Grammatical Relations in Chiyao

Abstract

This paper investigates how subjects, objects, and locative expressions are marked in Chiyao. The findings show that subject marking in Chiyao is always obligatory, and that it is affected by the topicality and position of the subject noun phrase in a sentence. As for objects, it is shown that object marking is determined by a combination of both semantic and morphological factors. It is revealed that animate objects are obligatorily marked, inanimate objects are optionally marked on verbs with more than one syllable, but they are not marked on monosyllabic verbs. With regard to locative expressions, the paper shows that Chiyao expresses location by marking either the verb (by using the applicative suffix) or the locative argument (by using the locative prefix) or by marking both the verb and the locative argument. Chiyao can also show location by double affixation, which involves attaching a locative prefix and a locative suffix to a noun.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 35 citations exist upstream.