Language Bending In Micronesia

Abstract

Clause chaining, a phenomenon identified in Papuan languages as involving strings of medial verbs with limited inflection followed by a final verb with full inflectional possibilities, is as common as it is var.ied in the Papuan languages of New Guinea. This paper details aspects of the clause chaining system in Kamano Kafe, a language of the Eastern Highlands group, in which medial verbs not only show morpho.logical alternations for same vs. different subject between clauses in a clause chain – common in many clause chaining systems – but they also feature a paradigm of preview subject agreement (PSA) markers which inflect for person and number of the subject of a following clause in the clause chain. The interac.tion between TAM morphology and PSA is explored here in order to make claims about the syntactic struc.ture of clause chains in Kamano Kafe, primarily to argue for a subordination relationship of medial clauses to final verb clauses, and for the functional use of these syntactic structures in establishing complexmacro.events.