Towards a typology of tail–head linkage in Papuan languages

Abstract

In this article a typological overview of tail–head linkage (THL) in Papuan languages is presented. There are two types of THL, chained THL and thematized THL. The chained type is the default type and its morphosyntactic form follows from the basic clause linkage type in a given Papuan language, for example when switch reference constructions are the basic type of clause linkage, then the default type of THL takes the form of switch reference constructions. Chained THL carries referential coherence mechanisms (e.g. gender agreements, switch reference) and event sequencing mechanisms (e.g. sequence-simultaneity morphology) across chain boundaries. The second, marked, type of THL is with nominalized clauses that discontinue the event and participant lines. The head clause in this type of THL is a thematic NP that is syntactically separate from the chain and this reflects thematic discontinuity: the thematic head clause is off-sequence. In languages like Wambon and Usan the two types of THL select different verb types: medial verbs that express switch reference (same versus different subject) and/or sequence-simultaneity distinctions occur in the chained type and independent verbs that cannot express these distinctions occur in the second, thematic type. THL has four functions, referential coherence, processing ease, thematic continuity (chained type) and thematic discontinuity (thematized type). The phonological form of THL (slowly pronounced, rising intonation, pause phenomena) reflects its processing function to give speakers and addressees a break between two chains.

From clause conjoining to clause chaining in Dumut languages of New Guinea

“…This is unexpected since the -t (with allomorph -r in Mandobo, see Drabbe 1959: 32) is a marker of Realis status in South and North Wambon. The explanation for t-forms in conditional contexts could be that what Drabbe calls a conditional is in fact a generic thematised clause construction of a type found in very many Papuan languages that can have many interpretations, including conditional readings (see De Vries 2005;2006). These generic clausal thematic NPs should be glossed as 'given that X, Y' and do not at all require special Conditional or Irrealis verb forms.…”

“…To distribute the perceived event to a separate conjoined or chained clause (he sees that a pig comes>he sees and a pig comes) is a normal perception construction in Papuan languages with distributive tendencies, see De Vries 2005;2006).…”

The tapestry of Dolakha Newar: Chaining, embedding, and the complexity of sentences

“…Typically, sentence beginnings in narratives are marked by one or more clauses which recapitulate the events denoted at the end of the previous sentence (Genetti 2007: 438-439). This discourse pattern is referred to as "tail-head linkage" (Longacre 1968(Longacre : 8-9, 1985Thompson & Longacre 1985: 209-210;de Vries 2005) or as a "bridging device" (Dixon 2009: 8).…”

8 Granularity in the cross‐linguistic encoding of motion and location

“…This type of event report is in fact very common in the Papuan languages of Melanesia, as well as some Austronesian ones that perhaps adopted this strategy through language contact (cf. van Staden & Senft, 2001), and is possibly related to the general avoidance of having more than one full noun phrase or more than two overt (pronominal) arguments per predicate-argument structure so that all ditransitive actions and all actions involving manipulation of multiple objects are distributed over more than one predicate (de Vries, 2003;Du Bois, 1985, 1987Heeschen, 1998). In this interpretation of granularity, languages can be shown to be different in where they place the boundaries for event report.…”