Directional constructions in Matukar Panau A Bayesian approach to assessing variation

Kira Davey*, Danielle Barth

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The Oceanic language Matukar Panau has three equivalent morphosyntactic strategies for describing the direction of the event represented by a verb, with a system often directional morphemes that can appear in each construction. This variation is explored using a corpus from Matukar Panau and analysed quantitatively with Bayesian regression analyses to assess what factors influence the choice of directional construction. Variables pertaining to the lexical verb and the directional morphemes are found to be the most important factors affecting the variation in the directional system. Sociolinguistic factors are shown to play a less significant role. Thefindingshave implications for the grammaticalization of directional elements, as well as the typology of directional constructions in Oceanic languages.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)156-194
    Number of pages39
    JournalAsia-Pacific Language Variation
    Volume9
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 31 Dec 2023

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