SPECIFYING THE DEONTIC SOURCE: THE SUPERORDINATE VERB OMA

The Mekeo are generally very concerned to 'attribute' all statements, to ascribe their illocutionary force to some responsible source.1 This is accomplished in terms o f the superordinate verb OM A, which always follows the verb it 'governs' and denotes by its person and number a 'highest' subject.2

(182)

Pe-mai

a-oma.

(WMek)

OBLG.3SG-come 1SG-DNT "I wish s/he would come."

OM A, which has cognates in most of the other languages of West Central Papua,3 is essentially a reporting verb and it means, basically, "intend" or "mean". But, because o f the cultural focus upon the source of the intention that underlies every action or utterance, OM A can act as a universal pro-verb, standing in for any other verb. In different utterances it can mean not only "intend, mean, want, hope, think, be o f the opnion that" but also "do, make, behave" or simply "be". When functioning as an adverbial co-verb, OMA can often be translated as "like".

By common extension, OM A serves for "say, demand, command". When governing one of the intentional moods (as above), the obligative (OBLG) and the imperative (IMP), it indicates the identity of the agent who wishes or means for the agent-subject of the governed verb to do whatever is denoted by that verb. When governing a verb in the indicative mood it either reports an utterance or it attributes an intention or a wish or hope, or an opinion, to some subjective source.

(183)

E-mai

e-oma.

(EMek)

3SG-come 3SG-DNT

"S/he's come", s/he said/thought.4

The term that will be used for OMA is the deontic source (DNT), as the primary function of this verb, in Mekeo, is to govern the two subjunctive moods, the obligative and

1 Mekeo thus codifies a preoccupation with the hidden agenda that is routinely attributed to others (see Hau'ofa, 1981: 95-96).

2 It can be taken to express a "higher, performative main clause". See Lyons (1977: 778) for a discussion and other references.

3 I cannot yet say to what extent their functions in these languages replicate the central place of O M A in Mekeo grammar. See footnote 1, Section 4.2.4.2, below, for some possible cognates.

4 This distinction can be shown by inserting quotation marks to indicate what one judges to be direct speech. Note that this represents a judgement on the part of the hearer.

imperative, which express modal necessity, or obligation. OM A serves to identify the ultimate source of obligation.1

OM A is very often deleted from the surface structure, and it is then up to the hearer to supply the appropriate form of the verb, including person (and sometimes number). It is thus often entirely at the discretion of the hearer what interpretation s/he will choose to put upon an utterance, i.e. whether s/he will construe it as an indirect request, or as a statement of intention (and hence perhaps a promise), or indeed as a question, since interrogative 'mood' is expressed in Mekeo by means of this verb. Thus the bare utterance:

Fo-uele

(EMek) "OBLG.2SG/PL-bathe", can be interpreted as the reduced form of either

(184)

Fo-uele

la-om a.

(EMek)

OBLG.2SG/PL-bathe 1SG-DNT "I think/want that you should bathe." or

(185)

Fo-uele

lo-oma?

(EMek)

OBLG.2SG/PL-bathe 2SG-DNT You think/want that you should bathe?"

Example (184) is as close as one normally come to giving a direct command in Mekeo (at least to non-related adult male). Example (185), with OMA inflected for the second person, would normally be interpreted as a question. Note that these two utterances could also be interpreted as reported speech: "I said that you should bathe" (184) and "You (2SG) said that you should bathe" (185).2

1 See Lyons (1977, Chapter 17) for a detailed discussion of deontic necessity in logic and deontic modality in language.

2 Fo- uel e can be either 2SG or 2PL, due to homophony, while l o- oma is clearly 2SG.

Chapter 2

C L A SS E S O F N O M IN A L E X P R E S S IO N S

2.0 INTRODUCTION

In this chapter I simply list all the possible constituents of nominal

predications in Mekeo. All of the items in question can be classified as nominals. that is, items that refer or denote.1 In Section 2 .1 1 divide up what I call 'prototypical nouns' into five sub-categories. This classification is based as much on semantic as on morphosyntactic criteria. In Section 2.2 I detail membership of the closed or virtually closed systems o f pro-forms, among which I number the deictics and quantifiers. And in section 2.3 I enumerate lexical predicates.2 In Chapter 3 the combinatorial possibilities of all the aforementioned items (i.e. in predications) are considered at some length. This procedure represents something of a methodological anomaly, as membership in the categories and systems described in Chapter 2 presupposes and is indeed based upon morphosyntactic behaviours described in Chapter 3 (in the absence of fixed formal criteria applicable to free items). That is, I present my results first and only then give the

evidence necessary to justify them. This is however a feature o f the presentation and not of the analytic procedure that has been followed.

Note that, in Mekeo, where a topic is frequently deleted under ellipsis, nomination is indistinguishable from predication. It can also be an invocation. As we saw (in Section 1.3.2.4 above), to utter the name of a person or the word for a thing in a certain way (with a certain intention) can constitute an invocational speech act. See Section 2.1.1.1 below for more on this. Non-performative one-word nominal utterances are also common, functioning for example to identify or classify or describe -

anaphorically or exophorically - some referential given. In this chapter I deal with nominals in isolation, as components of a lexicon.

