Abstract
Jangkat is a Malayic variety spoken in the Bukit Barisan Mountains, in the Malay homeland of Sumatra. It provides insight into the role of the phonology-syntax interface in the development of morphosyntactic agreement in Malay. To provide context, roots in nearly all Malayic languages exhibit a single form in all morpho-syntactic environments. However, in certain regions of Sumatra, especially in Kerinci, there exist ‘root-alternating varieties’, varieties wherein roots exhibit two (or more) forms with distinct morphosyntactic distributions. Kerinci exhibits agreement-like morphological object registration: most words in the language exhibit a special form marking the presence of a nominal syntactic complement. The phonological realization of object registration is highly complex due to layer-upon-layer of historical changes in Kerinci phonology. These changes have obscured the grammatical development of Kerinci historically, leaving linguists to puzzle over how a Malayic language could develop such an extensive system of morphosyntactic marking. Jangkat exhibits morphophonological root-shape alternations reminiscent of those described in Kerinci, but, unlike Kerinci, the phonology of the Jangkat alternation is relatively straightforward. We argue that Jangkat not only reveals the origins of Kerinci’s morphosyntactic marking in phrase-level phonology, but it also illustrates the important role that the syntax-phonology interface plays in syntactic change.
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Notes
- 1.
These facts are consistent with either the hypothesis that PM *ə merged with *a in final syllables or the alternative hypothesis (suggested by Uri Tadmor, p.c.) that PM lacked the contrast *ə and *a (contra Adelaar 1992).
- 2.
Some borrowed roots ending with nasals represent exceptions to this generalization: e.g. tlipon ‘telephone’, puhon ‘tree’.
- 3.
N in pN--ʔn is an underlyingly velar nasal which assimilates to the initial consonant of the circumfix base.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by National Science Foundation (BCS-1126149), the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the University of Delaware, and Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia. We are greatly indebted to Ade Putra, our linguistic consultant, and the staff of the Padang Field Station of the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, especially Santi Kurniati. We would also like to thank David Gil, John Bowden, Bradley Taylor, and Uri Tadmor, for their logistical and intellectual support.
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Mckinnon, T., Hermon, G., Yanti, Cole, P. (2018). From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Jangkat Malay. In: Bartos, H., den Dikken, M., Bánréti, Z., Váradi, T. (eds) Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 94. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22
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