Directional constructions in Matukar Panau: A Bayesian approach to assessing variation

Abstract

The Oceanic language Matukar Panau has three equivalent morphosyntactic strategies for describing the direction of the event represented by a verb, with a system often directional morphemes that can appear in each construction. This variation is explored using a corpus from Matukar Panau and analysed quantitatively with Bayesian regression analyses to assess what factors influence the choice of directional construction. Variables pertaining to the lexical verb and the directional morphemes are found to be the most important factors affecting the variation in the directional system. Sociolinguistic factors are shown to play a less significant role. Thefindingshave implications for the grammaticalization of directional elements, as well as the typology of directional constructions in Oceanic languages. Show more