Serial Clause Construction Clausal Complexities

c. pe nautesi erau d. Meken nautetei nimpe they trip rock Megan trip.I log The tripped on a rock. Megan tripped over the log. Verbs that have an inverse form universally use the t form when the patient is either first or sec- ond person. This shows that people involved in the conversation have a high level of importance. 110 a. pe p-etesi-ne b. pe p-etete-iki they 3p-hit-3f they 3p-hit-1s They hit her. They hit me. When the patient is third person, the use of the t form is pragmatically determined. That is, if the speaker wants to highlight the patient, but not suppress the agent, this construction is used. For exam- ple, in a story about processing sago, the initial time the verb esi ‘holdwork’ appeared, the inverse form ete was used. However, subsequent uses are the normal form esi. The assumption is that the in- verse form was used to set the discourse topic. 111 fei ku m-e m-ete lou. Rita n-esi plen le today we 1p-go 1p-work.I sago Rita 3f-work side and Yuwana n-esi plen. Yuwana 3f-work side Today we went and worked sago. Rita worked one side, and Yuwana worked one side.

2.2.7 Clausal Complexities

The primary clausal elements have been specified, and we can now look at the formulation of the clause structure. As stated above the central element of the clause is the verb. Single word clauses in Olo are quite common. On the other end of the spectrum clauses can form quite complex structures. These include conjoined clauses, a clause list, and serial clauses. Clauses can also be embedded in other structures or in a clause, giving rise to relative clauses, clauses with subordinate marking and complementation.

