TY - JOUR
T1 - Split inalienable coding in linguistic Wallacea
T2 - Typology, origins, spread
AU - Arnold, Laura
N1 - I am grateful to the editors, Antoinette Schapper and Emily Gasser, as well as Owen Edwards, Michael Franjieh, Harald Hammarström, and an anonymous reviewer, all of whom gave valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. My thanks also to the following, for providing additional data, sources, and/or discussion: Peter Austin, Jürgen Bohnemeyer, Don Daniels, Marcel Erdal, Alex François, David Gil, Harmut Haberland, Martin Haspelmath, Jeffrey Heath, David Kamholz, František Kratochvíl, Randy LaPolla, Neil Myer, Åshild Næss, Sebastian Nordhoff, Maia Ponsonnet, Bert Remijsen, Linn Iren Sjånes Rødvand, Jean Rohleder, Poppy Siahaan, Eline Visser, Ron Whisler, Jeroen Willemsen, and Philip Yampolsky. Terminological discussions with Greville Corbett, Matthew Dryer, and Hedvig Skirgård were particularly helpful. Thanks also to participants at the Second Workshop of the Languages of Wallacea, and the 10th, 12th, and 13th Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics conferences, where aspects of this work were presented. All errors and misunderstandings are my own.
PY - 2023/9
Y1 - 2023/9
N2 - This paper is a typological survey of inalienable possessive constructions in the linguistic area of Wallacea and its surrounds. In a sample of 189 Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages, 13 have a phenomenon not previously recognised in the theoretical or typological literature: Split Inalienable Coding (SIC), whereby a language has two or more possessive coding strategies that are closely or exclusively associated with expressing inalienable possession. This paper focusses on semantically conditioned splits, where minimally one strategy encodes the possession of body parts, and another the possession of kin terms. Geographically, all of the sampled languages with semantic SIC are located in Wallacea; special attention is therefore given to the development of split inalienables in this region. In most of these languages, SIC has developed very recently. I argue that there have been multiple causes of SIC: Austronesian languages are predisposed to develop SIC, due to the inheritance of a structurally defined class of kin terms that favours the distinction; and contact has also played a role in Northwest New Guinea, with SIC diffusing both across and within genealogical groupings.
AB - This paper is a typological survey of inalienable possessive constructions in the linguistic area of Wallacea and its surrounds. In a sample of 189 Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages, 13 have a phenomenon not previously recognised in the theoretical or typological literature: Split Inalienable Coding (SIC), whereby a language has two or more possessive coding strategies that are closely or exclusively associated with expressing inalienable possession. This paper focusses on semantically conditioned splits, where minimally one strategy encodes the possession of body parts, and another the possession of kin terms. Geographically, all of the sampled languages with semantic SIC are located in Wallacea; special attention is therefore given to the development of split inalienables in this region. In most of these languages, SIC has developed very recently. I argue that there have been multiple causes of SIC: Austronesian languages are predisposed to develop SIC, due to the inheritance of a structurally defined class of kin terms that favours the distinction; and contact has also played a role in Northwest New Guinea, with SIC diffusing both across and within genealogical groupings.
KW - alienability
KW - attributive possession
KW - inalienable possession
KW - language contact
KW - language typology
KW - multiple causation
KW - parallel developments
U2 - 10.1515/stuf-2023-2013
DO - 10.1515/stuf-2023-2013
M3 - Article
SN - 2196-7148
VL - 76
SP - 331
EP - 368
JO - STUF - Language Typology and Universals
JF - STUF - Language Typology and Universals
IS - 3
ER -