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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2020

Morphology in Trans New Guinea languages

Résumé

The aim of this article is to present the morphology and morphosyntax of Trans New Guinea TNG languages to a wide audience of linguists. The TNG languages are a family of several hundred languages which are spoken across much of the New Guinea mainland. The morphology of Trans New Guinea languages shows a high degree of diversity, from mildly polysynthetic to almost isolating. I present language data from virtually all subgroups of TNG, giving preference to recent descriptions and new data. TNG languages display a clear categorial divide between nouns and verbs. In terms of word formation, they typically allow N-N and V-V compounding. Category-changing derivational processes usually involve overt morphological means. TNG languages are rich in nominalization processes, verbalization processes are less common. Valency-changing derivational processes (causatives, applicatives) are widespread and involve affixation or verb serialization. Many TNG languages have a reduced inventory of verb roots, in extreme cases comprising only as few as 60 recorded roots. Serial verb constructions and light-verb constructions are used to increase the expressive power of the verb lexicon. Besides nouns and verbs, TNG languages have sizeable classes of adjectives, small classes of adverbs, and pronouns, directionals, numerals, postpositions and conjunctions. Nouns have restricted inflectional morphology, with inflection for the possessor being the most widespread. Nominal number is expressed less often and gender is very rare. Peripheral case roles are signaled by postpositions. Many TNG languages show optional ergativity where transitive subjects can be marked by a special case depending on certain semantic or pragmatic factors, such as animacy, agentivity or focus. Verb morphology is extensive, yielding large paradigms. TNG languages use verbal affixes to express core arguments. Subjects are almost universally indexed with a suffix on the verb. The majority of TNG languages also indexes the object on the verb, either with a prefix or a suffix. 1 The majority alignment pattern in the clause is accusative. Most TNG languages employ distinct constructions for bodily and mental processes, depending on whether they are controlled by an animate agent (e.g. think) or whether they are manifestations of a stimulus beyond the control of the experiencer (e.g. be angry). Tense, aspect and mood categories can all be found in TNG languages with one of them usually being dominant. For the expression of aspect, serial verb constructions are common in which the last verb in the serialization has undergone grammaticalization into an aspect marker, e.g. a progressive marker which has developed from the verb 'stay'.
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hal-03586038 , version 1 (23-02-2022)

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Sebastian Fedden. Morphology in Trans New Guinea languages. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2020, ⟨10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.633⟩. ⟨hal-03586038⟩
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