30.3888, Review: Wára; General Linguistics; Language Documentation: Döhler (2018)

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Subject: 30.3888, Review: Wára; General Linguistics; Language Documentation: Döhler (2018)

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Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 14:06:13
From: John Mansfield [jbmansfield at gmail.com]
Subject: A grammar of Komnzo

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36513457


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-139.html

AUTHOR: Christian  Döhler
TITLE: A grammar of Komnzo
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Diversity Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Language Science Press
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: John Mansfield, University of Melbourne

SUMMARY 

The Yam language family of Southern New Guinea has generated significant
interest in recent years for its complex and unusual morphological structures
(e.g. Evans 2015; Carroll 2016). Doehler’s grammar of Komnzo adds
substantially to our knowledge of these languages, being the first published
reference grammar for the Yam family. A key point of interest in Komnzo is the
elaboration of distributed exponence (Matthews 1972), making this a promising
source of data for morphological theorists. Phonologists will find interesting
material in the prolific vowel epenthesis. Other highlights are the rich
social, environmental and sociolinguistic background provided, and the use of
fully contextualised example sentences. The grammar is also paired with an
accessible online corpus.

Chapter 1 explains the background and plan of the book, and also provides a
generous amount of information about the Farem people who speak Komnzo, their
homeland and their recent history. Komnzo is spoken by some 150-250 people,
most of whom are multilingual in neighbouring languages. They are a
predominantly agricultural people, with yam cultivation playing a particularly
important role in both subsistence and ritual. This gives rise to a
fascinating senary number system used for ritual yam counting, and the
creative use of yams to punish men who mistreat their wives. Doehler also
provides valuable sociolinguistic details, including discussion of
multilingualism and language attitudes. Linguistic diversity runs deep in
Komnzo mythology, with the ancestor-hero Kuramonggo said to have heard many
voices from a tree, which he then chopped down to gradually releasing people
speaking different languages. The branches and upper parts were other peoples’
languages, and when he got to the base he found his own language (p. 36).

Chapter 2 describes the phonology, which is distinguished by extensive use of
schwa epenthesis. Following previous work on the unrelated Papuan language
Kalam (Blevins & Pawley 2010), Doehler argues that the phonemic representation
of Komnzo words may be quite deficient in vowels (e.g. yrakthkwa ‘he put on
top’), or in some cases lacking vowels altogether (e.g. mnz ‘house’). The
phonetic form of these words uses predictable schwas to provide missing
syllable nuclei, i.e. [jərakəθkʷa, məⁿts], though Doehler argues that
syllables are not defined in lexical representations, noting that there is
some free variation in syllabification, e.g. mrn-en ‘family-LOC’ → [mərənen ~
mərnen]. Komnzo may thus contribute important data to theories of
syllabification.

Chapter 3 gives an overview of the word classes, thus serving as an entrée to
the morphological and syntactic descriptions that make up the remainder of the
book.

Chapter 4 describes nominal morphology, predominantly case clitics. There is a
large number of cases, which Doehler divides into ‘core cases’ that are
complements of verbs or possessed nouns (ERG, ABS, DAT, POSS), and ‘semantic
cases’ that are not required in this way (LOC, ALL, PURP etc). Case marking
involves a grammatical distinction for animacy, with animate case suffixes
inflecting for number, while inanimates are underspecified. 

Chapter 5 is on verb morphology, which is one of the most complex and
typologically interesting dimensions of Komnzo. The verb hosts prefixes,
suffixes and clitics on both edges, while the stem also indicates aspectual
distinctions in its ‘restrictive’ versus ‘extended’ forms. Stem alternations
are also notable for the unpredictability of their formal relations (e.g.
rfitf ~ rfitfak ‘answer’, garf ~ gar ‘break’, mg ~ ru ‘shoot, spear’) (cf.
Ackerman & Malouf 2013). TAM categories are marked distributionally, combining
prefix, stem and suffix markers. The number categories of participants
(singular, dual, plural) are also marked distributionally, as well as
dual/plural neutralisation in various forms. For example, in the following
form Actor agreement is marked on two different suffixes, with different
degrees of number specification, and one of which is also associated with IPFV
aspect. This aspectual value, in turn, is marked on the stem, a prefix and a
suffix, each of which also contributes other lexical or grammatical meanings:
     
y-fath-wr-o-th     
3SG.M.Patient.NSPT.IPFV-hold.IPFV-NonDual.Actor.IPFV-AND-2|3NSG.Actor
‘They hold him away.’  (p. 177-179)

Komnzo person agreement tends towards a binary distinction of 1 vs 2|3 (as in
the example above), while gender agreement is a rich though relatively
straightforward system in which gender of both actor and undergoer can be
specified.

Verbs may be inflected in a range of valency templates, some of which involve
prefix agreement with a single participant, while others use prefix and suffix
to agree with two participants (including a non-referential ‘dummy’ prefix in
middle verbs). Komzno verb stems are a large closed class with 380+ attested
members, but they show great flexibility in filling diverse valency templates,
so that each stem may cover a great range of event types. For example, Doehler
shows that the verb migsi ‘hang’ can appear in five different valency
templates, producing meanings such as ‘He is hanging’, ‘Something is hanging
from him’, ‘It hangs itself up’, ‘She hangs him up’ and ‘She hangs it up for
him’ (p. 188).
A distinct subclass of ‘positional’ verb stems can only take a single
argument, but can be inflected for an additional number category ‘large
plural’. The large plural category is marked by an unexpected combination of
dual and singular markers:

woz    y-ræs-thg-n
bottle  3SG.M-erect-STAT-DU
‘Many/all bottles are standing.’

