The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

This file checks the grammar's account of medial clauses (Chapter 18) against the Manambu Fragment. Same-subject medial verbs are uninflected and different-subject ones partially inflected, while a marker neutral to switch-reference takes an uninflected or a fully inflected verb (§18.1). The only complex marker, -ta:y-kǝb, has the same subject because -ta:y is the same-subject marker, and its time begins before the next clause's and overlaps it (§18.6). A chain of completive clauses presents its events one after another (§18.10). The completive auxiliary napa- is used only in temporal clauses (§18.1), and a clause with it has only temporal meaning (§18.9): a completive clause reads 'after' or 'because' (18.17), with napa- only 'after' (18.53).

Implementation notes

Each of the two examples has one medial clause with each completive, and its readings are those of both clauses.

Errata

Table 18.1 marks -ta:y-kǝb, with -lǝk and -ga:y, as not occurring with napa-, while the text excludes only the last two (§18.1, §18.9). The Fragment follows the table.

References

• Aikhenvald 2008, The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea