(Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

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Isfendil
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(Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Isfendil »

I was reading the wikipedia article for PA, and I came upon the list of voices and the list of affixes. I knew that the family was very fancy with its affixes, but I'm not sure how these work.

For verbal voice, for instance, an infix is given /-inum-/. It says that this is for independent past of actor voice. Now, where does this go? Presumably in a verb? And what state is an unmodified verb in?
On the other affixes in the big list of affixes, they are all listed with a purpose of some kind. How are they used? For instance, the affix /pang/ is listed to have the "instrumental voice" quality. Where does that go? Is it an alternate to case endings? Is it for verbs?

Is there a "basics of Austronesian morphology"? I feel like that would help.
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Evynova »

Affixes are parts that attach to root words: prefixes are added to the beginning of a word (re- + think = rethink, with re- indicating repetition), and suffixes, more common, are added at the end of the root (the -ed suffix indicating the past tense in English: end + -ed = ended; the -s suffix indicating a plural: cat + s = cats).

An infix is more complex, for it is added inside the root. They are considerably rare, and I don't have any real-life example at hand, but let's imagine a constructed language making use of infixes:
Let's say kupi means house, and the infix -ro- expresses the inessive case (in English, we use the preposition in)
-> "In the house" would be kuropi, with the infix -ro- being added in the middle of the root.

I've had a quick look at the article you mentioned and nothing is said about the affix paŋ, I would assume it is used as an adpostion (before or after the word). The instrumental voice is typically used with nouns, however. In Slavic languages, for example, it is a case on its own, the instrumental case. English doesn't have that case, but it uses constructions like "with + n" or "by means of + n". Take this with a grain of salt but I would assume, considering the lack of information, that paŋ is roughly the equivalent of the English word with.

As for the other affixes, as I explained, they are added to the beginning of a root if they're prefixes, and to the end if they're suffixes. When they are added to the root, they add their meaning to it.
To continue with our made-up language examples:
Let's say the suffix -na indicates the instrumental case:
-> kupina would mean "with a house" or "by means of a house"

Hope this helped!
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Isfendil »

Evynova wrote:Affixes are parts that attach to root words: prefixes are added to the beginning of a word (re- + think = rethink, with re- indicating repetition), and suffixes, more common, are added at the end of the root (the -ed suffix indicating the past tense in English: end + -ed = ended; the -s suffix indicating a plural: cat + s = cats).

An infix is more complex, for it is added inside the root. They are considerably rare, and I don't have any real-life example at hand, but let's imagine a constructed language making use of infixes:
Let's say kupi means house, and the infix -ro- expresses the inessive case (in English, we use the preposition in)
-> "In the house" would be kuropi, with the infix -ro- being added in the middle of the root.

I've had a quick look at the article you mentioned and nothing is said about the affix paŋ, I would assume it is used as an adpostion (before or after the word). The instrumental voice is typically used with nouns, however. In Slavic languages, for example, it is a case on its own, the instrumental case. English doesn't have that case, but it uses constructions like "with + n" or "by means of + n". Take this with a grain of salt but I would assume, considering the lack of information, that paŋ is roughly the equivalent of the English word with.

As for the other affixes, as I explained, they are added to the beginning of a root if they're prefixes, and to the end if they're suffixes. When they are added to the root, they add their meaning to it.
To continue with our made-up language examples:
Let's say the suffix -na indicates the instrumental case:
-> kupina would mean "with a house" or "by means of a house"

Hope this helped!

Thank you, but I already know what affixes are in linguistics. I was asking about how they were used specifically in Proto Austronesian or modern Austronesian languages.
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Evynova
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Evynova »

Well, affixes work the same way for every language out there, I don't think Austronesian languages make any exception to this rule. I don't understand your question then, sorry. [:x]
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Frislander »

I think the infixes in PA come after the first consonant of the verb. Other than that I don't know that much about PA.
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Isfendil »

Frislander wrote:I think the infixes in PA come after the first consonant of the verb. Other than that I don't know that much about PA.
This is the sort of answer I was looking for. Do you know where you learned this, frislander?
Evynova wrote:Well, affixes work the same way for every language out there, I don't think Austronesian languages make any exception to this rule. I don't understand your question then, sorry. [:x]
I wanted to know specifically what sort of word each suffix and prefix would be allowed to attach itself to, which ones stack together, and, similarly to the answer I got above, I wanted to know where on a word the infix actually goes. It required a specific knowledge of the family that I do not have.
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Frislander »

Isfendil wrote:
Frislander wrote:I think the infixes in PA come after the first consonant of the verb. Other than that I don't know that much about PA.
This is the sort of answer I was looking for. Do you know where you learned this, frislander?
Robert Blust did a very nice long book on the family as a whole in 2013: Here's the Google scholar search: it's the first result.
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Isfendil
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Isfendil »

Frislander wrote:
Isfendil wrote:
Frislander wrote:I think the infixes in PA come after the first consonant of the verb. Other than that I don't know that much about PA.
This is the sort of answer I was looking for. Do you know where you learned this, frislander?
Robert Blust did a very nice long book on the family as a whole in 2013: Here's the Google scholar search: it's the first result.
Thank you, I will take a look at this.
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Salmoneus »

It's questionable whether "sort of word" is even applicable to Proto-Austronesian, since there's a big debate as to whether it lexically distinguished nouns from verbs at all.

