Research on Ende

Ende is a member of the Pahoturi River family of languages spoken in southern Papua New Guinea.

I work with data from original field work undertaken by Kate Lindsey to investigate topics such as vowel harmony and copular constructions. You can read more about Dr. Lindsey’s original research on Ende on her website.

Vowel Harmony

Lindsey (2019) describes a progressive height harmony system in Ende that targets mid vowels, causing them to raise to their high counterparts. However, the description is based on observational data and had not been systematically investigated. For my second qualifying paper I conducted an acoustic analysis of harmony as it is realized (or not realized) in nominal clitic vowels to test the vowel harmony hypothesis and an alternative phonetic vowel coarticulation hypothesis. The results indicate that while back mid vowels produced by male speakers are realized higher following high vowels than non-high vowels, front mid vowels are not. Rather, male speakers produce front mid vowels significantly more front in high contexts, thereby exploiting a secondary phonetic cue that distinguishes the front high and midvowels /i/ and /e/. However, it was also found that the phonetic realization of mid vowel height varies gradiently as a function of the surrounding phonetic environment. The data from female speakers failed to exhibit patterns consistent with vowel harmony. Thus, it is proposed that vowel harmony does hold in Ende (at least for male speakers), but that the phonetic realization of mid vowel height is also subject to phonetic coarticulation.

Phonology in the Northeast (PhoNE) 2021

I presented the preliminary results of my research on vowel harmony in Ende at PhoNE on April 30, 2021. I am grateful to all of the organizers and attendees of PhoNE for their feedback and help in moving forward with this project.

Language Documentation & Linguistic Theory (LDLT-6)

I presented the final results of my research on vowel harmony in Ende at LDLT-6 on December 16, 2021.

Copulas

During my research fellowship in 2022, I conducted a corpus study on the morphosyntactic features conditioning different predicational copular forms in copular constructions containing predicates marked with the morpheme =ang. The morpheme =ang derives agentive nouns from verbs and attributive adjectives from nouns. Copular forms in these constructions come in two basic flavors: auxiliary verbs (transitive/intransitive) and the intermediate demonstrative base da- bearing copular morphology.

I find the copular forms can be predicted by two factors: aspect (episodic/gnomic) and argument structure. Auxiliary copular forms correspond to an episodic interpretation, while copular forms derived from the intermediate demonstrative base da- and dedicated copular morphology correspond to gnomic imperfectives. Assuming a generative framework, I propose a small clause analysis of these constructions, where the copular form is primarily a function of the type Pred0 (Individual Level (IL) PredIL or Stage Level (SL) PredSL) merged into the structure.

Following Myler (2018), I propose a small clause analysis of these data where all predicational copular constructions with ang- predicates are syntactically stative, but aspectuality is determined by Pred0: PredSL derives an episodic interpretation and PredIL derives a gnomic imperfective interpretation. The type of auxiliary is conditioned by the syntax. The presence of a causer or ang= predicate-internal NP conditions the transitive auxiliary form. The intransitive is used elsewhere. While further research is needed with non-ang-predicates, these findings represent a promising step toward describing the copular system in Pahoturi River languages, with implications for theoretical analyses of predicational copular constructions more broadly.