Syntax and Semantics of Wamesa Valency-Changing Operations
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2022
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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en
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Abstract
Wamesa, a SHWNG language of Western New Guinea, has three apparent valency-changing
operations (VCO’s): the pseudopassive, causative and instrumental applicative. This
paper takes a closer look at the syntactic and semantic forms of these constructions. The Wamesa
pseudopassive is not a real VCO but simply a case of topic-motivated object fronting.
Additionally, the causative likely does not actually increase verbal valency. The instrumental
applicative, however, has a rather unusual [Instrument S V O] word order that is a result of the
initial generation of an instrumental object in the underlying representation and subsequent
movement of this object to the leftmost periphery for topic reasons. All three operations are
motivated largely by either topic or focus and can be explained as resulting from the dual
syntactic and discourse-pragmatic function of valency-changing operations (Peterson, 1999).
Cross-linguistically, although many of Wamesa’s features are unusual, they are not wholly
unheard of and conform to data from other languages showing that many apparent VCO’s are
motivated primarily by semantic considerations. Further research is needed on this understudied
language and its morphology but this short examination of just one section of its verbal
morphology demonstrates both the importance of the syntax-semantics interface in Austronesian
languages and the semantic motivation of syntactic phenomena overall.