[Fwd: question for Austronesian list]

[Piet Lincoln]

Hi Annemarie,

While I don't know of a cross linguistic study  the phenomon you have 
interest in occurs in Bannoni  [SW Bougainville} not very far from Haava.

What I have in mind is the use of /*va-*/  to achieve same subject 
construction for the verb to kill:

*ke                  tsunu   va-            mate-a     nna*
REAL.3s      hit         CAUSE      die   -3s   he
He killed it (by hitting).                 [example from Lynch, Ross, & 
Crowley(2002:450)]

The /*va-/*  prefix has other uses,  CAUSE  in general,   making ordinal 
numerals from cardinals, making adverbs from adjectives.

As I recall, quite similar to Fijian.

Good luck,
Keep in touch,

Piet

Wayan Arka wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> This is posted on behalf of Annemarie <annemarie.verkerk at mpi.nl>.
> Thanks.
>
> Best,
> -Wayan
>
>
>
> ----
>
> Dear all,
>
> we (myself and Benedicte Frostad from Radboud University Nijmegen, the
> Netherlands) are justing starting on a project concerning the following
> phenomenon. The prefix which is used for causatives, fa- or va-,
> reflexes of Proto-Austronesian *paka-, is, in some Oceanic languages,
> also used in serial verb constructions to derive manner predications,
> i.e. adverb-like things, as in this example from Hoava:
>
> Tanini va-hevá.
> hold CAUS-strong.TR:3SG
> 'Hold it strongly.' Davis (2003: 77)
>
> or resultative verbs:
>
> Ego, naní sa, nani va-paho-e.
> well eat.TR.3PL PRO:3SG eat CAUS-empty-TR.3PL
> 'Well, he ate them, ate and emptied them.' Davis (2003: 161)
>
> So far, our findings indicate that some Oceanic languages pattern like
> this, while others do not use the causative marker in this way. Since
> this seems to be an interesting topic to pursue, we were wondering
> whether there has been any prior research into this. Since we haven't
> been able to find any, we would be very grateful if you could inform us
> of any publications or research concerning this topic.
>
> with kind regards,
> Annemarie Verkerk
> a.verkerk at mpi.nl
> Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
>
>
> --
>
> Annemarie Verkerk, MA
> Evolutionary Processes in Language and Culture (PhD student)
> Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
> P.O. Box 310, 6500AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands
> +31 (0)24 3521 185
> http://www.mpi.nl/research/research-projects/evolutionary-processes
>
>
>

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