Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: The Oceanic language Matukar Panau has three equivalent morphosyntactic strategies for describing the direction of the event represented by a verb, with a system of ten directional morphemes that can appear in each construction. This variation is explored using a corpus from Matukar Panau and analysed quantitatively with Bayesian regression analyses to assess what factors influence the choice of directional construction. Variables pertaining to the lexical verb and the directional morphemes are found to be the most important factors affecting the variation in the directional system. Sociolinguistic factors are shown to play a less significant role. The findings have implications for the grammaticalization of directional elements, as well as the typology of directional constructions in Oceanic languages.
Source: Asia-Pacific Language Variation
Authors: Kira Davey, Danielle Barth
Institution: Australian National University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4390740225