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Chapter 9 The verbal complex In this chapter, all the elements that participate in building a verbal complex are presented. Verbal complexes in Mav̋ea may contain various grammatical morphemes , as shown in Table 9.1. Table 9.1 Order of the constituents in the verbal complex SBJ AGR COND NEG IT/INCPT NBER IMPF VERB ADV TR OBJ i-, . . . mo- sopo- m̋e-/ r-/ l(o)- =i =a/NP pete- tolThe subject agreement marker (see §3.1.3.2) is always the first element prefixed to the rest of the verbal complex. Irrealis/realis mood distinctions are marked on the subject agreement marker, as a portmanteau morph. Agreement precedes the conditional mood, which in turn precedes negation. After negation, the inceptive or the iterative aspect marker may occur, in complementary distribution. The number and imperfective markers always appear closest to the left edge of the verb, in varying order (see 9.1.2). After the verb but before the object (realized as a clitic or a NP), a phrasal adverb may be inserted, before a transitive clitic. All morphosyntactic categories represented in Table 9.1 are either prefixes or clitics, except for the adverb. There are two other categories that are part of the verbal complex, but which are independent morphemes. First is the future marker me (ro). It always occurs sentence initially, and can be positioned after or before a NP subject. At the end of a sentence, two aspectual markers are possible in complementary distribution: the completive aspect (the grammaticalized form of the verb evuia ‘finish’) or the continuative aspectual adverbial pa. The chapter is organized as follows: §9.1 describes the left and right edges of the verbal complex, that is, subject agreement prefixes and object clitics. §9.2 discusses tense, §9.3 aspect, and §9.4 mood. Modality is presented in §9.5. 9.1 The edges of the verbal complex In the following sections, prefixes and enclitics are discussed. 9.1.1 Subject agreement markers The agreement markers, characterized as prefixes in Chapter 3, are repeated in Table 9.2 for convenience. 210 9 The verbal complex Table 9.2 Subject agreement markers Realis Irrealis Realis and Irrealis Singular Plural Dual Paucal/trial 1INCL da- dar- datol1EXCL na- ka- ki- kir- kitol2 ko- ko- ki- kir- kitol3 mo- i- ra- rar- ratolAs can be seen from Table 9.2, two subject agreement markers are morphologically marked for the irrealis mood: the first person singular realis na- and its irrealis counterpart ka-; and the third person singular mo- and its irrealis counterpart i-. According to Jauncey (1997:334–338), mo used to be a realis marker in Oceanic languages, used after the subject agreement marker. In Tamambo, it is still (irregularly) used as such by speakers above 50 years of age, and thus can co-occur with any person marking. For most Tamambo speakers, however, it has been reanalyzed as the third person singular subject marker. In Mav̋ea, mo- is solely used as the third person realis singular subject agreement prefix. There is no synchronic evidence that, in Mav̋ea, mo- was also a more general realis marker. An interesting feature of the set of subject markers is the homophony between the first person plural exclusive ki- and the second person plural ki-. This homophony (also found in Tamambo, Jauncey 1997:312), can result in ambiguity and possible misinterpretation. A case in point is the text 07037, where the speaker narrates an event that happened to his brother and himself (using kir- as the first person dual exclusive), and relates in direct reported speech his discussion of the event with a group of people, who used kir- second person dual marker, when they asked the speaker to detail the event. Given that Mav̋ea is a pro-drop language (that is, a subject—whether a NP or an independent pronoun—is not obligatory in a sentence), it would be of interest to study in detail other discourse referencetracking resources available to the hearer. 9.1.2 Plurality Non-singular reference of the subject can be divided between dual, and paucal or trial. The dual marker r- is derived from the numeral rua ‘two.’ This morpheme is used when the subject refers to exactly two entities. The paucal/trial marker tol- is derived from tolu ‘three.’ This morpheme is used to refer to exactly three entities acting as subject or to a group of up to five or six...

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