spatial terms, polysemy and possession in longgu (solomon islands)

Pergamon

Language Sciences, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 263-275, 1997 © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0388-0001/97 $17.00+0.00

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S P A T I A L T E R M S , P O L Y S E M Y AND POSSESSION IN L O N G G U ( S O L O M O N ISLANDS)

D E B O R A H H I L L and C L I F F G O D D A R D

Lexical exponems of the proposed semantic primitives ABOVE, UNDER, INSIDE and ON THE SIDE are identified in Longgu (Solomon Islands). It is argued that the first three of these exponents are polysemous between a semantically primitive relational sense and a secondary topological sense. A number of issues relating to the morphosyntax of the exponents a r e discussed, including their status as 'local nouns', the significance of the fact that their basic syntactic frame employs the same system of person-number agreement suffixes as the inalienable possession construction, and the difference between this basic frame and a rarer 'associative construction'. There is also a brief discussion of the status of the hypothetical primitive 'ON' in Longgu. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

Introduction

Longgu is an Oceanic language spoken on the island of Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands) by around 1500 people ~. It belongs to the Cristobal-Malaitan subgroup of Southeast Solomonic languages (Lichtenberk, 1988). The paper identifies lexical exponents in Longgu of the proposed semantic primitives ABOVE, UNDER, INSIDE and ON THE SIDE and discusses issues relating to their morphosyntactic properties. There is also a brief discussion of the problematical status of the hypothetical primitive 'ON' in Longgu.

Syntactically, exponents of the proposed primitives function as nouns in the language, belong- ing to a wider class of locational nouns that can be distinguished on language-internal grounds. In their normal syntactic frames, the Longgu primitives are associated with the same possessive morphology as used with part-whole relations and kinship terms. Why should this be so? A partial answer is proposed based on the fact that many locational nouns, including most of the proposed exponents of the primitives, are polysemous in that they may designate either a 'location' or an 'entity'.

Also discussed is the meaning of a second, 'associative' construction, which is favoured if the spatial arrangement being described has a weak or unusual 'figure-ground' relationship.

Background: possessive constructions in Longgu

The Longgu primitives which we will focus on are nominal in character, and share a distinctive type of 'possessive morphology' with part-whole relations and kinship terms. This necessitates some background on Longgu possessive constructions. There are two possessive constructions in Longgu, which we will term 'alienable' and 'inalienable'. In the alienable construction the possessed noun is bare and followed directly by the possessor noun-phrase, e.g. iola ngaia mwanene 'this man's canoe', iola nau 'my canoe'. Notice that independent pronouns are found in this construction.

Correspondence relating to this paper may be directed to Dr Deborah Hill, Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (E-mail: [email protected]).

263

264 DEBORAH HILL and CLIFF GODDARD

In the inalienable construction, the possessed noun is followed by a possessive person- number suffix. No independent pronoun is possible, e.g. gale-gu 'my child', gale-miurua 'your(dl.) child'. If the possessor is a full noun phrase, it follows. In example (1), for instance, the head noun (tatala 'footprint') bears a possessive suffix -na 3sg which cross-references the person-number of the possessor NP mwela-ne 'this child'.

(1) E se bweina ta 'a tatala-na mwela-ne. 3SG NEG big INTENS footprint-3SG child-DEIC It isn't really big, this child's footprint.

The person-number markers distinguish three persons (lst, 2nd and 3rd) and four numbers (singular, dual, paucal and plural). First person non-singulars also distinguish inclusive and exclusive.

A comparable distinction between two types of possessive construction (also called direct and indirect", cf. Lichtenberk, 1985) is found in many Oceanic languages. Over the years, linguists have moved from the view that the distribution of the two types of construction is largely arbitrary (somewhat like a gender system) to the view that it is partly, but not entirely, semantically based (see the discussion in Pawley and Sayaba, 1990). The fact that in most languages there are a number of words that can head either type of construction certainly argues for a semantic basis in relation to certain words. For example, in Longgu the noun gale refers to human offspring or child when it heads an inalienable possessive construction (gale-gu 'my child') and to animal offspring when it heads an alienable possessive construction (gale ngaia usui 'the dog's puppy, offspring').

Aside from the 'local nouns' (see below), nouns which may form the head of an inalienable possessive construction can be classified as follows: (a) certain kin terms, e.g. burunga-na 'his/her spouse', vavune-na 'his/her cross-sex sibling'; (b) nouns which express the relationship between a whole and its parts, including body part relationships, e.g. bou-na 'his/her head', tina-na 'ai 'tree trunk'; (c) certain nouns referring to personal possessions, e.g. vuli-na 'his/her bed'; (d) nouns whose referents are inherently connected to a person, such as a person's name, shadow, ancestors, e.g. zata-na 'his/her name, and the noun ve 'ete- 'self', e.g. ve 'ete-na 'him/herself'.

It can be seen that there is a broad semantic basis underlying the sets of nouns that form the head of inalienable possessive constructions. The inalienable possessive construction is used when there is an 'inherent relationship' between the possessor and the possessum, whether this is in terms of kinship, body-parts, or possessions. This notion receives support from the fact that personal items employ the inalienable construction when they are worn or occupied, but the alienable construction when they are not, e.g. ivi-na 'his/her clothes (that he/she is wearing)', but ivi ngaia 'his/her clothes (that he/she is not wearing)'. Similarly, body-part terms usually occur in the inalienable construction, but when they are dismembered they can occur in the alienable constructions, e.g. kakasa ngaia boo 'the pig's rib (that has been butchered)'.

The alienable construction typically expresses a relationship between the possessor and possessum whereby the relationship can be terminated or the possession transferred to another person (e.g. tuapasa ngaia 'his spear', ei ngaia 'his/her basket', kabokabo ngaia 'his/her taro'). Typical nouns found in the alienable construction are common nouns denoting animals, foods, personal items, and places to which one may belong (e.g. a village). As has already been pointed out, however, there are exceptions. For example, in Longgu, one finds that some

SPATIAL TERMS IN LONGGU 265

kinship terms--indeed the most culturally important relationships--employ the alienable construction, not the inalienable construction as might be expected: tia ngaia 'his/her mother', mama ngaia 'his/her father/son', vua ngaia 'his/her grandparent/grandchild', sa'i ngaia

'his/her maternal uncle, sister's child'.

Spatial primitives and polysemy The main words expressing spatial relations in Longgu, which we refer to as 'local nouns',

are given below. We will argue that the first four (i.e. those in Group A) are the Longgu exponents for INSIDE, ABOVE, BELOW, and oN THE SIDE, respectively, though the situation is complicated by the fact that the words marked with an _t in Table 1 are polysemous, as shown 3.

Note that two of these expressions also have temporal, as well as spatial, meanings: na 'ova-

can mean 'before' (as well as 'in front of'), and buri-can mean 'after' (as well as 'behind'). Two forms contain a nominaliser -va, indicating that they derive historically from verbs: na-'ova- ' in front, the front' from the v e r b 4 na'o ' to face' and orova- 'under, underneath, beneath' from oro ' to bend'.

Grammarians of Oceanic languages treat such spatial terms as nouns rather than adpositions because they have certain morphosyntactic characteristics of nouns. As mentioned above, a local noun typically appears as the head of an inalienable possessive construction, that is, bearing a 'possessive' person-number suffix; for example, buri-mu 'behind you' , gege-gu 'next to me' , vavo-gaolu 'above us (few)', or na'ova-da 'in front of them'. Note, however, that if the relatum is a (non-pronominal) NP, the suffix does not agree in number with the relatum, as happens in the case of inalienable possession; instead, the 3sg marker -na is used in all cases. Longgu local nouns may also function as object of a preposition, e.g. tana vavo-na 'at/on the top of it', vu ubu-na luma 'into ( = to inside) the house'.

We want to argue in this section that most of the local nouns exhibit a regular polysemy (Apresjan, 1974) between two meanings which can be called the 'locational' sense and the 'entity' sense or, alternatively, the 'relational' vs. the 'topological' meaning. For example, we claim that orova- has two meanings: (a) 'under' (the 'locational' or relational meaning), and (b) 'the underneath' (the 'entity' or topological meaning).

To begin with, a few words on the NSM approach to polysemy are in order. NSM theory adopts the traditional 'definitional' view of polysemy (cf. Geeraerts, 1994). An expression has a single meaning if it is possible to formulate a single translatable reductive paraphrase explication which is predictive of the full range of distribution. An expression is polysemous if this is not possible, and two (or more) distinct explications are required (cf. Wierzbicka, 1996: 242-44, 270-74).

Applying this reasoning to the local nouns leads to the conclusion that they are polysemous, because no single translatable paraphrase can be found which can cover both the relational and the topological uses.

Table 1. Local nouns in Longgu (_t = polysemous)

Group A:

Group B:

t_ubu- ' inside', 'the inside' t_vavo- 'above', 'the top' t_orova- 'under ' , 'the underneath"

aba- 'on the side' t_na 'ova- ' in front', 'the front' ~buri- 'behind', 'the back'

gege- 'next to' levua- "between'


Furthermore, the relational meanings are semantically prior because it is possible to paraphrase the topological ('entity') meanings in terms of the relational ('locational') meanings, but not vice versa. For example, if we assume that the primary meaning of orova-na Yis 'under Y', then we can paraphrase the 'entity' meaning of orova-na Yas 'a part of Y, this part is under the other parts'. The 'entity' meanings of the other polysemous local nouns can also be explicated in terms of the relational meanings:

ubu-na Y 'the inside of Y' = a part of Y, this part is inside Y vavo-na Y 'the top of Y' = a part of Y, this part is above the other parts of Y orova-na Y 'the underneath of Y' = a part of Y, this part is under the other parts na 'ova-Y 'the front of Y' = a part of Y, this part is in front of the other parts buri-na Y 'the back of Y' = a part of Y, this part is behind the other parts

It is not possible to construct plausible paraphrases on the opposite assumption (i.e. that the 'entity' meaning is basic). Readers who are unconvinced of this are invited to give it a try. Of course, a skeptic may still insist that there is a single general meaning but that this meaning cannot be stated in most languages, including English. But such an assertion is essentially untestable, and incompatible with the assumptions of the NSM framework. In the NSM framework, any hypothesis about meaning must be statable as a translatable reductive paraphrase.

The paraphrase procedure just illustrated may also help explain why the local nouns gege-

'next to' and levua- 'in between', are apparently not polysemous, i.e. why they lack 'entity' readings. A hypothetical 'entity' meaning based on gege- 'next to' ('a part of Y, this part is next to the other parts of Y') would be near-nonsensical. A hypothetical meaning based on levua- 'in between' is conceivable ('a part of Y, this part is in-between the other parts'), but such a meaning would not be nearly as useful as the other 'entity' meanings: after all, many things have 'inside parts', 'top parts', 'bottom parts', 'front parts' and 'back parts', but not many things have 'in-between parts'. The situation is different with uba ON THE SIDE. A meaning like 'a part of Y, this part is on one side of Y' would be quite servicable, and we know that in many languages (including English) the exponent of ON THE SXDE is indeed polysemous in exactly this way. Perhaps the explanation in the case of Longgu is connected with the fact that Longgu has a number of specialised words for 'entity' sense of 'side', such as ru 'uru 'u 'side of a house', kikisi 'side of a person's body', kabakaba 'side of a river, bank of a river'.

In any case, having established that the majority of the Longgu local nouns are polysemous between a basic relational sense and a secondary topological sense, we can identify the basic senses of the Group A local nouns as the Longgu exponents of proposed semantic primitives: ubu- INSIDE, IJavo- ABOVE, orova- UNDER, and aba- ON THE SIDE. Examples of canonical contexts follow:

(2) Asi ubu-na kuki-i.

salt inside-3sG pot-SG The salt (is) inside the pot.

(3) Madama-i vavo-na maramana-i.

moon-sG above-3sG earth-sG The moon (is) above the earth.

(4) lola-i orova-na luma-i.

canoe-sG under-3sG house-sG The canoe (is) under the house.


(5a) E obwa-ta'ini-a geni aba-na maa ni zuda-i.

3SG hide-TRS-3SG woman on the side-3sG thing ASS sit-SG He is hiding from the woman on the (other) the side of the chair.

(5b) E aba mai/hou..

3SG on the side hither/thither It (is) on the side nearest me/furthest from me

This is not to say that all semantic issues about these words have been resolved. In a later section, we turn to the fact that vavo- ABOVE overlaps in its range of use with English 'on'. Before this, however, we want to mount a further, syntactic argument for the polysemy of the local nouns.

Place nouns, local nouns and prepositions

The Longgu local nouns are a subset of a larger class which (Hill, 1992) terms 'place nouns'. Semantically, these words have meanings which are inherently locational, including names of places, e.g. Honiara, culturally salient places, e.g. malaba 'garden', komu 'village', luma

'house', wai 'river', asi 'sea', and directionals, e.g. langi 'up', vu 'a 'down', a/a 'a 'east', toli

'west', asi 'seawards', longa 'towards the bush'; see Hill (1997a, b) for detailed discussion of directionals. Grammatically, place nouns differ from other nouns in several ways. The main difference we want to focus on here is that only place nouns may function as the object of a 'simple preposition', where by 'simple preposition' is meant a preposition which is both morphologically simple and which can combine directly with a noun as prepositional object. Like other Oceanic languages, Longgu has very few simple prepositions, and in particular, only two in the spatial domain: a general locative i 'at' and an allative vu 'to, towards '5. Only place nouns can appear as the prepositional objects of a simple preposition, as in (6) and (7).

(6) Mwane e la vu komu/Honiara.

man 3SG go to village/place name The man went to (his) viUage/Honiara.

(7) E la vu asi.

3SG go to sea He/she went towards the sea/to the sea.

Other nouns cannot combine directly with a simple preposition. Instead they must be first be combined with the complex nominal preposition ta-na 'be at'. This consists of a bound morpheme ta- and a 3sg possessive suffix -na (which is used regardless of the number category of the noun). For example, in (8) the goal Peter combines with tana to form a nominal prepositional phrase, and this in turn functions as the object of vu ' to'.

(8) La vu ta-na Peter.

go to LOC-3SG NAME Go to Peter.

Note that a noun like komu 'village' only occurs with the simple preposition when it refers to the home village of the subject. If not, as in (9), the complex construction with tana is required.


(9) M-ara la vu ta-na tabalu komu-gi-na. CONJ-3PL go to LOC-3SG some vilIage-PL-DEIC And they went to some (other) villages.

Hill (1997b) has argued that place nouns designating culturally important locations, such as komu 'village', malaba 'garden', and asi 'sea', exhibit a similar kind of regular polysemy as proposed above for local nouns--'place as location' vs. 'place as entity' (cf. Lyons, 1977; Wilkins, 1988). The 'place as location' meaning is associated with the same morphosyntactic behaviour as exhibited by the directional terms, including the capacity to combine directly with a simple preposition, and also an inability to combine with quantifiers and deictic modifiers (just as place names cannot combine with these elements). The 'place as entity' meaning, on the other hand, calls for the construction with the nominal preposition tana, and is compatible with quantifiers and modifiers.

The distinction is roughly comparable to that found with the English word 'home'. When home acts as a 'location' it needs no determiner, e.g. 'He is at home', and it has the special privilege of combining with motional verbs directly, that is, without the need for a preposition, e.g. 'He went home, She took it home'. When 'home' acts as an 'entity' however, it has the same grammatical behaviour as any other common noun, e.g. 'They have two homes', 'He took it to John's home'. In Longgu, however, the comparable distinction is found with a larger set of culturally important locational words.

Hill (1997b) did not deal with the local nouns, but in support for the contention that the majority of local nouns are polysemous we would now adduce the fact that these local nouns exhibit the same capacity to occur in both simple and complex prepositional constructions as do words like komu 'village', malaba 'garden', and asi 'sea'. For example, buri- can occur with the simple preposition vu 'to' as in (10), where we contend that buri- has the 'locational' meaning 'behind'. Or it can occur in the complex construction with tana, as in (11), where we contend it has the 'entity' meaning 'the back of' (i.e. the part behind the other parts).

