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The structure of the Rarotongan verbal piece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

J. E. Buse
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Extract

The term ‘verbal piece’ is applied here to any utterance stretch defined initially by one of the particles listed in paragraph 6 and finally either by sentence-closing intonation or by a marker indicating the onset of another piece. Investigation of the order in which forms appear within these limits leads to the recognition of a number of sequential positions within the verbal piece. Forms are classified according to their distribution over these positions and commutability within them.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 1963 , pp. 152 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1963

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References

page 152 note 1 It is hoped to discuss the structure of the nominal piece ina subsequent article. We may note here that the first four nominal positions are occupiedby (1) prepositions, (2) determinatives, (3) number particles, (4) nominals.

page 152 note 2 cf. Biggs, B., ‘The structure of Xew Zealand Maaori’, Anthropological Linguistics, III, 3, 1961, esp. pp. 23–7 and 37–8Google Scholar.

page 154 note 1 The Rarotongan syllable is here regarded as a phonological unit of structure V or CV, where C equals any consonant and V any short vowel. Long vowels are treated as two short vowels in sequence, i.e. are phonologically disyllabic. There are no monosyllabic words, though a few particles have only one syllable.

page 155 note 1 See 11.1, 2, 3 below.

page 155 note 2 See Noam Chomsky, Syntactic structures, especially the references on p. 44, n. 8.

page 159 note 1 See Buse, J. E., ‘Rarotongan personal pronouns’, BSOAS, XXIII, 1, 1960, p. 129Google Scholar, n. 1. It would be possible to treat mē in mē kite Icoe i te moni as a Class 1 particle, instead of, as here, setting up zero as an allomorph of e and assigning mē to the conjunctions. The former analysis ik fttjected (a) because it means assigning mē to both the conjunctions and thetense particles, and (b) because it does not take intoaccount the clear structural parallelism:

1 2

Mē (kā kite) koe i te moni ‘Ifyou should find the money’

Mē (kua kite) koe i te moni ‘If you've found the money’

Mē ([θ] kite) koe i te moni ‘If you find the money’

page 160 note 1 See C. F. Hockett, A course in modern linguistics, 164.

page 162 note 1 The sequence rāi ‘(my)self, (him)self’ is usually written as one word: .