A-class genitive subject effect: a pragmatic and discourse grammar approach to A-and O-class genitive subject selection in Hawaiian

Abstract

This dissertation explores genitive class selection of genitive case subjects in nominalizations and relative clauses in Hawaiian. The amount of research in the area of Hawaiian's a-and o-class is far from sufficient. Since Wilson (1976a), there has been minimal critical new inquiry to a-and o-class in Hawaiian. Schütz et al. (2005) and Wong (2006) are the latest to mention a-and o-class in their respective works. Genitives in Hawaiian are normally analyzed as possessives first, and every other use thereafter. We illustrate here that the genitive class has two usages, possession and subject marking. We approach genitive subjects by looking at genitive subject selection and then provide sample applications of the findings to possession. To arrive at our findings we explore syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse factors in a-and o-class genitive subject selection. Our first finding here illustrates that the a-and o-class genitive subject relationship is not dichotomous. O-class is the unmarked category since it occurs in every subject category. A-class is the marked category. Our second finding is that a-class is used only with agentive subjects and marks the subjects as essential and/or foreground information within a narrative context. The findings ultimately illustrate that a-class selection is based on pragmatic and discourse needs as determined by the speaker, where a-class marking is used to express that some genitive subject's action is important to the narrative and its progression.