(lO) Mwela-i e la vu buri-na luma-i. child-sG 3SG go tO behind-3sG house-sG The child went (to) behind the house.

(11) Mwela-i e la vu ta-na buri-na luma-i.

child-sG 3SG go to LOC-3SG behind-3sG house-sG The child went to the back of the house.

The same difference can be seen in the contrast between (12) and (13). In the first of these examples, buri-na is functioning in its relational ('locational') meaning. In the second, where it is headed by the nominal preposition tana, it has the topological ('entity') meaning.

(12) Mwela-i buri-na luma-i. child-sG behind-3sG house-sG The child is behind the house.

(13) Mwela-i ta-na buri-na luma-i. child-sG LOC-3SG back-3sG house-sG The child is at the back of the house.


'Above ' vs. ' on ' in Longgu

We are now in a position to tackle the question of whether there is an equivalent in Longgu to the English preposition on, in the sense of 'contact' (e.g. the vase is on the table, the ant is on the wall). This meaning has been tentatively proposed as an additional spatial primitive in Wierzbicka (1996: 59), though its viability has been questioned by Tong et al. (this volume) in relation to Cantonese. In this section we will see that the Longgu evidence also apparently weighs against the proposition that there is a semantic primitive 'ON' with the same meaning as English on (we use inverted commas to indicate the hypothetical status of this proposed primitive.)

The most common Longgu expressions corresponding to sentences like 'The pot is on the table' do not contain any distinctive element corresponding to on. Rather, the proposed exponent for AaOVE, namely vavo-, is used.

(14) Kuki vavo-na tevoloi.

pot above-3s6 table The pot is on (= above) the table.

It is possible to disambiguate 'above' from 'on' in such situations, but to do so one must employ the nominal preposition tana, as below. (Note, however, that this is an unusual construction.)

(15) Kuki ta-na vavo-na tevoloi,

pot LOC-3SG above-3sG table,

bwala vavo-na tevoloi.

not above-3s6 table The pot is on the table, not above the table.

Can we then regard the combination of tana + vavo-na as an adequate exponent of the 'ON of contact'? The answer must be in the negative, for two interconnected reasons. Firstly, we have just seen that when tana combines with a local noun, the local noun has the 'place as entity' meaning. In the case of vavo-na this meaning is 'the top (part) of it'. Thus, a literal rendition of the sentence (16) above would be something like 'the pot is at the top of the table' (or in more idiomatic English 'the pot is on top of the table').

Secondly, as one might expect from this, the combination tana + vavo-na does not have the same range of use as English on. In particular it does not designate mere 'contact'. It can only be used when the thing being located is both above and in contact with something else. Expressions like 'the ants (are) on the wall' and 'the plaster (is) on my knee', for example, cannot employ vavo-. In both these cases, the nominal preposition tana 'be at' is used alone.

(16) Lolo-gi ta-na (*vavo-na) opa-i.

ant-PL LOC-3SG above-3sG walI-sG Ants (are) on the wall.

This being the case, one can argue that the routine use of vavo- in 'on-top-of situations' is an extended use of the basic meaning of vavo-as ABOVE. It is simply unspecified (i.e. it remains vague) whether or not contact is involved (though of course, in practice, the nature of the referents makes it pretty clear what the likely situation is--we know that tables are for putting things on and that pots can't fly!). It is therefore not necessary to posit polysemy to cover the range of application of vavo-.


One possibility which cannot be rejected at this stage is that ta- itself might furnish an exponent of a possible primitive 'ON', though this seems unlikely as it is an extremely versatile element (also being used to express locational and comitative meanings, e.g. tana luma 'at the house', ta-gu 'with me'). For the time being, the most we can say is that the tana + vavo- locution does not provide an exponent for 'or~' (in the sense of 'contact').

Local nouns in the associative construction

In addition to the possessive construction described above, a second construction--which we will term the 'associative construction'--is also possible with local nouns, although it is much less frequent. It can be illustrated with examples (17) and (18) below. Notice that there is no possessive suffix on the local noun (unlike an inalienable possessive construction), and that an 'associative' morpheme ni intervenes before the relatum expression (unlike an alienable possessive construction).

(17) lola-i orova ni luma-i.

canoe-sG under ASS house-sc The canoe is somewhere under the house.

(18) Manu-i e Iovo vavo ni luma-i. bird-sG 3SG fly above ASS house-sG The bird is flying above the house.

Before running through a range of contexts in which the associative (or ni) construction is found with local nouns, it should be noted that it is also found with common nouns. A direct contrast between a possessive and associative construction is given in (19) and (20). Basically, one can say that a possessive construction implies a specific, referential 'possessor', whereas the 'possessor' in an associative construction is merely generic. Thus, in (19) we understand that a specific, real woman was involved. However, in (20) the expression refers to a voice of a certain type: female as opposed to male.

(19) Wala-na geni.

voice-3SG woman The woman's voice.

(20) Wala ni geni. voice ASS woman The woman's voice.

Broadly speaking, we can say that when the ni construction is used with local nouns it also indicates a reduced degree of 'specificity' or 'determinacy' in the locational relationship. Five different contexts of use may be distinguished. First, the ni construction is invariably used when asking a question containing a local noun; for example:

(21a) Tai hou ubu ni what thither in ASS What is in the pot?

(2 lb) Raisi ubu ni kuki.

rice in ASS pot IS there rice in the pot?

kuki. pot


It is not possible to rephrase such questions using the possessive construction; that is, sentences like *Tai hou ubu-na kuki ? are ungrammatical.

Second, the ni construction tends to be used when the speaker cannot see the object being located (the 'f igure') . For example, in answer to the question I eve hakalovoi? 'Where is the plane?' (22a) implies that the speaker can see the plane in the cloud, whereas (22b) implies that he or she cannot.

(22a) Ubu-na parako-i. in-3s6 cloud-s6 Inside the cloud (I can see it).

(22b) Ubu ni parako-i. in ASS cloud-sG Somewhere in the cloud (I can' t see it).

Similarly, if the speaker is reporting on the location of a stick, (23a) implies that he or she speaker can see the stick (poking up out of the mud), whereas (23b) implies that the stick is out of sight.

(23a) Ubu-na lupilupi. inside-3sG mud (It 's) the mud (I can see it).

(23b) Ubu ni lupilupi. in ASS mud (It 's) in the mud somewhere (I can ' t see it).

The 'visibility factor ' is the explanation most often volunteered by Longgu consultants if they are asked outright for an explanation, and it can also be noted that it would appear to apply to most question situations also; why ask, after all, if you can see for yourself?. However , if we continue to list out the situations in which the ni construction can be used, we see that there are some which do not depend directly on visibility.

Third, a ni construction can be used to indicate a degree of 'haziness ' about the location which may or may not be tracable to a lack of visibility. For example, (24) does not necessarily imply that the speaker cannot see the child. The ni construction could just convey a 'hedge ' as to whether gege 'next to ' is quite the appropriate expression to use.

(24) Mwela-i gege ni 'ai. child-sG next to ASS tree The child is more or less next to the tree.

Fourth, a ni construction is used when there is more than one location involved. In this case, there need not be any particular uncertainty about the location. For example, (25) can be used even if the speaker is quite sure that the canoes are under the houses.

(25) Iola-gi orova ni luma-gi. canoe-pL under ASS house-PL The canoes are under the houses.


(26) Ivi-gi vavo ni vau-gi. cloth-at above ASS stone-Pt (The) clothes (are)(hanging) above the stones

The sole exception concerns the spatial noun levua- 'between'. The 'between-relationship' of course requires two reference points, so perhaps it is not surprising that it employs the possessive construction even though the 'ground' is marked as plural, as in (27).

(27) Levua-na rua 'ai-gi. between-3sG two stick-PL Between two sticks.

