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
Clause conjunction is done with the morpheme le ‘and’. It coordinates the events in the different clauses.
121 fei
ile-pe kere
p-e p-aplou-pe
yousi, le ile-pe
kotu-wo now part-3p
break 3p-go
3p-cut.3p-3p leaves and
some-3p remove-3m
tef, le
ku ile-pe
weisi-pe nimpe teingelem re
era m-aØfo
wof. ground and
we part-3p
turn-3p tree
trunk.
PL
and rocks
1p-put.3p river
Now some of us broke away, they cut leaves, and some removed ground, and some of us turned tree trunks and rocks and put them in the river.
It is normal for there to be a lexical agent following the conjunction, even if the agent is identical. 122
ki ma
k-e liom
le ki
ma k-ontoli
I
IR
1s-go garden
and I
IR
1s-look I will go to the garden and I will look.
2.3.7.3 Immediate sequence
Olo marks that one clause follows another in immediate sequence with the morpheme so. A. McGregor 1983 referred to this morpheme as a future tense. While it is understandable given its dis-
tribution to make such a claim, it is better thought of as a type of conjunction. When it occurs between two clauses it means that the clauses are in immediate sequence, either temporally or logically, as in
123.
2.3 Grammatical Characterization 41
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Longacre 1972 discusses a similar phenomenon in highland chaining languages like Fore and Kanite, as well as Nasioi. In these cases if the subject of one clause is included in the second clause the first clause could be marked with the same subject
marker. This is true of these languages even in the third person.
123 a. ki
k-ato Lumi
so k-au
I 1s-remain
Lumi
ISQ
1s-come I was in Lumi, now I come.
b. le kolele
nimpe so
oweli fale
he limb.3m.
CNT
tree
ISQ
food come.up
He limbed the tree in the garden so the food would grow. The marker can be used with completed events. The following response was made to an offer of food af-
ter sitting around for an hour talking. This clearly shows that the morpheme does not mark future tense. 124
olo k-aplei
so k-au
no 1s-eat.3p
ISQ
1s-come No, I ate right before I came.
The immediate sequence marker is often phonologically reduced to just an s and attached to the word following it.
125 ki
k-ato Lumi
s-k-au
I 1s-remain Lumi
ISQ
-1s-come I was in Lumi, now I come.
2.3.7.4 Clause listing