1 This is a wider definition of nomi nal than that employed by Lyons, 1977, who confines the term to expressions that ref er.

2 A pro-form is an expression that 'stands for' some referent. This may be a discourse constituent (endophora) or some real-world entity (exophora). It may also represent ('stand for') an entire predication (e.g. the 'grammatical predicators' in Section 2.3). As pro-forms I classify them as nomi nal s .

Having noted then that all nominal and nominal-type expressions can occur as either topic or predicate in non-verbal predications, and that the said predications can subsequently undergo a rankshift, subsequent to which the same nominals represent constituents of a group level unit, I now survey the membership o f all the closed and open systems of nominals and nominal pro-forms (deictics and particles), postponing a detailed description of nominals in use - nominal predications - until Chapter 3.

2.1 CATEGORffiS OF NOUNS

Mekeo nouns are prototypically names (aga, aka) for individuals and, by extension, for types or classes of individuals - this latter word being used here in the logician's sense, to signify instances of e.g. people, things, places; events, states, processes; and ideas or concepts. That is to say, nouns are lexical items that have meanings - denotations - independently of the utterance situation. The forms agä, akä, incidentally, also mean "means" or, better perhaps, "its meaning".1 The meanings of naming words can be, according to the situation, animate or inanimate, concrete or abstract. A nominal can, without any surface marking or derivational apparatus, function as the name for a state, a process or an event (e.g. an action); however, certain roots are seem to be more typically verbal in function as they are more often met with as verbs.

Nominals function in two different kinds of predications: verbal and nominal. They specify the arguments of verbal predications, or act as topics or as the predicates of nominal predications. These functions define the term nominal.

Mekeo names - our nouns - fall upon inspection into two major formal

categories: non-determinate nouns and determinate nouns. The first are nouns that do not usually carry a determining suffix (though under certain circumstances they may).

Determinate nouns usually do carry a determining suffix and their reference is thereby

determined in relation to some nominal antecedent. These two categories can be broken down further, though no longer on formal grounds, into a number of functional

groupings that will be discussed in turn below. But first I will say some more about these major groupings:

A. Typically Non-Determinate Nouns:

i) Proper Names. These denote specific individuals or recognised social groupings, or places (villages or localities). They cannot normally occur as the head of a possessive construction (i.e. as the possessed), but this essentially extralinguistic (i.e. pragmatic) restriction is the only one that applies to them. They differ chiefly from other non-determinate nouns in having an extra vocative function. That is to say, they can be used as terms of address.

ii) Common Nouns. This is an open class in two different senses. As we saw in Section 1.4.1.2, Mekeo is best regarded as having a single class of

multifunctional content words based on lexical roots. The class o f common nouns is thus 'open' to typically verbal roots when these are made to function as nominals. It is also open in that new words - new ’names’ - can be added indefinitely (e.g. by borrowing or compounding, or by widening or narrowing the denotation of an established item). Such nominals are ’free’ in that they occur without a determining suffix marked for agreement with some other nominal. I will distinguish, further below, between superordinate class nouns (generic terms), hvponvms (species names), and technical terms (according to the circumstances, secret names).

B. Typically Determinate Nouns:

i) Relational Nouns. These represent abstract relations, and typically comprise closed systems. Included here are kin terms, the names for parts of animate or inanimate wholes, nouns of measurement, and a number of terms for inherent attributes or intimately associated concepts that are often only optionally members o f this class. The principle at work here is that of systemic association. Kin terms resemble proper names in that they can be used as terms of address. These nouns can function as predicates of nominal sentences but they more commonly occur, after rankshift, as topics. They (almost) always carry a determining suffix, marked for the person and number of a referential subject/topic.

ii) Locative-Relational Nouns ('Postpositions’). The majority of these nouns name locations in space (and sometimes, by semantic extension, in time) relative to some chosen viewpoint/object; more abstractly, they refer to relational aspects of people, places or things. They can be described grammatically as

postpositions that function to form embedded adverbial predications. They almost always occur with a 3SG determining suffix; and are frequently marked for a circumstantial case role (e.g. source or location) with the oblique case-marking suffix -AI. They

can

function as predicates; and in any case will be

analysed as rankshifted predicates. Certain very general - that is, abstract - members of this class form a functionally specialised (i.e. grammaticalised) sub-set.

iii) Adjectival Nouns. Adjectival nouns can originate at any o f a number of points along the time-stability line shown in Section 1.4.1.2 above. Thus they sometimes seem to represent the property of being something (i.e. a thing-like state, or like a thing) and sometimes the property of becoming something (i.e. a process!, and sometimes again the property o f having a property.1 Some of these roots are functionally distinct in that, in a rankshifted predication, they lose their status as head (which status "reverts" to the natural, non-determinate head). Some of these roots do seem more inclined than others to exhibit the (3SG) determining suffix when used predicatively, and it is possible to divide up the adjectival nouns, on the strength of this tendency, into two somewhat fuzzy subcategories.

Each of the above categories of nouns will be described further below, and briefly exemplified.

1 It is possible, of course, that these are simply distinctions we ourselves are seeking to impose upon the data.

2.1.1 NON -DETERMINATE NOMINALS

In document Towards a lexicogrammar of Mekeo (Page 173-180)