The Tukang Besi language of southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract

This thesis describes the synchronic grammar of the Tukang Besi language of Indonesia. Tukang Besi is an Austronesian language whose home islands lie in the province of' Southeast Sulawesi in Central Indonesia. It appears to subgroup more closely with the languages of Sulawesi than with the languages of Maluku, but its close genetic affiliations remain uncertain. The language displays elements common to the Philippine-type languages that are mainly found to the north and west of it, such as the presence of a 'focus' system, as well as many elements found in the languages of eastern Indonesia and western Oceania, such as pronominal indexing on the verb. The interaction of these two seemingly incompatible systems is responsible for many of the complexities of Tukang Besi grammar. Tukang Besi is a head-marking language, with extensive verbal affixing that also serves to drive the Philippine-type 'focus' system. The subject is obligatorily indexed on the verb, and the object optionally (but preferably) so. Nominals, which are optional due to the indexing on the verb, are case-marked to indicate their status as core or oblique arguments in the clause; the division between these two layers of the clause is evidenced by numerous processes and constraints that apply to the two categories in different ways. There are two cases that may be assigned to core arguments, nqminative and non-nominative, and these are pragmatic cases (with syntactic effects), not semantically based cases. The case marking on core nominals is dependent not only on the case assigned to the argument, but also on the position of that nominal in the clause. Oblique arguments are marked by an oblique article, prepositions, or one of a variety of verbs in special non-contiguous serial verb constructions that show different degrees of grammaticalisation, behaving unlike 'true' verbs and more like prepositions in some respects. Contiguous serialisation is also found in the language, and is in many respects indistinguishable from the extensive valency-increasing morphology in terms of the effects achieved. There are three casuative processes, three applicative suffixes, and three passive prefixes. A particular feature of the grammar is the use of different pivots for different grammatical processes. Some processes are sensitive to the case an argument bears, and others are sensitive to the syntactic role that the argument bears in the clause regardless of its case. Yet others are dependent on the thematic roles that an argument bears, irrespective of its pragmatic case or syntactic role. The data have been presented in a loose structuralist framework as much as possible, in order to avoid prejudging the linguistic facts in favour of one or the other linguistic theories. In the description of causative and applicative processes, however, reference to thematic roles and a ranked thematic hierarchy has proven to be an invaluable descriptive tool. Many grammatical processes are easily explained by reference to this hierarchy.