36 mai a-mai-mai-mamni
come 1p-RDP-come-POS
‘our coming’ 37 mori
mor-mior-ni live
RDP-live-POS ‘life’
38 ku’a + lawna ku-ku’u-ni-lalawan-ni
small + big RDP-small-POS-RDP-big-POS
‘all social positions’
3.1.3 Compound nouns
There are two kinds of compounding in Luang: productive compounding and lexicalization. Productive compounding in Luang “is identifiable by flexibility of the frame where one of the members of the
compound may be productively replaced by other forms, and the resulting form is semantically recognisable as the sum of its parts. Compounding always signals tight grammatical and semantic
cohesion Grimes 1991:70–71.” Lexicalization, on the other hand is unproductive and frozen in form and semantics Grimes 1991:70–71.
Note the following examples of lexicalization with the word or ‘the one who owns’. 39 or-noha
owner-island ‘king’
40 or-gahi owner-things
‘God’ Luang is full of compound nouns. The more formal and ritualistic the genre, the greater the number
of compound nouns occur. They are considered poetic. Often compound nouns occur within compound phrases in very poetic ritual speech. The words which are compounded together descriptively express the
semantic meaning of the whole. As a result it may be that in traditional or spiritual practices Luang speakers use these word pairs in the place of noun phrases for purposes of description.
41 in-ni-nar-ni mother-POS-brother-POS
‘mother’s relatives’ 42 in-ni-am-ni
mother-POS-father-POS ‘older relatives’
43 am-ni-hyal-li father-POS-brother-POS
‘male relatives’ 44 upa-tgara
i’na-ya’ana wehla-ta’wa
ancestor-ancestor fish-edibles
machete-knife ‘the fishing knives of our ancestors’
45 uhu-nu-ewat-ni ewat-ni-lahwa-ni
corner-POS-width-POS width-POS-length-POS ‘all overeverywhere’
3.1.4 Enclitic -a
Sometimes an -a is encliticized word finally on nouns. The reason for this is not exactly clear. With older people it has more of an e quality. Sometimes it seems to relate the nominal to what follows it
in a more semantically tight unit. At times it appears to be part of a system not so well used now where it indicates the object’s proximity to the speaker or actor on stage either in space or time.
46 Ri-mor-miori-a nohkerna
People-RDP-live-a earth
‘Peoples of the earth.’ 47 Ri-mor-miori-a
mak-mori-kdar-lia tlin-te-tema-nam-pul-wulu
Ri-mori-mori-a mak-mori-k-dari-la
tlin-tema-tema-nama-wulu-wulu People-RDP-live-a
who-live-REL-live-in ear-RDP-all-mouth-RDP-hair
‘People who live ignorantlyuncivilized.’ Sometimes it seems to function purely phonologically to avoid unnatural clusters at word breaks.
In example 48 below it seems clear that –a is phonological and not grammatical because MKI is an acronym or abbreviation for a particular group of people.
48 Ra-tian nohor
a lia
MKI-a re
ya-la’a-ni Ra-tiana
nohora a’u
la MKI-a
re ya-la’a-ni
3p-ask concerning
me about MKI group-a
those NOM-go-POS ‘They asked me about the goings on of the MKI group.’
3.2 Deixis
