A Grammar of Yeri, a Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea

834 Pages·2017·9.426 MB·English

by  Jennifer Wilson

A Grammar of Yeri
a Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea
by
Jennifer Wilson
February 1, 2017
A dissertation submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of the
State University of New York at Buffalo
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Linguistics
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2017
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Acknowledgements
There are numerous people to thank for their support of this project, financial, emotional,
and otherwise. Most obviously, I need to thank the Yeri people. Without their enthusiasm
for this work, I would never have been able to even begin this project. In particular, this
includes Leo Ainaris and John Sirio who acted as my primary consultants throughout this
project and who went above and beyond to help me record and understand their language. I
could never have hoped to find two such talented and enthusiastic consultants. They each
devoted hundreds of hours to the project despite having a great deal of other important
responsibilities, and I will be forever grateful for their help. I also want to specifically thank
Ansela N1b1san, Vero N1b1san, and Josepa Yikaina who came back again and again to tell
me stories, spend time with me, and answer my endless questions, as well as John N1b1san
who graciously let us record in his new house in 2014.
In addition to language work, the whole Yeri village looked after me during my time in
the village. As a foreigner, I could not scrape, wash, or turn sago. I didn’t have a garden I
tended or any knowledge of how to survive in the Torricelli mountains. I am grateful to the
people who took on the task of caring for me, so that I could focus on documenting their
language during the time I could be there. Without their willingness to help, this project
would never have been completed. This includes my adopted family, Leo Ainairis, his wife
Rosa, and their children, Yirkuri and Solomon, as well as numerous other families who would
send food to my adopted family to help care for me. I also briefly want to thank John, Tom,
and Ruth who welcomed me to Sibilanga when I first arrived and who have helped take care
of me during my time in Sibilanga. During the eleven months I have spent in Papua New
Guinea, I have developed close friendships with so many of these people, and nog1l Yeri will
always hold a place in my heart. As so many of you have so often said to me, ‘‘hem wan
nyode ye.’’
There are also several groups I want to thank for their financial support. My doctoral
work from August 2008-December 2011 was funded by a teaching assistantship as well as
a Dean’s fellowship from the University at Buffalo, while my doctoral work from January
2012- May 2015 was supported by a doctoral fellowship from the Max Planck Institute for
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Evolutionary Anthropology. My initial fieldwork in 2010 was supported by the National
Science Foundation under grant #0756075. The two subsequent trips were funded by the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Without funding, none of this would
have been possible.
To the people at the University at Buffalo, I am grateful to all of the UB faculty for
the training I received. I am especially grateful to my adviser, Matthew Dryer, who first
introduced me to Papuan languages during my first semester in a seminar on the typology
of Papuan languages. He supported my first field trip to Yeri under his grant and personally
introduced me to the area and people. I also want to thank Lea Brown, who has always
been willing to talk with me about Torricelli languages and offer advice. To the rest of my
committee, Jeff Good and Karin Michelson, thank you for everything. I have grown so much
as a linguist since when I started the program and you two and Matthew are much of the
reason for that. Jeff, I owe you a particular debt of gratitude for being the one to suggest I
apply for the MPI EVA doctoral fellowship (as well as more recently for the ELDP postdoc
I was awarded).
I also want to thank the many other people I met throughout my time in the UB
linguistics program. Many of these have become lifelong friends and have supported me
despite the distance in our physical locations. In particular, I want to thank Hiroto Uchihara,
Karl Sarvestani, Jay Stallings, Adam Sposato, Adam Hatfield, and Jesse Lovegren who I
became close to while at UB. To those I still speak with frequently, thank you for putting up
with me through the many times I’ve talked way too much about this language. To those I
may speak with less frequently, I’m here if you ever need me and I’m grateful to have known
you. Like Adam said, I think this is my way of saying I miss you all.
To the people at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, thank you
for providing the most welcoming and supportive environment I could have asked for. I
know my own research was greatly improved from the many impromptu informal talks I had
with other researchers and by learning about a range of wonderful research projects being
undertaken by the other researchers there. In particular, I owe a deep debt of gratitude
to Bernard Comrie, who believed in me enough to offer me the doctoral fellowship that
supported the creation of this grammar. He was also gracious enough to offer me feedback
on several chapters and supported my travel to conferences to present on Yeri. I also want
to thank Julia Cissewski, who helped me settle into my life in Leipzig, Germany, and who
helped my husband find a hospital for me when I came down with malaria. I am especially
grateful to Alexandra Meier and Dorothea Steude, who helped me turn language data written
in field notebooks into a format that permitted computational searching. Without their help,
I could not have processed and archived as many Yeri recordings as I did. I also want to
thank Alexander König at The Language Archive, who single-handedly solved every issue I
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ran into while attempting to archive the Yeri data, and did it much faster than I could have
hoped for.
Finally, I would not have survived without the love and support of my parents, my
sisters, and my husband. Instead of telling me how crazy I was for choosing to travel to such
a remote area of Papua New Guinea (though they may have thought so), they supported
my choices and encouraged me when the challenges inherent in a project like this surfaced.
My older sister gave me a place to work when I returned home, and my younger sister kept
me supplied with music to work to. Both my parents cheered me on through the many
emotional challenges you face taking on such a large complex project for so many years, and
they continued to cheer me on even after we all took on the even more difficult emotional
challenges faced when a loved one starts a battle with cancer. Without such a wonderful
support network, I might never have believed in myself enough to attempt such a task.
My husband, in particular, was not only the most emotionally supportive friend I could
have asked for, but made choices again and again to actively encourage and help me. When
I moved to Germany to accept the doctoral fellowship from the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology, he moved with me, setting aside his own career plans. In 2014,
when I returned to Papua New Guinea for my third trip, he chose to come too. While there,
he took pictures for the dictionary, held bush-made boom poles for me, collected GPS data,
and recorded speakers telling stories so that I could later transcribe, translate, and analyze
them with the help of a consultant. There are no words to describe how very lucky I feel
every day to have married such a loving and supportive man. David, for everything that
you have done and continue to do, thank you.
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Contents
Acknowledgements iii
List of Figures xix
List of Tables xxv
Abbreviations xxvi