But obviously, to the extent that it had nouns and verbs, verbal affixes (like those for voice) went on verbs and nominal affixes went on nouns. An instrumental voice affix, for instance, marks instrumental voice, which is a voice, and therefore it is used with verbs, to indicate the instrumental voice. I'm not sure where the confusion arises here.

However, in this particular case, Blust considers 'pang-' to be a marker of instrumental nouns, not a voice, and considers it PWMP rather than PAN. He also lists 'Sa-', for deverbal instrumental nouns, and 'Si-' as the marker for instrumental voice, as well as 'paR-' for instrumental nouns. However, the obvious puzzle here is the pairing of mang- (marking some verbs) and pang-, which appears to fall into the normal p/m pattern - most theories suggest that the p- forms are original with the m-forms as derived, but mang- is much more widespread than pang- and semantically the derivation seems to be in the other direction (however, in some languages pang-nouns and mang-verbs aren't always directly related semantically). Even mang- he lists as only PMP, however.

-inum- occurs in Blust as a product of -in- (perfective) and -um- (one of the active voice markers), but he notes that both -inum- and -umin- are found in different languages and there's no way to tell which, if either, was in PAN (he tentatively sides with -umin-). There are also languages with prefixed in- tied to infixed -um-.

Due to the confusion between nouns and verbs, and consequently between verbal and nominal functions for affixes, the exact original meanings of a lot of the affixes is unclear. Reid, for instance, believes that -in- was originally a derivational affix for deriving verbs, and only became a perfective affix later on, whereas Blust strongly disagrees with this and sees it as fundamentally a perfective affix that has also come to be derivational.

Also be aware that the position of many affixes is highly variable. So -ay- is the prefix for the future tense in Rukai, but the suffix for the 'future-general action dependent subjunctive' in some Philippine languages.

You can read Blust (The Austronesian Languages) for short discussions of the reconstructable affixes, but be aware that this is not a grammar of PAN (if such a thing exists) and that it often describes tendencies of daughter languages rather than attempting a definitive 'meaning' for the affix in the parent language.
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Isfendil »

Thank you Salmoneus.

So what I gathered from this is that the positions of these adfixes are flexible and very from language to language/family to family. Furthermore, they are not immune to semantic drift (as is of the course).

A short follow up question on inum vs. umin- is that not simply a combination of two adfixes? Wouldn't then the order be variable?
Furthermore, I understand that Blust's book is not a grammar of PAN, and I honestly don't think enough work has been done to actually produce one (or if it is, one is being written now), but is there sufficient info on the structures of the daughters as a whole?
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Re: (Possibly Dumb) Questions about Proto Austronesian

Post by Salmoneus »

Isfendil wrote:Thank you Salmoneus.

So what I gathered from this is that the positions of these adfixes are flexible and very from language to language/family to family.
I'm not sure I'd say very flexible, but certainly some of the affixes have ended up in different places. Others seem pretty stuck - this probably reflects things that were genuinely affixes in PAN and things that might have, say, been clitics.

Furthermore, they are not immune to semantic drift (as is of the course).

A short follow up question on inum vs. umin- is that not simply a combination of two adfixes? Wouldn't then the order be variable?
Well, a combination of two affixes shouldn't normally have a variable word order. In German, for instance, "You made" is always "Du machtest", never "Du machstete" - the tense comes before the person.
Apparently some people think that the variable order of these two affixes in daughter languages may indicate different grammatical stages, with a derivational affix become inflexional, or vice versa, and hence changing how close to the root it comes.
Furthermore, I understand that Blust's book is not a grammar of PAN, and I honestly don't think enough work has been done to actually produce one (or if it is, one is being written now), but is there sufficient info on the structures of the daughters as a whole?
Depends what you mean by "structures", and by "the daughters as a whole". As you know, there are literally thousands of daughter languages...
What the book broadly does is give an overview of what the languages look like, rather than, say, giving detailed reconstructions of each family or anything. As an example, there's about 100 pages on phonology. That's about 40 pages giving general tendencies of the various geographical areas (rather than families, although of course one is a reasonable guide to the other in most cases), then 20 or so on phonotactic tendencies as a whole (with more detailed sections on unusual or difficult issues, like the family's fondness for prenasalisation), and 35 on tendencies in phonological processes, from the vague (p.251-253, "stress rules") to the specific (p. 238 "sibilant assimilation in Formosan languages") and then a couple of pages on minor oddities like metathesis and the like.
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