2.3.7.1 Serial Clause Construction

Olo has a construction that contains more than one verb and for which the verbs are not in a gram- matical dependency relationship. The verbs take their full morphological marking irrespective of their serial position. The construction is under a single intonation contour. 112 Wamnei n-e kali tom n-ila n-au wa-iki Wamnei 3f-go get.3m string.bag 3f-carry 3f-come give-1s Wamnei went, got the string bag, and carrying it, she came and gave it to me. In 112 the subject of all the clauses is the same. This does not have to be the case, as is shown in 113. Here the agent of au ‘come’ is third-person masculine which in this context is coreferential with tom ‘string bag’. While this example may seem odd, it is not at all unusual. In general, it causes a slight shift of focus to the item being brought instead of the person bringing it. 113 Wamnei n-e kal t i tom t n-ila-Ø l t -au wa-iki Wamnei 3f-go get.3m string.bag 3f-lift-3m 3m-come give-1s Wamnei went, got the string bag, and she carried it, it came, and she gave it to me. 2.3 Grammatical Characterization 37 The serial clause versus the clause chain Clause chains are commonly found in non-Austronesian or Papuan languages of Papua New Guinea. As formulated in Longacre 1972 13 the term refers to sequences of verbs with attenuated morphological marking followed by a verb that is fully inflected. Each of the attenuated verbs, called medial verbs by Longacre, typically has a morpheme attached which marks whether the next verb has the same or different subject from the current verb. It should be clear from 112 and 113 that Olo does not match up with the definition of a clause chain as formulated by Longacre. Firstly there is no medialfinal verb distinction, and secondly there are no same subjectdifferent subject markers, even when there is a change in subject as in 113. While the Olo data is clearly distinct from the clause chaining phenomena described by Longacre, it shares some similarity with Miskitu of Nicaragua Hale 1991. When the subjects of each clause are different, Miskitu marks each verb with a subject pronominaltense marker. This is very similar to what is found in Olo, for both same subject and different subject sequences. According to Hale, how- ever, when the Miskitu clauses have the cataphoric same subject, the medial verbs are marked with the infinitive and only the final verb has full tense aspectpronominal marking for the subject. This behav- ior is similar to what Longacre found in Papua New Guinea Highland languages, but is distinct from what occurs in Olo. Givón calls the Miskitu type of clause chaining “A rudimentary—and diachronical- ly early—form of clause-chaining” 1990:865. The Olo data could be thought to show that Olo is at a less grammaticalized stage than the Miskitu system, which has the clause chain only when the same cataphoric subject is used. The question of whether to characterize the Olo data as clause chaining, only still more rudimentary, must be answered. Since Olo does not make a finitenon-finite distinction in the verbal system, and the data is radically different from what is normally thought of as a “clause-chain” in Papua New Guinea languages, I feel it is best not to call the construction a clause chain, but prefer the term serial clause. The serial clause versus the serial verb construction The question of whether the serial clause construction is distinct from the serial verb construction is more perplexing than whether it is distinct from the phenomena of clause chaining. There is not a con- sistent single definition of what constitutes a serial verb construction. The definitions vary from writer to writer but agree on some essential points see Osam 1994 for an African perspective. For example Schachter says that: A sentence that contains a serial verb construction consists, on the surface at least, of a subject noun phrase followed by a series of two or more verb phrases, each containing a finite verb plus, possibly, the complements of that verb. 1974:254 Foley and Olson state: Serial verb constructions…are constructions in which verbs sharing a common actor or object are merely juxtaposed, with no intervening conjunctions…Serial verbs constructions always contain two or more predicates. Furthermore…while they may require the same actor for both predicates, each verb in the series may have arguments not shared by other verbs. 1985:18 They go on to argue for a concept of serial verbs as forming a single event or clause. Durie makes this more explicit when he defines serialization this way: In simple descriptive terms, serialization is what happens when two or more verbs are juxtaposed in such a way that they act as a single predicate, taking a unitary complex of direct arguments. The verbs are bound together syntactically andor morphologically on the basis of sharing one or more core arguments, and neither verb is subordinate to the other. Typically in a serial construction there is no marker of subordination or coordination, no dividing intonational or morphological mark of a clause boundary, and the verbs cannot have a separate scope for tense, mood, aspect, illocutionary force, and negation. 1988:3 Crowley adopts a definition of serialization following Bradshaw 1982 where he states: 38 The Olo Language 13 The term clause chaining predates Longacre’s work, for example see McCarthy 1965. Verb serialisation is a term that is used to describe a grammatical construction in which a sentence may contain two or more verb stems, which share the following basic features Bradshaw 1982:28: i All verbs in the serial construction refer to subparts of a single overall event. ii There is no intonational or grammatical marking of clause boundaries between the verbs. iii There are tight restrictions on the nominal arguments associated with each verb. iv There is no contrast in the basic inflectional categories of the serialized verbs. 1987:38 Crowley goes on to lay out a subcategorization of serial verb constructions depending on the level of restrictions involving the nominal arguments. He proposes four types of serial constructions based on these parameters. The first involves constructions where the verbs share the same subject. The second type involves constructions where the object of the first verb is the subject of the second. The third type has the same subject but different objects for each verb. The fourth type is what Crowley calls “ambient serialization.” This type of serialization involves serialization without a specific referent as the subject of the second clause. A Paamese example is given below from Crowley 1987:40. 114 kihulÜn ato kail hemal ki-hulii-nV atoo kaile he-malu 2sg-dis-count-comm OBJ chicken PL 3sg-dis-be.correct Count the chickens correctly. Givón 1991 conducted a crosslinguistic study of four Papuan Languages in regards to verb serial- ization. From this study Givón makes a strong crosslinguistic claim: Serial verbs thus reveal themselves, with great cross-language consistency, to be rather non-prototypical verbs. They lack most grammatical trimmings of verbhood; they are not coded as typical verbs, but rather as stripped-down stems. 1991:176 At this point let us turn from a characterization of serial verbs in general to looking at how those claims fit with the Olo data comprising the construction I am calling the serial clause. The Olo serial construction is a series under a single intonation pattern, and there is no grammatical marking of any clause boundaries. This construction then has the same general surface structure as a serial verb con- struction. However, if we compare the status of verbs in the Olo construction with Givón’s crosslinguistic claim, we find that the verbs that are clearly verbs still have all their verbal morphol- ogy. None of them are stripped down stems as can be seen in 115 by comparing 115a with 115b–d. 115 a. ne kapi yali n-ila-pe n-e uf she get.3p firewood. PL 3f-lift-3p 3f-go village She got the firewood, lifted it and went to the village. b. ne kapi yali she get.3p firewood. PL She got firewood. c. ne n-ila-pe yali she 3f-lift-3p firewood. PL She lifted up the firewood. d. ne n-e uf she 3f-go village She went to the village. 2.3 Grammatical Characterization 39 Another claim about serial verbs is that there is no contrast in inflectional categories. That is often taken to mean that each verb is under the same scope for purposes of tense, aspect, and mood. Olo, however, does not require that each verb in a serial clause construction have the same aspect. 116 ne n-ifei n-alpopo omkele she 3f-sit 3f-pierce.3m. CNT armband She sits piercingweaving an armband. It is possible for the word ifei ‘sit’ to be inflected for continuous aspect taking the form ifefei ‘sitting’. The irrealis mood has a similar freedom as compared to the continuative aspect. If the first clause of a serial clause construction contains the irrealis morpheme, then it and all subsequent clauses will be in- terpreted as irrealis. This is a logical entailment, if the first in a series of events is unreal, then all the subsequent events must also be unreal. However, the reverse is not a logical entailment. If the first in a series of events is real, it is not logically necessary for all the subsequent events to be real. This is re- flected in the grammar of Olo as is shown in 117. 117 a. ki ma k-e Lumi k-aisi-pe oweli I IR 1s-go Lumi 1s-buy-3p food I will go to Lumi and buy food. b. ki ma k-e Lumi ma k-aisi-pe oweli I IR 1s-go Lumi IR 1s-buy-3p food I will go to Lumi and will buy food. c. ki k-e Lumi ma k-aisi-pe oweli I 1s-go Lumi IR 1s-buy-3p food I go to Lumi and will buy food. Durie 1988 also claims that the verbs in a serial verb construction cannot have separate scopes for negation. This is commonly true in Olo as should be expected. However, it is not universally true. Olo has a certain emphatic construction that is composed of paired clauses, the first positive and the sec- ond negative. The second can be seen as a paraphraseamplification of the first. The first clause is not negated, only the second clause is negated. 118 pe p-ifei yau-pe p-aplei kolo they 3p-sit empty-3p 3p-eat.3p NEG They sit emptily, they do not eat. A final area that also somewhat distinguishes Olo serial clauses from serial verb constructions involves the verb arguments. Durie 1988 talks about “unitary complex of direct arguments,” and Crowley subcategorizes for same subject arguments, object-subject arguments, same subject but multiple object arguments, and ambient arguments. All the examples so far have been same subject arguments. Of the other subtypes Crowley proposes, only the ambient argument is not found in Olo. 119 a. k-elele lou l-ongo l-ualo Different Subject 1s-fell sago.tree 3m-break 3m-fall I felled 14 a sago tree, it broke and fell down. b. ne kali ila n-aplo-pe fouye Different Objects she get.3m knife 3f-cut.3p-3p vines She got a knife and cut the vines. 40 The Olo Language 14 The word elele means to cut through the base of a standing tree. This most readily corresponds to the english word ‘fell’. However, the Olo word does not imply that the tree actually came down, but only the cutting at the base. c. ne kapi oweli wato-wo Different Objects she get.3p food give-3m She got the food and gave it to him. Olo does have another variant on the arguments allowed in the serial clause. There is a special arrangement of first or second-person free pronoun occurring as the free nominal “subject” while the actual prefix on the verb is the third-person affix. The combination refers to a set 15 of every- body that would normally be covered by the pronoun, but excludes the actual speech act partici- pants. This allows a speaker to say “All of us but me did X.” What can happen is that the speaker can exclude himself from one verb and include himself in the second, so that the two verbs have different actual subjects. 120 ku p-uluw-epe m-antutu we 3p-see-3p 1p-run. CNT Some of us, but not me, saw them and we ran and ran. Technically the two verbs in 120 have different subjects, however, both are interpreted under the scope of the free pronoun. We can now answer the question as to whether the serial clause construction is really a serial verb construction. The answer is clearly no, based on the data. The Olo serial clause construction is distin- guished from serial verbs because of the full inflection of the verbs, and the freedom of scope for as- pect, mood, negation, and arguments.

2.3.7.2 Conjoining clauses