Abstract xxviii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Geographic location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Genealogical classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Common typological features of Torricelli languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Sociolinguistic situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4.1 The larger linguistic area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4.2 Clans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4.3 Language vitality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.3.1 Current language proficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.3.2 The narrowing of linguistic domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.3.3 The loss of traditional Yeri registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.5 Previous research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.6 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.6.1 Speakers and consultants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.6.2 Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.6.3 Data types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.6.4 The Yeri corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.6.4.1 Creating the corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.6.4.2 An overview of the corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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1.6.4.3 Accessing the corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.6.4.4 Using the corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.7 Data presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.7.1 Selecting examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.7.2 Interpreting examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.7.3 Hyperlinks (digital form only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.7.4 A note on allomorph terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.8 Organization of the grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
1.9 Grammatical overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2 Phonology 39
2.1 Segmental phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.1.1 Consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.1.1.1 Plosives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.1.1.2 Nasals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.1.1.3 Fricatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.1.1.4 Approximants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.1.2 Vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.1.2.1 The realization of /e/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.1.2.2 High vowels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.1.2.3 Evidence for vowel contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2.1.2.4 Neutralization of vowel contrasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.2 Yeri orthography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.3 Phonotactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.3.1 Consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.3.1.1 Onset consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2.3.1.2 Coda consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.3.2 Vowels and VV sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.4 Stress, vowel reduction, and epenthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2.4.1 Regular penultimate stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.4.2 Alternate stress patterns in trisyllabic words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
2.4.3 Word-final stress in specific disyllabic words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2.4.4 Stress and reduplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
2.4.5 Primary lexical stress and form types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
2.4.6 Stress shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
2.4.7 Vowel reduction/deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
2.4.8 Vowel coalescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
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2.4.9 Epenthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
2.5 Morphophonology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
2.5.1 Regressive vowel harmony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
2.5.2 Deletion of /e/ before vowel-initial morphemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
2.5.3 Irrealis mood and the reduction of /e/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
2.5.4 The pronunciation of /ai/ as [Ei] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2.5.5 The pronunciation of /oi/ as [Ei] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
2.5.6 Vowel disharmony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
2.5.6.1 Plural morphemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
2.5.6.2 Predicate morphemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
2.5.6.3 Augment morphemes and pronominal clitics . . . . . . . . . 100
2.5.7 /ia/ final verbs and -ki or danua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
2.5.8 Optional subject prefix omission before prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
2.5.9 /n/ deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
2.5.9.1 Optional deletion before consonant-initial verbs . . . . . . . . 107
2.5.9.2 Before consonant-initial plural suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
2.5.9.3 Optional deletion following /l/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
2.5.10 Predicate morphemes and velar deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
2.5.11 Imperfective -m- preceding /p/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
2.6 Reduplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
2.6.1 Complete reduplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
2.6.2 Partial reduplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3 Word classes 120
3.1 The selection of word class criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
3.2 Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
3.3 Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
3.4 Ideophones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
3.5 Adnominals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
3.5.1 Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.5.1.1 WGN adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.5.1.2 GN adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
3.5.1.3 N adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
3.5.2 Demonstratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
3.5.2.1 The demonstrative yot- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
3.5.2.2 The demonstrative yaPa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
3.5.3 Numerals and Quantifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
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3.5.3.1 Numerals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
3.5.3.2 Quantifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
3.5.4 Genitive pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
3.5.5 The relational clitic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
3.6 Copula words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
3.7 Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
3.8 Degree words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
3.9 Clause particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
3.10 Prepositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
3.10.1 wd1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
3.10.2 danua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
3.11 Conjunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
3.12 Subordinators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
3.13 Exclamatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
3.14 The word nad1 ‘only’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
4 Basic clausal syntax 166
4.1 Grammatical relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
4.1.1 Verbal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
4.1.2 Non-verbal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
4.2 Pronominal forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
4.2.1 Personal pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
4.2.2 Pronominal forms in non-verbal clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
4.3 Word order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
4.4 Overview of clause types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
4.5 Verbal clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
4.5.1 Intransitive verbal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
4.5.2 Transitive verbal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
4.6 Non-verbal clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
4.6.1 Nominal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
4.6.1.1 Simple nominal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
4.6.1.2 More complex nominal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
4.6.1.3 Temporal nominal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
4.6.2 Ideophone predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
4.6.3 Adnominal predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
4.6.3.1 Adjective predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
4.6.3.2 Demonstrative predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
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