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Rarotongan Sentence Structures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

A. D. H. Bivar
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Extract

Rarotongan sentences may be classed broadly as statements, unmarked questions, and marked questions. Statements have an intonation contour characterized by a final fall; unmarked questions are segmentally identical with statements, but have an intonation contour characterized by a final rise-fall and generally require a yes-or-no answer; marked questions contain one of four interrogatives, a?a ‘what ?’, ?ai ‘who ?’, ?ea ‘where ?, when ?’, ?ia ‘how many ?’, are characterized by a final rise in the intonation contour, and cannot be answered by a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , October 1963 , pp. 632 - 645
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1963

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References

page 633 note 1 The 13 form classes are discussed in detail in ‘The structure of the Rarotongan verbal piece’, BSOAS, xxvi, 1, 1963, 152–69Google Scholar, and ‘The structure of Rarotongan nominal, negative, and conjunctival pieces’, BSOAS, xxvi, 2, 1963, 393–419 Google Scholar.

page 633 note 2 Rarotongan examples are cited in the normal orthography, but phonemic glottal stop and vowel length are marked, and a hyphen is sometimes used to draw attention to a morpheme boundary. Verbal phrases are enclosed in parentheses ( ), and nominal phrases in brackets [ ]. Form classes are numbered above the text, translation ‘tags’ and a free translation are given below.

page 639 note 1 Rarotongan possession is discussed in ‘Rarotongan personal pronouns’, BSOAS, XXIII, 1, 1960, esp. pp. 130–2Google Scholar.

page 641 note 1 te- and t-, although bound forms, commute with tē, and are therefore assigned to the same form class, 7a.

page 641 note 2 For the zero verbal particle, see BSOAS, xxvi, 1, 1963, 159.

page 645 note 1 See BSOAS, xxvi, 2, 1963, 411.