| ROA: | 210 |
|---|---|
| Title: | A note on verbal agreement in Maung |
| Authors: | Mark Donohue |
| Comment: | 12 pages, including 4 figures and 4 tables. Uses IPAKiel font |
| Length: | 12 |
| Abstract: | The non-Pama Nyungan languages of the north of Australia are notable for the often elaborate pronominal prefixing that is found on verbs. Most descriptions of this prefixing describe it as following a nominative-accusative pattern, and note that the ordering of the affixes is not fixed: sometimes object precedes subject, sometimes subject precedes object. In this article I demonstrate that the pronominal prefixing found in Maung is a split-ergative system, and that through reference to the alignment categories distinguished by the prefixes we can find a set of principles behind the variation in prefix order, which are modelled in a set of constraints following the principles of Optimality Theory. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |