Volume 16 Issue 1 (2018) DOI:10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.488 Note: Linguistic Discovery uses Unicode characters to represent phonetic symbols. Please see Optimizing Display for requirements to accurately reproduce this page. More
than Most: Comparative Constructions in Muna René van den Berg Comparative constructions are an understudied field of research in the
regional languages of Indonesia. This paper provides a detailed look at Muna,
an Austronesian language of southeast Sulawesi, where there appears to be an
unusually large assortment of comparative constructions and lexemes. These
include the comparative, superlative and equative degree (all of which are
expressed non-morphologically), correlative and ‘let alone’ constructions, as
well as various inherently comparative lexemes. Of typological interest are the
use of a comitative preposition for the standard marker, and the lack of a
designated word meaning ‘less’. The wealth of data
available is possibly related to various aspects of the Muna culture, including
the popularity of competitive games and the traditional social stratification. 1. Introduction Muna is a Western Austronesian language
spoken in southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia (see map 1 for the location of Muna in
Indonesia).[1]
It is a member of the small Muna-Buton group, itself part of the larger Celebic
group, which is a subgroup of Western Malayo-Polynesian. Muna is probably
spoken by over 300,000 people, but the exact number of speakers is very difficult
to ascertain. There has been considerable outmigration from the island of Muna
to the provincial capital Kendari, as well as to other places in eastern
Indonesia (Maluku, Papua), and these are not usually included in census figures.
Also, there is considerable language shift to Indonesian. Traditionally this
shift happened among urban and educated Muna people (especially in Kendari, but
also in Raha, the capital of Muna), but it is now increasingly found across the
whole island, due to widespread education in Indonesian and exposure to the
media, specifically television. Many young people growing up on Muna only have
a limited knowledge of their ancestral language.
Figure 1. The Location of Muna in
Indonesia Typologically, Muna can be characterized
as follows (see also van den Berg 1989). The language has a relatively simple
phonology of five vowels and 25 consonants, including seven prenasalized
consonants, an implosive /ɓ/ written as <bh>, a voiced dental plosive /d̪/
written as <dh>, and a voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ written as <gh>.
Syllable structure is (C)V and stress is penultimate. Muna
morphology is mostly agglutinative with a rich and diverse array of forms.
Prefixation and suffixation are prevalent, but there is also infixation,
circumfixation, reduplication and various combinations of these categories.
Less common are compounding, incorporation and subtraction. The major
word classes are verbs and nouns, both of which have extensive morphological
possibilities, especially verbs. Verbs are classified into three inflection classes
and ao-class, based on the 1sg subject form; see Table 1 below). In addition, verbs are
morphosyntactically grouped into a further three classes: stative
(corresponding to adjectives[2]),
dynamic (intransitive) and transitive. In the lexicon verbs are therefore
specified for both their inflection class and their morphosyntactic class.
Examples are late (vi,ae-) ‘live’ (meaning that
late is an intransitive verb belonging to inflection class ae-)
and lowu (vs,ao-) ‘drunk’ (meaning
that lowu is a stative verb belonging to inflection class ao-). Closed
classes, most of which have few morphological possibilities, are pronouns, demonstratives,
numerals and classifiers, quantifiers, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions,
particles and interjections. Inflectional
morphology centers around four person-number sets: subject prefixes, direct
object suffixes and indirect object suffixes on verbs, as well as possessor/agent
suffixes on nouns and passive participles (see Table 1). Each inflected verb is
marked as either realis or irrealis. There is a distinct definiteness effect:
definite objects cause a change in verbal inflection class from ae- to a-. Non-finite verb
forms include active and passive participles. Verbal derivational morphology is
broad, including a variety of valency-changing affixes, among others causative,
transitivizing, reciprocal, detransitivizing, applicative, requestive,
accidental/non-volitional passive, as well as various nominalizations. There is
also considerable evaluative morphology.
Table 1. Muna Free Pronouns and Pronominal Affixes[3] Nouns are
not marked for case or gender, and only marginally for number. The unmarked
constituent order is VS in intransitive clauses and AVO in transitive clauses,
though deviations are common for pragmatic reasons. SV, for example, is frequently encountered in
intransitive clauses. The
language is head-marking and uses prepositions. There is no voice
marking in main clauses; the active-passive voice distinction is limited to
relative clauses. Dialectal variation of the language is
extensive, especially in the southern half of the island, encompassing major
phonological, morphological and lexical differences. The variety spoken in the
northern half of the island is considered the prestigious dialect and is the
basis for the data presented here. The few examples where I have used data from
southern Muna are clearly indicated. My own involvement with Muna goes back to
1985, when I started doing fieldwork on the island. This resulted in a grammar
(van den Berg 1989), later followed by a Muna-English dictionary (van den Berg
and La Ode Sidu 1996) and a Muna-Indonesian dictionary (La Ode Sidu and van den
Berg 2000, rev. 2013). I have also published on other aspects of Muna, such as the
southern dialect, spatial terminology, loanwords, and evaluative morphology, for
which see the references. The website www.bahasamuna.org makes many of these
writings available and also offers some educational, textual and cultural
materials. This paper examines the rich variety of
lexical and grammatical means for coding comparisons in Muna, a topic which has
not yet been studied separately in any detail. It starts with the comparative (§2),
the superlative (§3) and the equative degree (§4). Then it moves on to inherently
comparative lexemes (§5), correlative constructions (§6), a ‘let alone’
construction (§7), and the word labhi ‘more’ (§8). In the final section
(§9), I try to link this profusion of comparative constructions to aspects of
the Muna culture. A short conclusion (§10) summarizes the main findings and
lists questions for further research. The paper is not concerned with
qualitative comparisons (similatives with ‘like’ and simulatives with ‘as if’),
which is another rich domain of research. The data on which this study is based are
mostly taken from a large text and dictionary corpus that was collected between
1985 and 1994, supplemented by additional examples obtained from translation
work, conversations and e-mail exchanges. 2. Comparative
degree 2.1. Basic
typology Muna does not make use of
morphological comparatives to indicate relative superiority, as is the case in
English (big-bigger). Instead, Muna has a dedicated construction,
illustrated in (1).
In Dixon’s
(2012) typology of comparatives, Muna is a type A2 language: •the comparee is a subject (anoa ‘3sg’); •the parameter is a stative verb (bhala ‘big’;
the prefix no- marks agreement with the subject); •the standard is inodi ‘1sg’;
•the standard marker is the comitative preposition bhe
‘with, and’; •there is no parameter marker in this construction (no
word or affix corresponding to English more or -er; but see §8 on
the word labhi ‘more’). Other monoclausal
examples, each showing exactly the same features, are (2)-(5).
2.2. Variations Some
variations on this basic pattern are possible, discussed and illustrated below,
although the exact conditions under which these variations occur are not yet fully
understood. Normally
the comparee follows the stative verb functioning as the parameter, but in (6)
the comparee subject precedes the verb to give it special prominence:
Example (7)
shows a topic-comment structure with the topic foo mani ‘our mangoes’
preceding the verb no-bhari ‘many’, and the comparee and the standard
both in the form of active participles functioning as NPs.
Example (8)
is another topic-comment structure, but here the comparee is not a subject but
a prepositional phrase following the idiom tai lalo ‘be
attached to, be emotionally close to’ (lit. ‘[the] inside sticks’). The
standard is also a PP (ne ina-no ‘to its mother’), resulting in a
sequence of two prepositional phrases.
Sometimes
an argument is absent, as it can be understood from context. In (9), for
example, the standard (the other participant in the race) is left implicit and
hence there is no PP introduced by bhe ‘with’. It is clear, however,
that a comparative reading is intended given the presence of a dhuri
‘referee’.
The
parameter can also be modified by another verb, as no-tende ‘it runs’
does in (10), giving ne-rimba ‘it is fast’ an adverbial meaning.[6]
In (11), a sentence
with a topicalised object, the comparee and the standard are both transitive
verbs:
Verbal
rather than nominal comparees are common in comparisons involving the verb asi-ghoo
‘love, like’ (the root asi ‘love’ with an obligatory applicative suffix -ghoo).
In such comparative constructions, this verb is best translated as ‘prefer’, as
in (12) and (13), the latter having a full clause as comparee and as standard.
2.3. The standard
marker bhe The
comitative preposition bhe ‘with’, which is used for the standard marker
in a comparative construction, has several additional functions in Muna. Its
primary function is a coordinating conjunction ‘and’, linking nouns (ina-no
bhe ama-no ‘her/his mother and her/his father’), NPs, verbs and predicates.
However, it is also found in in resultative, existential and exclamatory
clauses, as illustrated in (14), (15) and (16).
For further
discussion and examples of the multi-purpose preposition bhe, see van
den Berg (1989:141-143). Dixon
(2012:352) remarks that especially ablative prepositions with the meaning
‘from’ are cross-linguistically common to serve as standard markers in a
comparative construction. Muna does not have a specific preposition meaning
‘from’; any of the local prepositions ne, we, te, as well as bhe can be translated as ‘from’ in the appropriate context. However, the use of a
comitative preposition for the standard marker appears to be typologically
unusual. Stassen (1985:36) mentions the occasional use of instrumental markers,
comitative markers and benefactive markers, but does not cite specific
languages for the comitative. I am only aware of two other languages that code
the standard marker with a comitative preposition: Nuer (Nilo-Saharan; quoted
in Ultan 1972) and Mongsen Ao (Sino-Tibetan; Coupe 2007)[7],
though it is likely that a more thorough search will yield further cases. Since bhe
can also mean ‘and’, this can in principle lead to structural ambiguity, as in
(17), where the coordinated NP kawea bhe kaendo ‘wind and waves’ could
theoretically also be interpreted as a comparison. In practice, such ambiguity
appears to be very rare or non-existent.
2.4. Alternatives There are
two alternative ways of forming the comparative degree. One of these employs
the word liu ‘pass, surpass, exceed’, to be discussed in more detail in §3 in relation to superlatives. The parameter is a
nominalized stative verb, often affixed with a possessive suffix which
indicates the comparee. The parameter marker is the transitive verb liu.
It is not
clear whether there is a semantic difference with the regular comparative
construction with bhe. It should be noted that this construction is extremely rare in my text corpus, but is relatively frequent in translated material.
An example from the southern dialect is (19)[8],
which uses the variant foliu for standard Muna liu.[9]
Typically we find 3sg or 3pl possessors, on the nominalized stative verbs, as in (19). First and second
person possessors in these constructions are absent from my corpus. The
comparative with liu was also given in e-mail correspondence as a
translation equivalent of the English comparative construction. Its almost
complete absence from the large text corpus is puzzling.[10] The second
alternative to an unmarked comparative makes use of the word labhi
‘more’, a word which is discussed in more detail in §8. Again, this construction
is infrequent in my corpus, being limited to three examples. The first one
occurs in translated material and is probably a calque from Indonesian.
Structurally (20) is
remarkably close to its Indonesian source text: [Yakub] lebih
mengasihi Yusuf dari semua anak-nya yang lain[11] ([Yakub]
more loved Yusuf from all his-children rel
other), ‘[Yakub]
loved Yusuf more than all his other children.’ As outlined in §8, labhi
is not normally used to code the comparative degree, and the combination of labhi
with bhe is rare, but apparently well-understood. The second and third example
of labhi come from the dictionary corpus (van den Berg and La Ode Sidu
1996) and from a small corpus of traditional poetry respectively. In both cases
there is a clear comparison, but the parameter is not a property concept.
Rather, in (21) the comparee and the standard are both actions (expressed as
clauses consisting of a verb and an adverb or an object NP), while in (22) they
are persons. In both cases bhe ~ bhae is the standard marker, and labhi
is the parameter meaning ‘it is better’ (its literal meaning is ‘more’; see
also §8
for further discussion of labhi). Notice that (22) is shown to be poetry
by the use of an archaic form (bhae instead of bhe), and spontaneous
initial prenasalization (mpasole for pasole ‘handsome’[12]; mpatida for patida
‘type of spade, traditional iron tool for hoeing’).
This alternative construction with labhi
and bhe seems to be the preferred way of coding a comparison between
full clauses or between people. 2.5. Inferiority Expressing relative inferiority (‘less
than’) is problematic in Muna. Dedicated constructions involving relative
inferiority have not been encountered in the corpus. There is no lexical item
meaning ‘less’ and native speakers are often at a loss to find an equivalent of
the Indonesian term kurang ‘less’. It appears that native speakers
simply circumvent this structural gap by expressing the situation in terms of
relative superiority or non-equality. In other words, rather than saying ‘My
house is smaller than yours’, Muna speakers would express this situation in
their language as ‘Your house is bigger than mine’ or (culturally more
appropriate) ‘Our houses do not have the same size’ or ‘My house does not match
yours.’[13] This is further
illustrated in (23), which was provided as the translation equivalent of ‘La
Remi is less tall than Wa Ati’. Instead of building a negative construction
around the stative verb langke ‘tall’, a positive statement is made
based on the antonym panda ‘low, short’.
There are, however, several lexical items in
Muna which offer solace for this structural gap. There is, for instance, the intransitive
verb kae meaning ‘be not enough, be lacking, have a shortage’, which can
be used as the equivalent of Indonesian adverb kurang ‘less’. However, kae
always has absolute reference, and never involves an explicit comparison, as
illustrated in (24).
This verb kae can be modified by a
numeral phrase indicating the number or amount which is lacking, as in (25),
from a text about growing maize, the traditional food crop on Muna. The numeral
phrase raa wula ‘two months’ in combination with no-kae seendai (3sg.su.real-not.enough a.little) ‘a bit
short of’, results in the meaning ‘just a bit less than two months’ or ‘just a
bit under two months’.
The verb kae can also be negated,
as in miina nao-kae (neg 3sg.irr-not.enough), meaning ‘there is no shortage, nothing is
lacking, it is enough.’ A second verb to express inferiority,
specifically for amounts, is the use of the stative verb ndai ‘be
little’ in a comparative construction, as in (26).
In order to express inferiority with
specific numbers or amounts, Muna can also use the verb pata ‘be enough,
sufficient, adequate’, the positive counterpart of kae. This is most
commonly found preceded by a negator, meaning ‘not enough for, less than’, as
in (27).[14]
An alternative to this construction is the
use of the complex prepositional phrase we pandano (loc lower.part-3sg.poss)
‘under,
less than’, as in (28). The noun panda means ‘the lower part, the area
down below’.
3. Superlative
degree The
superlative degree in Muna is illustrated in (29).
This
construction consists of the following features: •the
comparee is the subject (anoa ‘3sg’); •the parameter is a nominalized stative verb langke
‘tall’; •the
parameter marker is an active participle fo-liu-no ‘(the one)
surpassing’, which is based on the detransitivized verb fo-liu ‘pass,
surpass, exceed’;[16] •the PP ne liwu aini ‘in this village’ functions
as the domain within which the statement is true.
Superlatives
with similar constructions are further illustrated in (30 ) and (31):
The basic literal
meaning of the intransitive verb liu is ‘pass, pass by’, as for instance
a person or a car passing by on the road, a boat at sea, or birds in the air,
as illustrated in (32):
As
mentioned before, the verb liu can also be used in a comparative sense,
as in (18) and (19) above, though this appears to be a functionally marked
construction. If there is no standard, the meaning of no-fo-liu
(3sg.su.real-detr-surpass) is elative
‘exceedingly, extremely, very’, as in (33) and (34):
The word
order in the second part of (34) is unusual. A more regular order would be no-fo-liu
ka-pasole (3sg.su.real-detr-surpass
nmlz-handsome) ‘most handsome’, as in (33). It is
probable that bhe in (34) is actually an exclamatory bhe, also illustrated
in example (16), which would be an alternative explanation for the following nominalization
and the marked word order. It is possible that non-3sg forms such as a-fo-liu (1sg.su-detr-surpass) ‘I surpass others; I am the best’, can
also be used as elatives, but this remains to be investigated as they do not
occur in my corpus. Finally, there
is one clear example in the corpus of a superlative meaning without the use of fo-liu-no (detr-surpass-act.part), illustrated in (35).
It is
possible that this is limited to the root bhari ‘many.’ Depending on the
context the active participle bhari-no can mean ‘many’, ‘more’ or
‘most’. 4. Equative degree
and sameness Muna
has two main ways to express the equative degree: •the intransitive verb pototo ‘be the same’; •repeated nominalization. 4.1. The verb pototo ‘be the same’ The most
unmarked way of expressing the equative degree is by means of the intransitive
verb pototo ‘be the same’, followed by a nominalized stative verb.
Example (36) illustrates a simple clause with the verb pototo, not
involving an equative degree (which needs a stative verb), but simply an identical
referent. Examples (37), (38) and (39) illustrate equative degrees with
nominalized stative verbs. Notice that the unreduplicated base pototo has dual reference (though the subject prefix is singular for non-humans). When
there are more than two human participants involved, the root is reduplicated to pototo-toto[17] and
has a plural subject prefix, as in (38) and (39). The parameter, the
nominalized stative verb, agrees with the plural subject and receives a plural
possessive suffix.
4.2. Repeated nominalization An alternative and less frequent strategy
to express the equative degree is to create an equational clause (a simple
juxtaposition of noun phrases), in which the nominalized stative verb is
repeated, occurring both in the subject and the predicate. This is illustrated
in (40) and (41); it so happens that the stative verb used (rimba ‘fast’)
is identical in these two examples, but there do not appear to be constraints
on the verbal root.
Example (41) is taken from a
story about a boy who gets advice from an elder on how to outwit a monster by
magically flying away.
4.3. Other ways to
mark sameness In addition
to these equative degrees, Muna has other means to express sameness or equality.
One of these is the verbalizing prefix si- followed by a noun, either a simple
or a derived noun. The meaning of the resulting verb is ‘be one in respect to
X; have the same X; be of the same X; share X’. The subject prefix is always
plural, but with non-reduplicated base nouns, the subject has dual reference.
With reduplicated base nouns, the reference is plural, as illustrated in (42):
Additionally,
Muna has various specific lexemes with a meaning component indicating sameness
or equality, listed in (43). The first three verbs (obligatorily reduplicated) are
completely synonymous (though the first one is the most common), and have a cross-temporal perspective on sameness. They
are also unusual in that they use object suffixes to refer to the single verbal
argument, as illustrated in (44).
Three of
these lexical items are illustrated in the following clauses. The preposition peda
‘like’ in (44) is the normal preposition to indicate similarity, as, for
example in peda inodi (like 1sg)
‘like me’ or peda dahu (like dog) ‘like a dog’.
It is noteworthy that the word dua
‘also’ occurs quite frequently in equative and sameness constructions, as in (40),
(41) and (46). This is hardly surprising, as dua ‘also’ has an inherent additive
meaning component, but the exact conditions under which dua needs to be
present or can be left out remain to be explored. 5. Inherently
comparative lexemes Dixon
(2012:365) mentions the presence of “inherently comparative lexemes” in some
languages, in which the parameter and the parameter marker are fused, like
English prefer. Muna has a fairly large group of such inherently
comparative lexemes, most of which are verbs, with a few nouns and one idiom. These
are listed in (47).
That these lexemes are inherently comparative is shown
by the fact that in each case there is a comparison between more than one
entity, or a comparison of qualities (though sometimes one of the entities can
be left implicit). The fact that translations of these lexemes in Indonesian
include words such as lebih ‘more’, paling ‘most’ and semakin
‘increasingly’ (or their English equivalents) corroborates this analysis. The
following clauses illustrate several of these lexemes. Notice that in
examples (48) to (51) the standard is introduced by the preposition bhe,
just as it is in regular comparative degree constructions. The other examples
illustrate different types of inherently comparative lexical items, both
syntactically and semantically.
6. Correlative
comparisons Muna has at least two correlative constructions,
that is, constructions in which two comparative clauses are juxtaposed, like
the English example ‘The smaller it is, the faster it goes’. As in English,
these are balanced constructions in Muna, the two clauses each being introduced
by the same adverb. In the first type the adverb is nihompu ‘the more’ (or
its stylistic variants hompu, nihompuu, nehompu[19]). Example (55) is
from a text on traditional musical instruments and describes the making of a
xylophone and the type of wood that one should use. [20]
The following example, (56), is from a
story about a competition among food crops as to who will be their leader. Rice
turns out to be the best candidate to become king of the foods. He is praised
for his humble character in the following way:
The second type of correlative comparison is
similar, except that the adverb is the deverbal word hende ‘the more’ (from
the intransitive verb hende ‘move up, go forward, rise, increase’), and
that in both clauses hende is followed by a nominalized stative verb.
There does not appear to be any semantic difference between the use of hende
and nihompu.
Correlative constructions are fairly
uncommon cross-linguistically (Dixon 2012: 368), though Indonesian also has
them, formed with makin ‘the more’, as in makin lama makin banyak
(the.more long the.more many) ‘the longer the time,
the greater the amount’. I am not aware of other Sulawesi languages for which correlative
comparisons have been reported. 7. ‘Let alone’
construction Another construction which involves
explicit comparison between entities is the so-called ‘let alone’ construction.
The English ‘let alone’ construction has received considerable attention in
recent years, primarily from a pragmatic and constructionist perspective
(Fillmore et al. 1988, Verhagen 2005). In this section I simply add another
specimen to the growing corpus of ‘let alone’ constructions, disregarding further
semantic and pragmatic aspects. ‘Let alone’ is used in Muna (as it is in
other languages) to emphasize the obvious impossibility of something, in
comparison to another entity. It means that if statement A is true for entity
X, A is even more true for entity Y. This should have been obvious to the
addressee, as A(Y) is more complex or less expected than A(X). Some English
examples are: He can’t boil potatoes, let alone cook a full meal; I barely know
the streets in my own village, let alone in the provincial capital. In Muna this construction is also bipartite,
though the second part is typically just a noun phrase, introduced by a complex
conjunction. Semantically, the first clause makes a statement of negative
character (though not necessarily a negative clause), which is even more true
for the second clause. The first clause is sometimes introduced by the
conjunction salangimo ‘whereas, while’ or one of its many stylistic variants:
sangi, silangi, sangiha(mo), saniha(mo), sangihano(mo), sanihano(mo) or sinomo.
Typically, the second clause is introduced by the complex conjunction poolimo
dua, glossed as ‘let alone’ (poolimo is actually an uninflected form
of the verb pooli ‘can, be able’, probably acting as an imperative here;
dua means ‘also, too’). Some examples:
Example (62) is somewhat unusual, as the
two clauses are reversed, the conjunction poolighoomu ‘whereas’ replaces
the expected sangihamo, and instead of poolimo dua the author
uses taamoolimo dua.
8. The word labhi
‘more’ There is one word in Muna which is deeply
connected with comparisons: the word labhi ‘more’ and its derivations,
already briefly introduced in §2.4. Example (63), a slightly edited entry
from the Muna dictionary (van den Berg and La Ode Sidu 1996), lists the main
meanings, followed by a few illustrative examples.
Even though Muna labhi is a direct reflex
from the Proto-Austronesian noun *labiq ‘excess, surplus’ (Blust and Trussell n.d.), it is possible
that some of the meanings and constructions above may have been influenced by
Indonesian lebih ‘more’. This could include the unusual position of the adverbial
labhi following numerals, as illustrated in (65), which follows the
Indonesian pattern sepuluh ribu lebih (ten thousand more) ‘more than ten
thousand’. The word labhi is also the base for
a large number of derivations. These are listed below in (69), followed by a
few examples illustrating the derivation ko-labhi ‘be more than’, which
is the most relevant to the present discussion. Even though the translation of ko-labhi
is ‘be more than’, the prefix ko- in ko-labhi is glossed as ‘have’, on the basis of other similar
derivations with this very productive prefix (e.g. doi ‘money’, ko-doi
‘to have money’).