As a special case of this use of the ni construction there are examples like those in (28), where ubu INSIOE is used with a plural 'ground' expression, approximating the meaning of English 'among' or 'amongst'.

(28a) Te mwane ta'a-i ubu ni taotaova ni 'inoni-gi. one man bad-sG in ASS group ASS person-PL One bad man among the group of people.

(28b) Rua lodo niu-gi ubu ni vugi-gi. two fruit coconut-aL in ASS banana-pL Two coconuts amongst the bananas.

Fifth, the ni construction is favoured when the 'f igure-ground' relationship is weak or odd for various reasons. We can illustrate by a comparison of the two situations below. In the case of (29), which uses the possessive construction, one can say that the smoke and the house readily form a single perceptual figure-ground unit. The smoke issues from the house, and in a sense, 'belongs with' the house. In the case of (30), however, with the ni construction, house and bird are more likely to be seen as separate. There is no inherent connection between them and their spatial relationship is extremely transitory.

(29) Zasu-i vavo-na luma-i. smoke-sG above-3sG house Smoke is above the house.

(30) Manu-i e lovo vavo ni luma-i. bird-sG 3SG fly above ASS house-sG The bird is flying above the house.

The influence of an odd figure-ground relationship may be shown by comparison of the next two examples. A sentence like 'The child is in front of the house' will be translated using the normal possessive construction, as in (31), whereas the unusual converse configuration ( 'The house is behind the child') will normally receive the associative construction, as in (32).

(31) Mwela-i na'ova-na luma-i. child-sG in front of-3SG house The child is in front of the house.

(32) Luma-i buri ni mwela-i. house-sG behind ASS house-sG The house is behind the boy.


To sum up, an associative (or ni) construction will be used in preference to the more common possessive construction (i) in questions, (ii) if the speaker cannot see the situation being described, (iii) if the relationship is regarded as approximate, (iv) if multiple 'ground' locations are involved, or (v) if there is a weak and/or unusual figure-ground relationship. A given sentence may be compatible with more than one of possibilities (ii)-(v).

From the perspective of cognitive semantics, it can be argued that all five situations can be regarded as falling under the last factor listed--namely, a weak or unusual figure-ground relationship. That is, one can argue that situations which are unknown (as in questions), out of sight, approximate, or which involve multiple locations all imply a disruption of the normal or canonical figure-ground relationship (cf. Hill, 1993). For the purposes of the present paper, however, such a generalisation cannot be regarded as fully satisfactory. Within the NSM framework, generalisations about meaning must be statable in the form of simple paraphrases in natural language. The question therefore becomes: Is it possible to formulate a meaning component which could plausibly be involved in all five contexts in which the associative construction is found?

Obviously, such a component must involve the speaker's degree of awareness of or confidence in the locational relationship being described. Consider the explication below for the associative (ni) construction with local nouns, illustrated with buri 'behind'.

A local-noun (e.g. buri) ni B= I don't know if one can say about A: A is local-noun (e.g. buri) this other thing (B) I think one can say something like this

According to this, in using the ni construction the speaker distances him or herself from saying that A and B are in a canonical 'A-behind-B relationship', while at the same time expressing the view that 'one can say something like this'. As well, the explication has a topicality component: the statement is 'about A'. Such an account would explain why the ni construction is favoured if the speaker cannot see the whole situation or is unsure for other reasons whether the real situation exactly matches the canonical one. It would also explain why the ni construction is used with questions involving local nouns. If someone asks 'Is the child behind the house', for example, there is obviously a presupposition that this might be the case; otherwise, the question would be 'Where is the child?'. (Of course, any question would also contain additional components, such as 'I want to know something; I want you to say something because of this'.)

As for the preference for ni construction when there are multiple 'ground locations', that too is consistent with the proposed explication. The very fact that there are multiple locations involved means the speaker is not issuing a token of the 'this thing is behind this other thing' type. The topicality component of the explication could help explain why the ni construction is favoured for meanings like 'The house is behind the child'. This is not the sort of thing one would normally say 'about' a house: rather, we would normally expect the topic position to be occupied by the child.

