Yamdena perfectivity: the interplay between legacy material and on line fieldwork
Abstract
Yamdena, an Austronesian language of eastern Indonesia, is claimed to have an (im)perfectivity distinction in its verbal subject prefixes. According to grammar sketches that appeared in the 1920s and 1990s, long prefixes mark imperfective aspect and a range of other related functions, while short prefixes mark perfective aspect. This paper describes how this claim was investigated with the help of legacy ma- terials and fieldwork. The legacy materials provided verb roots to test; three elicitation tasks were then performed with three consultants, and the results were cross-checked with the legacy materials again after- wards. This confirms that the verbal subject prefixes, at least on some verb roots, express (im)perfectivity as well as other functions like transitivity and reciprocality. This study illustrates a semantic hypothesis that can be checked with a combination of ample unglossed legacy materials and a limited amount of fieldwork.
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