Chapter 6 describes the TAM system, some of which overlaps with the verb
affixation system. Particles also provide more specific TAM categories.
Distributed exponence is again a major theme here, and as Doehler remarks, it
is striking how the TAM system produces so many grammatical categories from a
relatively small set of grammatical markers, by assigning a value to almost
every possible combination.

Chapters 7 to 9 describe the syntax of noun phrases, simple and complex
clauses respectively. There is a relatively fixed NP structure, though most
modifiers (e.g. adjectives) can go on either side of the noun. Clause
structure is also relatively fixed, with verb in final position, and [Actor
Undergoer Verb] being the preferred order where two arguments are present.
However, arguments are freely elided (especially objects), and verb-only
clauses are common. Light verb constructions also play a major role, allowing
a limited set of verbs to combine with ‘property nouns’ that denote many
events. Yet more flexibility is found in a copula verb that can fill both
single-argument and double-argument templates, covering the semantic ground of
both ‘be’ and ‘do’ in other languages.

Chapters 10 and 11 describe information structure and lexicon respectively,
thus providing some bonus topics that are not always found in grammars.
Information structure is frequently marked by particles (including komnzo
‘only’), but also to a great degree by using irrealis verbs for backgrounded
events. This section also brings out some of the typologically unusual
properties of perfectivity in Komnzo. The chapter on lexicon gives rich
examples of sign metonymy among natural species names, as well as interesting
details on the lexical semantics of landscape.

EVALUATION

The Yam family provides a fascinating and relatively new addition to our
knowledge of human language, and Doehler’s comprehensive description of Komnzo
is therefore an important publication. This work has many enjoyable and
informative features. It is comprehensive and detailed in its coverage of
phonology, morphology and syntax. The description is richly exemplified, with
examples often containing interesting cultural vignettes, always carefully
contextualised by the author. The grammar also has valuable ‘add-ons’,
especially the social, geographic and sociolinguistic background in the first
chapter, which is a substantial research achievement in its own right.

The presentation of linguistic examples is a constantly evolving documentary
technique, and one in which accuracy, brevity and legibility are often at
odds. Like many contemporary grammars, Doehler’s record of Komnzo is greatly
enriched by accompanying texts, including linked online texts. These provide
fully contexualised and naturalistic examples, which are used to illustrate
most of the grammatical phenomena. On the other hand, the length of these
examples sometimes make it hard for the reader to quickly spot the feature
under discussion. I would therefore suggest that there is still a role for
truncated, decontextualised and even elicited example sentences or words, as
concise illustrations of grammatical phenomena.

Distributed exponence creates its own challenges for grammatical glossing.
This book tends towards non-segmentation of verbs, and purely conventional
affix glosses, to represent word-forms in which meaning cannot be neatly
attributed to some morphological elements. For example, TAM-sensitive
agreement prefixes are labelled using empty Greek symbols like wo- 1sg.α, kw-
1sg.β, since the prefixes are responsive to TAM, but don’t align neatly with
particular categories. Personally, I would have preferred more semantic
glossing (e.g. 1sg.IRR), even if not strictly accurate, since it would at
least provide a mnemonic. Furthermore, if morphological components are only to
be given semantic glosses where they consistently align with a particular
meaning, this might require a vast amount of material to be glossed with
meaningless Greek symbols. To pick but one example, in the northern Australian
language Murrinhpatha, certain stem forms are usually associated with SG
subject agreement, but in specific morphological contexts are instead
associated with DU subject agreement (Mansfield 2019). The question is, how
consistent does an asssociation have to be in order to merit a semantic gloss?

In any case, Doehler is to be commended for taking an explicit and principled
approach to grammatical glossing, as Komnzo highlights some of the fundamental
limitations of standard segmentation methods. 

REFERENCES

Ackerman, Farrell & Malouf, Robert. 2013. Morphological organization: The low
conditional entropy conjecture. Language 89(3). 429–464.

Blevins, Juliette & Pawley, Andrew. 2010. Typological implications of Kalam
predictable vowels. Phonology 27. 1–44.

Carroll, Matthew J. 2016. The Ngkolmpu Language, with special reference to
distributed exponence. Canberra: Australian National University. (PhD thesis.)

Evans, Nicholas. 2015. Inflection in Nen. In Baerman, Matthew (ed.), The
Oxford Handbook of Inflection. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Mansfield, John. 2019. Murrinhpatha morphology and phonology. Berlin:
DeGruyter.

Matthews, P.H. 1972. Inflectional morphology: A theoretical study based on
aspects of Latin verb conjugation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

John Mansfield is a Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Melbourne,
specialising in Australian languages. Mansfield’s research interests include
language change, morphology, phonology and the relationships between
linguistic structure and social structure.





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