Erromangan Non-Verbal Clauses

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Erromangan Simple Sentences: Non-Verbal ClausesCrowley, T. (1998). An Erromangan (Sye) grammar. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications 27: 197 ² 201.

Non-verbal clauses are those which consist of a nominal topic and a following non-verbal comment.

The topic in such constructions can be either a pronoun or a noun, as illustrated by the following, in which

the topic and comment are each surrounded by square brackets :

[K ik] [h ai na h iven armai].

2SG INDEF woman good

'You are a good woman.'

[N ocle h ram (<nocle h ira-m)] [ nacave].body POSS-2SG kava

'Your body is the kava.'

When the topic is a specific unmodified noun, it is more common for it to be followed in a topic-

comment construction by the topic marker cum demonstrative ma , which indicates that the noun phrase

represents given information, with the new information following in the comment, for example:

[N atma h ma] [ natma h itna h iven].devil TOPIC devil female

'The devil was a she-devil.'

When the topic is a generic noun, it is not followed by the topic marker, and there is usually instead

an independent third person pronoun between the topic and the comment, as in the following :

[M orel] iyi [h ai nvag nimsi-n ndan nemetagi].

fermented .breadfruit 3SG INDEF food PURP-CONST time cyclone

'Fermented breadfruit is a food for times of cyclone.'

The comment can take a variety of forms, with the examples just cited involv? ing a range of noun

phrase comments. The comment can also be an adjective, a prepositional phrase, a demonstrative or a

possessive pronoun, for example:

[ Ovon nogkli-n nei ginma h ] [ ra nocugo].

PL leaf-CONST tree many LOC road

'Many leaves of trees were on the road.'

There is one constituent which only ever appears in the comment position within a non-verbal clause,

and that is the form which has the following shapes:

h i after forms ending in i

h o after forms ending in o

h e elsewhere



These forms appear as comments after nominal or pronominal topics, and they indicate that the

referent of the topic noun phrase is being pointed at, for example:

Eteme h e. Iyi h i.other.one that·s.it 3SG that·s.it

'That's the other one.' 'That's him/her'

Non-verbal clauses are also involved in the expression of ambient events, in which the existence of

some entity or the pertinence of some state is simply asserted with no topic expressed, and the comment

appears on its own. Thus:

[ Pwarap]. [ Ov-nikau wocon m-nasi].afternoon PL-prawn only and-shellfish

'It is afternoon.' 'There were only prawns and shellfish.'

Topicless comments of this type are often used to introduce the topic of a story, for example:

N oki m-nacave.

coconut and-kava

'(This story is about) the coconut and the kava.'

Ambient clauses of this type can include the normal range of additional clause level constituents that

lie outside the comment itself, such as temporal adverbs, for example:

[ Nevip] ninu.

rain yesterday

'There was rain yesterday.'

A topic can also have zero realization when it has been previously mentioned in the discourse. We

therefore find the following prepositional phrase functioning as a comment to a previously mentioned noun

phrase topic referring to the powers of the kava spirit:

[N imsi-n came-nta-i ovoteme].

PURP-CONST 3SG:PRES-MR :kill-CONST people

'It is for killing people.'

There is no lexical verb in Sye meaning 'have' or 'possess'. This meaning can only be expressed by

presenting a possessive noun phrase in the comment slot in a topicless non-verbal clause. Thus:

[H ai netai enyau].

INDEF book POSS:lSG

¶I have got a book.'

Negation with verbal clauses is expressed by means of the prefix etu-/ etwo- . With non-verbal clauses,

however, negation is expressed by the free form negator tawi (or its shortened variant tau ) which appears

between the topic and the comment. Thus:



[Y au] tawi [ na h iven]. [N u mayuwi] tawi [ nomu].

lSG NEG woman river there NEG fish

'I am not a woman.' 'The river there has no fish.'

Topicless non-verbal clauses are negated in the same way, with tawi appearing before the ambientcomment. Thus:

Tawi [ yau]. Tawi [ nvat enyau].NEG lSG NEG money POSS:lSG

'It was not me.' 'I've got no money.'

In fact, the negative marker tawi can independently mark either topic or comment, for example:

Tawi [ kik] [ ra ovis h oro-m]. [K ik] tawi [ ra ovis h oro-m].NEG 2SG LOC office POSS-2SG 2SG NEG LOC office POSS-2SG

'It wasn't you in your office.' 'You were not in your office.'

When the negative marker appears before a comment that begins with the indefinite premodifier h ai ,

the sequence of tawi is generally - though not obligatorily realized irregularly as a single word ta- h ai . Thus:

Ta- [h ai nomu]. Ta- [h ai nvag eniror].NEG-INDEF fish NEG-INDEF FOOD POSS:3PL

'There are no fish.' ¶They have no food.'

With verbs, the emphatic negative is expressed discontinuously by means of the prefix etu-/etwo- and

the post-object suffix ² h ai . Emphatic negation with non-verbal clauses is expressed by adding the negative

emphatic marker - h ai directly to tawi , which is then phonologically reduced in the same way to ta- . Thus,contrast the following unmarked and emphatic negative constructions:

[K ik] tawi [ armai]. [K ik] ta- h ai [ armai].2SG NEG good 2SG NEG-EMPH good

'You are not good.' 'You are not good at all.'

The negative marker tawi can appear on its own in a clause with no overt topic or comment,

functioning as a pro-verb, referring to a negatively inflected verb. Thus :

K oc-vai ku tawi? K oc-vai-su? Tawi-la.

2SG:RECPAST-BR :take or NEG 2SG:RECPAST-BR :take-PERF NEG-CON T'Did you take it or not?' 'Have you taken already taken it? Not yet.'

These sentences could be expressed fully as follows (though such forms would be rarely

encountered):

K oc-vai ku kotuvai (<ko-etu-vai)?

2SG:RECPAST-BR :take or 2SG:RECPAST-NEG-BR :take



'Did you take it or did you not take it?'

K oc-vai-su? Y ocotuvaila (<yaco-etu-vai-la).2SG:RECPAST-BR :take-PERF lSG:RECPAST-NEG-BR :take-CON T

'Have you taken already taken it? I have not taken it yet.'

Tawi is frequently used after the conditional subordinator nagku 'if· in conditional constructions such

as the following where a hypothetical negative event is being contrasted with another event, as in the

following :

N agku tawi, yac-ante ra nimo.

if NEG lSG:FUT-MR :stay LOC house

'If it doesn't happen, I will stay at home.'

While Sye clearly belongs typologically to the set of subject-prominent rather than topic-prominent

languages (Li and Thompson 1976 ), we still find instances in the corpus of topic-comment patterns that are

structurally parallel to what we find in topic-prominent languages such as Chinese. There may be an initialtopic, with a comment consisting of an entire clause, with the topic and the comment separated by an

intonation break. Thus:

Y au, tawi nvat.lSG NEG money

would not normally be interpreted as 'I am not money' (though such an interpretation would be logically

possible). Rather, it would normally be interpreted with yau ¶I· as the topic, about which is asserted tawi nvat

'there is no money', that is 'As for me, there is no money', that is, 'I have no money'.

The comment clause in such cases can also be a verbal clause, for example:

N map ra nur igko, cutumnowi (<cu-etu-emo-nowi) nup.

soil LOC place here 3PL:RECRAST-NEG-EM-MR :plant yam

'As for the soil here, yams are not planted.'

In this case, the topic which is being addressed is the soil in this particular place, about which the

assertion is made that yams are not planted because, presumably, the soil is not of the right kind.

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Erromangan Non-Verbal Clauses