Tuvaluan

A Polynesian Language of the Central Pacific.

Niko Besnier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780415024563
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134974719
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Tuvaluan is a Polynesian language spoken by the 9,000 inhabitants of the nine atolls of Tuvalu in the Central Pacific, as well as small and growing Tuvaluan communities in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. This grammar is the first detailed description of the structure of Tuvaluan, one of the least well-documented languages of Polynesia. Tuvaluan pays particular attention to discourse and sociolinguistics factors at play in the structural organization of the language.

Chapter 1

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Syntax

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1.1 GENERAL FEATURES

1.1.1 Sentence-types

1.1.1.1 Direct speech and quoted speech

In Tuvaluan, quoted (or reported) speech is framed with the help of a number of lexical and prosodic devices. These devices mark a particular stretch of discourse as a quote in contrast to the rest of the discourse. Taken out of its discourse context, a quoted string is indistinguishable from a nonquoted string. No lexical marker or prosodic pattern is used exclusively to mark quoted speech.

Like many other languages, Tuvaluan has two different quoted-speech styles: one is associated with speech purported to reproduce the exact wording of another utterance (i.e., directly quoted speech); the other is associated with speech purported to reproduce an earlier utterance, but which is structurally modified so that it becomes syntactically part of the structure of the quoting context (i.e., indirectly quoted speech).

(a) Transitions between direct speech and quoted speech
Both indirectly quoted speech and directly quoted speech are typically introduced by a speech-act verb or nominal expression, usually the polysemic verb fai ‘say, tell’ (in the Nukulaelae dialect, hai) or the nouns muna and pati ‘word, utterance’:

(1)	Koo fai mai a Palu, “A moolii koo oti ne taamate.” Inc say Dxs Cnt Palu Cnt lamp Prf turn-off ‘Palu said to me, “The lamps have been turned off.’”
(2)	Koo fai mai a Palu mo koo oti ne taamate a mooliL Inc say Dxs Cnt Palu Cmp Prf turn-off Cnt lamp ‘Palu told me that the lamps had been turned off.’
(3)	Muna a Palu, “A moolii koo oti ne taamate.” word of Palu Cnt lamp Prf turn-off ‘Palu said, “The lamps have been turned off.’”
(4)	Muna a Palu mo koo oti ne taamate a mooliL word of Palu Cmp Prf turn-off Cnt lamp ‘Palu said that the lamps had been turned off.’

When the speech-act noun muna or pati is used as a speech-act expression, the speaker or writer to whom the quote is attributed is expressed as a possessive modifier of the speech-act noun, as in examples (3) and (4) above. The entire noun phrase (e.g., muna a Palu ‘Palu’s words’) forms with the quoted string an equational (verbless copular) construction (cf. 1.2.1.1.1(a)). Occasionally, muna and patimay function as noun-derived verbs (cf. 2.2.2.1.1); in the following, which can be contrasted with example (3), the tense—aspect marker koo preceding the word muna and the deictic adverb mai which follows it indicate that muna here functions as a verb:

(5)	Koo muna mai a Palu, “A moolii koo oti ne taamate.” Inc word Dxs Cnt Palu Cnt lamp Prfturn-off ‘Palu said, “The lamps have been turned off.”’

Descriptive speech-act verbs, or ‘graphic introducers’ (Tannen 1988: 101), can also be used instead of fai, muna, and pati to specify the way in which the quoted-speech string was originally uttered (or, more accurately, is alleged to have been uttered). Examples of such introducers are tuku taumate ‘guess, conjecture’ and ttapa ‘call out [a name]’:

(6)	Ne tuku taumate fua nee ia i te vaka koo pili 0 vau. Pst state guess just Erg he Cmp the ship Inc close Cmp come ‘He just conjectured that the ship would be coming soon.’
(7)	Koo lagona nee au ttino koo ttapa saalemaii tua, Inc hear Erg he the+person Inc call-by-name often Dxs in outside “Ee Sina, ee Sina!” Voc Sina Voc Sina ’I then heard someone who kept calling me outside [saying], “Sina! Sina!”

Occasionally, directly or indirectly quoted speech is introduced by a verb that does not describe a speech act, but a situation that presupposes a verbal exchange. The emotion verb ita ‘angry’, for example, can function as a quoted-speech introducer, in the sense that anger typically manifests itself when the experiencer expresses it verbally:

(8)	Koo ita mai te loomatua kee saa toe olo maaua o Inc angry Dxs the old-woman Sbj Neg again go we-2-e Cmp fakaitaita tena mokopuna. Cst+Rdp+angry her grandchild ’The old woman got angry at us [and said that] we mustn’t go and torment her grandchild again.’

In many cases, transitions between direct and quoted speech are marked with two speech-act expressions. One is a verb, which may be a speech-act lexeme with general meaning (e.g., fai ‘say’), a graphic introducer (e.g., ssili ‘ask’), or a verb which does not refer to a speech act but is used metaphorically (e.g., lafo ‘throw’); the other is a noun that denotes a generic speech-act category (e.g., pati, muna ‘word’, fesili ‘question’, tali ‘answer’) and functions as the direct object of the verb:

(9)	Koo fai mai alia mUlla iaa ia kaa fano. Inc say Dxs his word Cmp he Fut go ’He told me (his words) that he was leaving:
(10)	Koo lafa mai tella pati iaa ia koo see llago ki te mataaupu.
	Inc throw Dxs his word Cmp he Inc Neg support to t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Descriptive Grammars
• Editorial statement
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables, maps, and figures
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and grammaticality conventions
• 0. INTRODUCTION
• 1. SYNTAX
• 2. MORPHOLOGY
• 3. PHONOLOGY
• 4. IDEOPHONES AND INTERJECTIONS
• 5. LEXICON
• References
• Index