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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 6:2 (2016) ► pp.130–164

Accounting for variability in Malayo-Polynesian pronouns

Paradigmatic instability or drift?

| University of Hawaiʻi | National Museum of the Philippines

This article is a suggested explanation for the multiple variants of the forms of some Malayo-Polynesian pronouns that have been characterized as the result of drift. The explanation that is given is referred to here as paradigmatic instability, a phenomenon not previously discussed with reference to these problems. In the cases discussed in this article it is the avoidance of forms that are semantically or pragmatically inappropriate within the context of the paradigm in which they occur which renders the forms morphologically variable and the paradigms in which they occur unstable. In Malayo-Polynesian languages, it is the avoidance of a form that is reconstructed as a plural pronoun in Proto-Austronesian but which in all Malayo-Polynesian daughter languages is found as a singular pronoun. Where this form is retained as part of some other plural forms, it has been lost or modified in a wide range of variants in the daughter languages.

Keywords: Malayo-Polynesian languages, pronouns, paradigms, first person inclusive dual pronouns, first person inclusive plural pronouns, variation, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Pre-Malayo-Polynesian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Background
    • 1.2An overview of Austronesian pronominal systems
    • 1.3Variability and drift
  • 2.The reconstruction of a dual pronoun to PMP
  • 3.Paradigmatic instability in PMP pronouns
    • 3.1The development of PMP *=muyu ‘gen.2a’ (‘you all’)
    • 3.2The development of PMP *=tamu ‘gen.1+2a’ (‘we all’)
    • 3.3The development of PMP *=kamu ‘nom.2a (you all)’
    • 3.4The apparent loss of a distinction between PMP *=ta and PMP *=tamu
      • 3.4.1The retention of either PMP *=ta or a reflex of PMP *=tamu
      • 3.4.2Languages with a dual formed by adding ‘two’ to PMP *=ta
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 March 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.6.2.01rei
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