Grammatical Reconstruction

The Sogeram Languages of New Guinea

Don Daniels

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783110615142
• eBook ISBN: 9783110616569
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

There is still widespread disagreement among historical linguists about how, or whether, syntactic reconstruction can be done. This book presents a comprehensive methodology for syntactic reconstruction, grounded in a constructional understanding of language. The author then uses that methodology to reconstruct Proto-Sogeram, the ancestor to ten languages in Papua New Guinea. Chapters are devoted to phonology, lexicon, verbal morphosyntax, nominal morphosyntax, and syntactic constructions. The work culminates in a sketch of Proto-Sogeram grammar. Based largely on the author's original fieldwork, this is an innovative application of a novel methodology to new data, and the most complete reconstruction of a Papuan proto-language to date. It will be of interest to scholars of language change, language reconstruction, typology, and Papuan languages.

Chapter 1 Introduction

How much of a language can be reconstructed? Certainly we can reconstruct phonology and lexicon. Morphology is also fairly uncontroversial. But what about syntax—can we reconstruct that? If so, how? And how certain can we be about the outcome? When we put it all together, how complete a picture of a proto-language can we hope to attain?

These questions are old. A century and a half ago Schleicher (1868) tried to reconstruct the grammar of Proto-Indo-European, and twenty years ago Gildea hoped “to reconstruct a reasonable grammar sketch of Proto-Carib” (1998: 44). This book is another entry in that conversation, inspired by the desire to know what ­proto-languages were like. I argue that we can reconstruct a great deal of a ­proto-language and arrive at a respectable picture of its overall structure, but that there are serious difficulties that require methodological adaptation and that sometimes prevent us from achieving the level of certainty we might wish for. Nevertheless, I am convinced that syntactic reconstruction is possible, and that when it is combined with more established processes of lexical, phonological, and morphological reconstruction, we really can get a sense for what proto-­languages were like.

My argument takes the form of a demonstration: I reconstruct the lexicon, ­phono­logy, morphology, and syntax of the ancestor to the Sogeram languages of Papua New Guinea. The result is an 18-page sketch of Proto-Sogeram grammar and—a tribute to Schleicher’s initial foray into the field—two constructed ­Proto-Sogeram texts. But the path there is long, and there are several things to do along the way.

The first, and most important, is to develop a method for reconstructing syntax. There is, as yet, no consensus about how to do this, although there have been several recent efforts (Willis 2011; Barðdal 2013, 2014; Walkden 2014). Indeed, some linguists believe it is not possible (Lightfoot 2002a, 2002b). So I devote the second chapter to my methodology, outlining what language is, how it changes, and what that means for how we can reconstruct it.

Another goal is to broaden our theoretical understanding of language structure and change. Most of the Sogeram languages are almost completely undescribed, so the reconstruction of their common ancestor makes a contribution to our typology of language change, enlarging the storehouse of data against which our theories ought to be measured.

In my view, syntactic reconstruction relies heavily on phonological reconstruction, so after describing my method, I begin with phonology. In Chapter 3 I reconstruct the phonology of Proto-Sogeram (PSog) and describe how that system changed in each daughter branch. Then in Chapters 4 and 5 I reconstruct the morphology and syntax associated with verbs and nouns, and in Chapter 6 I address more abstract syntactic constructions. Chapter 7 contains the reconstructed ­Proto-Sogeram lexicon, and in Chapter 8 I present some concluding thoughts, along with the Proto-Sogeram grammar sketch and texts.

Much of the book employs a standard version of the comparative method. There are few methodological refinements we can make anymore to the processes by which we reconstruct phonology, morphology, and lexicon, so those sections employ orthodox methods. But whenever our exploration of Proto-Sogeram grammar takes us into syntactic waters, I use the methodological ideas from Chapter 2 to see what can be reconstructed.

In this chapter I first introduce the Sogeram languages (§1.1) and then the family they belong to (§1.2). I present previous research on these languages in §1.3, and describe my own fieldwork in §1.4.

1.1 The Sogeram languages

The Sogeram family consists of ten languages spoken along the Ramu and Sogeram Rivers in inland Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Their location is shown in Figure 1. Four of the languages—Mand, Manat, Magɨ, and Kursav—are each spoken in only one village. Others, such as Gants, Apalɨ, and Mum, are spoken across much larger territories. The largest languages are Gants and Mum, with two to three thousand speakers each. The smallest is Mand, with only eight remaining speakers; Kursav is a close second with ten. Language shift to Tok Pisin is in general quite advanced in central Madang (Kulick 1992), and all of the Sogeram languages (with the possible exception of Gants) are endangered. In none of my fieldwork did I ever hear a child speaking one of the languages I was investigating.

Figure 1: Map of the Sogeram languages.

The genealogical relationships among the Sogeram languages are shown in the family tree in Figure 2, although I defer a more comprehensive discussion of the internal relationships within the family to §2.4.2 below.

Figure 2: Sogeram family tree.

The issue of language names is somewhat complicated. The names used in the current edition of the Ethnologue (Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig 2019) are generally taken from Z’graggen’s pioneering work in the Madang area (Z’graggen 1971, 1975a). In these works Z’graggen “used important and well known village names as language names, because such names are a handy reference to the location”. He also noted that people in Madang often have no name for their language and declared that “the speakers of a language themselves are invited to give their own language name to replace the proposed name” (Z’graggen 1975a: 5). Because

languages in the Sogeram area generally do have a name by which they are known, I have decided, at the risk of further multiplying the number of language names in the Papuanist literature, to use the names by which speakers refer to

their languages instead of the names by which Z’graggen originally referred to them. The names he used, with the exception of Gants, are village names that do not refer to a language or a kind of speech. Rather, when speakers wish to refer to a language, they often refer to it by means of a salient word in that language, often “no”. Thus Mand, Nend, Manat, Apalɨ, and Magɨ are named after the word for “no” in each of those respective languages. Similarly, Mum and Aisi are named after the words for “what” and “why”. And sometimes a language has a name that does not appear to have any meaning apart from its use as a language name; this is the case for Sirva, Kursav, and Gants. Table 1 shows the language names that I (and speakers) use, what they mean, the names Z’graggen used, and what they mean. It should be noted that in three cases—Nend, Apalɨ, and Mum—the Ethnologue name of the language had been changed by missionaries with Pioneer Bible Translators well before my arrival on the scene.

Table 1:Language names.

Name used here	meaning	Z’graggen’s name	meaning
Mand	‘no’	Atemple	village name
Nend	‘no’	Angaua	demonym
Manat	‘no’	Paynamar	village name
Apalɨ	‘no’	Emerum	village name
Mum	‘what’	Katiati	village name
Sirva	language name	Sileibi	village name?
Magɨ	‘no’	n/a
Aisi	‘why’	Musak	village name
Kursav	language name	Faita	village name
Gants	language name	Gants	language name

Matters become somewhat complic...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Methodology
• Chapter 3 Phonology
• Chapter 4 Verbs and Verb Morphology
• Chapter 5 Nominal Morphology
• Chapter 6 Syntactic Constructions
• Chapter 7 Lexical Reconstructions
• Chapter 8 Conclusion
• References
• Index