9. Correlating
language and culture: comparing and competing in Muna culture In this
section, following a suggestion in Dixon (2012), I try to correlate the wealth
of comparative constructions in Muna described above with lexical and cultural
aspects of games and competition. Dixon observes: Across the world, many societies — both large and
small — are imbued with the notion of competition. This can be related to races
or other sports, or just to prowess in daily activities. One person tries to be
better than another, to win. Naturally there is then an appropriate stock of
lexemes: ‘race’, ‘compete’, ‘win’, ‘lose’, ‘victor’, ‘victory’ and so on. In
contrast, there are many small egalitarian communities — including both Dyirbal
and Jarawara — for which ideas of competition, or winning, or triumphing, are
totally alien. They simply lack such lexemes. This may
also have consequences within the grammar. […] Languages whose speakers indulge
in competition are likely to use a grammar that includes a specific comparative
construction… (Dixon 2012:441) Muna appears
to be a solid example illustrating this possible relationship. In addition to
several dedicated comparative constructions, Muna also has a considerable
number of lexical terms dealing with competing, scoring points, winning,
losing, and drawing. This, in turn, can be linked to the popularity of
traditional (and modern) competitive games, and the occurrence of competitive
story elements in folktales. A well-developed decimal counting system and a
socially layered society complete the picture of a society where unequality and
competition were, and still are to some extent, rife. The following section,
which is preliminary in nature, lists a number of lexical and cultural elements
in these domains that may shed some light on Dixon’s tentative correlation.
Whether this correlation is real or imaginary must
remain an open question at this point, but the facts appear to be pointing in
this direction. Below is a
tentative list of lexemes dealing with comparing, competing, winning, losing
and drawing.
Keeping
track of points in a game is never an issue. Muna has a robust decimal system
with basic term for one to ten,[22]
and additional terms for hundred (moghono), thousand (se-riwu),
ten thousand (se-lasa) and a million (se-juta), of which only the
latter two appear to be borrowed. In (74) a small
selection of traditional games played by children in premodern times is
presented. Most of these games, possibly more than thirty in total, are no
longer played and were already obsolete in the early 1990s when these terms
were collected. The following five terms (taken from Van den Berg and La Ode
Sidu 1996, slightly edited) are all intransitive verbs using the prefix po-.
This prefix, used for playing games and for playing instruments, could be
termed a “luditive” prefix (it also has a reciprocal function).[23]
Traditionally,
competitions were also organized around groups asking each other riddles (po-watangke),
as well as cockfighting (po-sawu) and horsefighting (po-gira-ghoo
adhara). Muna was, in fact, quite well-known for its horsefighting
competitions, and national dignitaries or foreign tourists can still request
such an event to be organized (at a considerable price). Modern
games that are regularly played on Muna include the following (each again with
the “luditive” prefix po-). Most of these were introduced during the
Dutch colonial period on Muna (1906-1949) and many, if not all, of the nominal
roots are borrowings.
There is
also quite a variety of lexemes relating to card games, including po-baralaa ‘play a card game where four
players each hold four cards’, po-kalawara ‘play clubs’ (from Dutch klaver). Modern competitions on Muna
(and in Indonesia as a whole) also include more serious activities in the
fields of education and religion, including the following: •competition for the highest grades in a class (ranked
class position for pupils); •competition for “model pupil” and “model teacher”; •church choir competitions; •Quran recitation competitions. Much energy
and money is spent on organizing and participating in these
events at various levels (village, district, province, nation). Muna
folktales, reflecting a culture where competing is firmly embedded, also
contain various competition narratives, especially when a big and strong animal
is pitched against a smaller animal that is able to outsmart him. Here are some
examples: •A buffalo and a snail hold a running competition,
which the snail wins. •A mousedeer and a genie hold a competition who can stay
awake the longest. •A finch and a buffalo hold a drinking competition, a
kicking competition and a stone-crushing competition. In each case the finch
outwits the buffalo. As far as Muna society is concerned, traditionally
it was very non-egalitarian, being divided into four strata, each one having
specific rights, responsibilities and limitations. The first stratum was the
high nobility (kaomu), followed by the low nobility (walaka). The
majority of the populace belonged to the commoners (maradika), while a
small section was treated as slaves (ghata). This social stratification
determined not only the governing, judicial and religious positions one could
fulfill, but also one’s dress, where one could live, whom one could marry, the
height of the bride price, mode of transportation, and how one or one’s wife was
to be addressed and referred to, among other things. Given this non-egalitarian organization,
it comes as no surprise that there was considerable strife and competition for
the three top positions in the kingdom, the kingship and the two defense
ministerial posts. Couvreur records several power struggles in the 19th
century. Tying language to culture is fraught with
problems, and we should refrain from making broad or speculative statements.
However, the least one can say is that competition was (and is) firmly embedded
in Muna culture. The linguistic cornucopia surrounding comparisons does therefore
not come as a surprise. 10. Conclusion The Muna language does not have a
morphological comparative, superlative or equative degree, comparable to
English big-bigger-biggest and Indonesian ter-besar ‘biggest’ or se-besar
‘as big as’. Muna is, however, very rich in comparative
constructions: it has dedicated comparative, superlative, equative and
correlative constructions, a ‘let alone’ construction, and various inherently
comparative lexemes, including the word labhi ‘more’. The
use of the comitative preposition bhe for the standard marker is
typologically unusual. The preponderance of comparative constructions and
lexemes may possibly tie in with the prevalence of competition in the culture,
as shown by the popularity of traditional and modern competitive games. The
social stratification may also have played a role. A few follow-up research questions suggest
themselves. The exact division of labor between the two strategies for the
comparative degree needs further investigation, as well as possible semantic
distinctions between alternative constructions and lexemes. More can possibly be
said about the expression of relative inferiority and the use of dua
‘also’. There is also a need to study comparative constructions in other
languages of Sulawesi. Is the situation in Muna representative for other
Celebic languages? In addition, a diachronic perspective on the comparative
constructions and lexemes would be very welcome. So far, there is little evidence
of borrowing. References Blust, Robert and Steven Trussell. n.d. The
Austronesian Comparative Dictionary. Web edition. www.trussel2.com/ACD/
(Accessed 16 October 2015). Coupe, Alexander R. 2007. A grammar of Mongsen Ao.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Couvreur, J. 2001. Sejarah dan Kebudayaan Kerajaan
Muna [History and Culture of the Muna Kingdom]. Kupang: Artha Wacana.
