The verbal syntax of Kuman

Abstract

Kuman is a Non-Austronesian or Papuan language of the Central Family of the East New Guinea Highlands Stock (Wurm 1978). There are over 66,000 speakers of Kuman, who live mainly in the northern part of Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea. Languages which belong to this family include Mid-Wahgi, Chuave, Salt-Yui, Sinasina and Golin. Previous work on Kuman has been carried out to my knowledge by Capell (1948-1949), Bergmann (1953), Nilles (1969), Trefry (1967, 1969) Lynch (in press) and Piau (1981). The aim of this subthesis is to describe the predicate and the constructions it enters into. In chapter one, I attempt to describe the morphophonemic processes, and formulate some general rules for the verbs. The more specific rules, that is, where only one phoneme of a particular morpheme is affected is given in the respective morpheme is discussed. The rules discussed here should not be considered as conclusive, as further research may show exceptions, or better rules may be written. The rules presented in this chapter only affect verbal morphology. In chapter two, I will describe briefly nominals and adjectives. The main focus of the chapter , however is a description of the final verb suffixes. In chapter three I will discuss the non-final or dependent verbs, which includes a discussion on serial verb constructions, the notion of controlled and uncontrolled events and the semantic relations that are encoded in these verbs. In chapter four, I will discuss clause linkage using Olson's (1981) and Foley and Van Valins' (1984) theory of interclausal relations. This involves a discussion on how clauses can be linked at different levels, and how Kuman does this. This discussion, of course, does not cover all the different suffixes that occur on the verb. Only the suffixes that are relevant to the subthesis are discussed here. Similarly, further research may show different methods of separating the different layers and the syntactic relationships between clauses. Show more