Second-position enclitics in Cebuano are syntactically dispensable and truth-conditionally irrelevant; however, they add emotional flavor to utterances. This study investigates second-position enclitics in Cebuano, including their form and how they are used to express stance. The objective of this study is to investigate the form and functions of two groups of second-position enclitics, “aspectual” enclitics, and emphasizer and intensifier enclitics, as well as to examine their distribution in enclitic clusters. Conversational data show that the “aspectual” enclitics convey attitudinal stance: =na can convey emphasis, determination, and desperation, while =pa is used to imply “incompletion” or “lack,” leading to annoyance. In addition, I discuss =man , illustrating how it is used for downtoning and for showing politeness. I also tease apart the meanings of four seemingly synonymous high-frequency enclitics that differ in their relative frequency and preferred position in a cluster. As to function, =ka’ayo and =gyud serve to emphasize and intensify, but =ka’ayo has a scope over a predicate, while =gyud has scope over an entire proposition. On the other hand, =lagi and =gud have to be inspected in discourse: =lagi has the additional function of asserting one’s stance on the hearers, while =gud has the additional element of disagreement or dissatisfaction. Finally, I propose a relative ordering involving these two groups of enclitics in clusters.

The language of motion events is a system used to specify the motion of objects through space with respect to other objects. Recent research has shown that languages differ in the relative saliency of manner or path they focus on in motion event descriptions. These can be thought of as different strategies dedicated to specifying the spatial relationship between objects in motion and the landmark object. We propose a four-way typology based on the narrative data from six western Austronesian languages. Evidence is presented that each of the languages examined typically has a preferred strategy for describing motion events and that each has a distinct narrative style. These six languages are shown to share the commonality of giving greater attention to path information in motion events. Path salience in the encoding of motion clauses appears to exhibit a strong diachronic stability, suggesting that Proto-Austronesian was probably also a path-salient language.

The view that the gi-clauses and/or their equivalents in other Philippine-type languages, specifically in Cebuano and closely related Bisayan languages, are active constructions has been widely accepted by a number of Austronesian linguists. In a recent study on the gi-verb clauses in Cebuano, however, another linguist reinterprets those with Verb-Patient-Agent (VPA) word order as passive. In this paper, we argue against such an interpretation, based on analyses of the semantics and discourse pragmatics of the gi- and naclauses in spoken data. A gi- attached to a verb implies a deliberate intention of an Agent; a na-clause directs attention to the often accidental effect of an action on a Patient without emphasizing any reference to an Agent. This renders a na-verb construction, especially one in which the Agent is missing, as a much more plausible candidate for passive in Cebuano.

In this study, we investigate the discourse-functional properties of the extended intransitive clause (EIC) in relation to other clause types in three Formosan languages: Tsou, Kavalan, and Squliq. We offer evidence, based on tracking behavior of NPs, to show that case-marking in EICs is motivated by a core/oblique distinction, and that the core/oblique distinction arises in a systematic way from recurrent patterns in discourse. The referents of the oblique-marked argument nominals in EICs in these languages are shown to be consistently much less likely to be tracked or to be continuous than either the nominative or the ergative argument of a nonactor voice clause. The data derived from investigating the tracking behavior of noun phrases suggest that the validity of a grammatical transitive/intransitive distinction in these languages is quite robust, and that the distinction can best be correctly discerned by examining the functioning of various argument nominals in discourse.

No abstract