[Original Dutch title Ethnografisch overzicht van Moena, 1935.] Dixon, R.M.W. 2012. Basic linguistic theory. Volume :. Further grammatical topics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Fillmore, Charles J., Paul Kay, and Mary Catherine
O’Connor. 1988. Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: the
case of let alone. Language 64: 501-538.
Stassen, Leon. 1985. Comparison and universal
grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Ultan, Russell. 1972. Some features of basic
comparative constructions. Working Papers on Language Universals (Stanford)
9: 117-162. van den Berg, René. 1989. A grammar of the Muna
language. Dordrecht: Foris. van den Berg, René. 1991.
Muna dialects and the Munic languages: towards a
reconstruction. VICAL 2. Western
Austronesian and Contact Languages. Papers from the Fifth International
Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, ed. by Ray Harlow, 21-51. Auckland:
Linguistic Society of New Zealand. van den Berg, René. 1991. Muna
historical phonology. Studies in Sulawesi
linguistics. Part II, ed. by J.N. Sneddon, 1-28. Jakarta: Badan
Penyelenggara Seri Nusa, Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya. NUSA volume 33. van den Berg, René. 1995. Forestry,
injections and cards: Dutch loans in Muna. Tales
from a concave world. Liber amicorum Bert Voorhoeve, ed. by Connie Baak,
Mary Bakker and Dick van der Meij, 191-215. Leiden: Projects Division
Department of Languages and Cultures of South-East Asia and Oceania. van den Berg, René. 1995. Verb
classes, transitivity and the definiteness shift in Muna: A counterexample to
the transitivity hypothesis. Oceanic
Linguistics 34/1:161-190. van den Berg, René. 1997. Spatial
deixis in Muna (Sulawesi). Referring to
space. Studies in Austronesian and Papuan languages, ed. by Gunter Senft,
197-220. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
van den Berg,
René. 2004. Notes on the southern
Muna dialect. Papers in Austronesian subgrouping and dialectology, ed. by John Bowden and Nikolaus P.
Himmelmann, 129-169. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. van den Berg, René. 2015. Muna. Edinburgh Handbook
of Evaluative Morphology, ed. by Nicola
Grandi and Lívia Körtvélyessy, 367-374. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press
van den Berg, René and La Ode Sidu. 1996. Muna-English dictionary. Leiden: KITLV Press. van den Berg, René and La Ode Sidu. 2000. Kamus Muna-Indonesia. Kupang: Artha Wacana Press. [2nd
edition 2013, Yogyakarta: Pustaka Puitika]. Verhagen, Arie. 2005. Constructions of intersubjectivity: discourse, syntax, and cognition. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. [1] I would like to acknowledge some of the Muna friends who helped me to learn their intriguing language between 1985 and 1994: †Nilus Larangka, †Hanafi, †La Ode Abdul Fattah, †La Ada, Syahruddin, as well as Lukas Atakasi for the southern dialect. More recently Mainuru Hado, La Habi, Lawa, Jafar and Dr La Aso have been very helpful in answering questions. I also want to thank the editors and two reviewers for their comments which led to many improvements. The following glossing abbreviations are used in this paper: act.part active participle, adv adverb, appl applicative, art article, caus causative, clas classifier, detr detransitivizer, du dual, fem feminine, foc focus, exc exclusive, fut future, hon honorific, inc inclusive, irr irrealis, loc locative, masc masculine, neg negator, nmlz nominalizer, obj object, pass.part passive participle, paus pausal clitic, perf perfect, pl plural, poss possessive, pred predicative, proh prohibitive, real realis, rec reciprocal, redup reduplication, sg singular, su subject, surpr surprisive, tot totalizer, tr transitivizer. Circumfixes such as nominalizing ka-…-ha are glossed with identical glosses nmlz for the prefixing and the suffixing part. Other abbreviations used: conj conjunction, k.o. kind of, lit. literally, n noun, s.o. someone, s.th. something, v verb, vi intransitive verb, vs stative verb, vt transitive verb; a-, ae- and ao- refer to three verbal inflection classes. [2] Muna does not have a separate word class of adjectives. Property words such as ‘big’ and ‘new’ are coded as stative verbs, receiving subject inflection when functioning as predicates. When they function attributively they are marked as participles in relative clauses or nominalized by means of ka-. See van den Berg (1989:45-47) for a full discussion. [3] In Table 1 V in -Vmu stands for an echo-vowel. Even though all these pronominal affixes are bound elements, in the practical orthography used for Muna (and followed in this paper) the longer suffixes are written as separate words. The most common of these are -kanau ‘1sg.obj’, -kasami ‘1pl.ex.obj’, -kaeta ‘2sg.hon.obj’ and -mani ‘1pl.ex.poss.’ [4] The intransitive verb feghawu means ‘to use abusive language, to call names’. The nominalization with ka- is derived from its transitive counterpart feghawu-ti ‘to abuse s.o.’. [5] The word see-mie ‘a person’ is a variant of the more common se-mie, found in (38). [6] Even though ne-rimba ‘it is fast’ appears to modify no-tende ‘it runs’, it is actually the other way round: no-tende modifies ne-rimba. Without no-tende the clause means essentially the same thing (‘A deer is faster than a dog’), but without ne-rimba the clause loses its comparative meaning and simply means ‘a deer and a dog run/are running’. [7] Ultan (1972:53) lists two languages in his appendix that have “instr-com” markers for the comparative degree. One is presumably Nuer, but the second one remains unknown. Thanks to Yvonne Treis for bringing the languages in this section to my attention. [8] Example (19) is taken from Bhihita Metaa. Podhandi’a Bu’ou, the New Testament in Muna (see alkitab.bahasamuna.org for the full text). It is unlikely that this is a calque from Indonesian, as Indonesian does not use a verbal construction to code the comparative. Instead it uses the adverbial parameter marker lebih ‘more’, as in lebih sering ‘more often’. [9] The variant is remarkable, as fo-liu (detr-surpass) is normally a detransitivized form of liu ‘surpass’ used in superlatives (see §3). In this case, however, the object suffix -da clearly show that foliu is treated as a transitive verb in the southern dialect. [10] It is possible that with a non-third person comparee, such as in (18) and (19), the alternative comparative degree with liu is the preferred, or even only, choice. I have not been able to verify this. [11] Taken from the 1985 Indonesian Bible
translation called Alkitab. Terjemahan Baru. [12] The form pasole is the root form of the stative verb pasole ‘handsome, beautiful’. Attributive root forms are not uncommon in poetry. The regular attributive form in normal conversation would be the active participle <m>asole-no, with infix -um- (realized as nasal substitution) and suffix -no. [13] The negative counterpart of a basic comparative (He is not bigger than you) also appears to be rare, but more research is needed to investigate this. [14] Without the negator, pata is almost exclusively found in temporal clauses. An example is No-pata kaawu se-wula… (3sg.real-enough after one-moon) ‘After a month had gone by…’. [15] The irrealis verb form <m>ata shows nasal substitution; it is the surface realization of -um- ‘irrealis’ + pata ‘enough’. [16] The detransitivising prefix fo- is added to transitive verbs. A human object is implied, but left implicit. Often this is the first person plural inclusive, as in the following statement about a dog: no-fo-sia (3sg.real-detr-bite) ‘it bites us/people’. [17] Although the form pototo-toto appears to be a case of suffixing reduplication (same-redup), all reduplication in Muna is prefixing, hence the gloss redup-same in (38) and (39). Prefixing reduplication is shown by such examples as intara ‘hold’ + po- ‘reciprocal’ > po-intara ‘hold each other (dual)’ and po-inta-intara ‘hold each other (plural)’. It appears that for reduplicative purposes pototo is treated as a bimorphemic stem with a prefix po-: po-toto, hence the reduplicated form po-toto-toto, rather than the expected *poto-pototo. It is possible that pototo ‘same’ is historically related to the noun toto ‘direction, side towards’, in combination with the reciprocal prefix po-. [18] An alternative translation ‘The crow flew as fast as the dog ran’ is possible, but since the dog is the topic in this section of the narrative, the most natural translation equivalent has the dog in sentence-initial position. [19] It is possible that nihompu is historically multimorphemic, but the origin of the word is not known. [20] The
instrument under discussion is a katou, a xylophone consisting of several loose pieces of wood (between
3 and 7), placed in a row on the upper legs and played with two sticks, while
the player sits with outstretched legs. This instrument, like many traditional
instruments, is now rarely found on Muna. [21] The stem of this verb is pototo ‘be the same’, but with indirect object inflection (here represented by 3sg ‑ane) it means ‘to compare’. [22] The basic terms are 1 ise,
2 rua, 3 tolu, 4 paa, 5 lima, 6 noo, 7 pitu,
8 oalu, 9 siwa, 10 ompulu, all directly inherited from
Proto-Austronesian. Each of these occur in three shapes: free, prefixed, and
reduplicated, as for example for 4: paa, fato- and po-paa. The
prefixed forms higher than two are written as separate words. [23] The prefix po- does not simply have a collective meaning. For this function Muna uses the circumfix si-…-ha, as in kala ‘go’ > ta-si-kala-ha ‘we (dual exclusive) go/went together.’ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||