Review: the morphology of spatial relations in Longgu

We have seen that the Longgu exponents of ABOVE vavo-, UNDER orova-, INSIDE ubu- and ON THE SIDE aba- are nominal in character, that the usual morphosyntactic construction in which they are found resembles that used with inalienable possession, and that the first three of them


exhibit regular polysemy between their basic relational meaning and an 'entity' meaning. How do these facts fit together to form a coherent picture (if at all)?

To begin with, one might like to observe that the inalienable possession morphosyntax of the Longgu words is unsurprising in relation to their 'entity' meanings. After all, 'the top of' something is an inalienable part of that thing (and similarly for the 'the inside of' something, and so on). Indeed, from morphosyntax alone one would be tempted to assume that the 'entity' meanings must be primary. Most probably the 'entity' meanings are diachronically prior also. But from a synchronic semantic point of view, such an assumption is untenable because, as we have seen, the 'entity' meanings are decomposable in terms of the purely relational meanings (e.g. 'the top of Y' = 'a part of Y, this part is above the other parts'), but not vice versa. In other words, we see a clash between the implications of the morphosyntax on the one hand, and synchronic semantic analysis, on the other. The same would apply in many other Oceanic languages 6.

How could the present-day Longgu situation have arisen? One possibility is that the etymological ancestors of the present-day local nouns had concrete, fully noun-like meanings. Bowden (1992) has shown that this is the case for various other Oceanic languages. Though no relevant historical reconstruction has been done on Longgu, there is some internal evidence in relation to orova 'under' and na 'ova 'in front of', since etymologically these forms are almost certainly oro + va 'to bend + nominaliser' and n a ' o + va 'to face + nominaliser', respectively. It is quite plausible therefore at an earlier stage of Longgu orova may have meant 'buttocks' (or something similar) and n a ' o v a may have meant 'face' (or something similar). If the ancestors of the present-day local nouns once had body-part meanings, the use of the inalienable possession morphology would once have been directly semantically motivated.

It may be that the ancestor form of orova began with the body-part meaning 'buttocks', then acquired the more general topological meaning 'bottom (part)', and later still the additional relational meaning 'under' (eventually displacing an earlier exponent of this notion). But for the moment, this is pure speculation. The historical route to the present-day Longgu situation is a matter for further research. It is appealing to think, however, that the 'entity' meanings of ABOVE vavo- , UNDER orova- , INSIDE ubu- may be historically prior to their present-day relational meanings, because this would provide an additional reason why the inalienable possession morphology has 'stuck'.

NOTES

The data for this paper comes from earlier work supported by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. Special thanks are also due to the late Charles Besa for his time and interest over a number of years, and in particular for his many discussions about Longgu spatial terminology.

2 We will not discuss the Longgu exponents of the other two proposed spatial primitives, harehare NEAR and tau FAR, except to say that they are verbs in Longgu; for a more comprehensive picture of spatial terminology in Longgu, see Hill (1996). Lichtenberk (1985) has shown that many Oceanic languages distinguish between direct possession, where an affix is directly attached to the noun, and indirect possession, where there is an intermediary morpheme between the head noun and the affix or pronoun. These two construction types usually correspond to inalienable and alienable constructions, respectively. In Longgu, however, the alienable possessive consists simply of a head noun followed by an independent pronoun, with no intermediary morpheme, thus making the terms direct and indirect less than suitable. More appropriate terms for the Longgu possessive constructions are 'direct' and 'direct without cross- referencing' (Lichtenberk, personal communication), but for the purposes of this paper we have kept to the less cumbersome, but still semantically misleading, terms 'inalienable' and 'alienable'. There is also a Longgu noun na 'o referring to the face of an animal (but not of a person) but the presence of the nominaliser indicates that the local noun na 'ova- 'in front, the front' is not derived from this form, but from a verb (cf. the reciprocal form vaina 'ovi 'to face each other').

SPATIAL TERMS 1N LONGGU 275

There is a single simple temporal preposition mi 'until', which appears to be derived historically from the conjunction ma 'and' and the general locative i.

6 A similar clash can be found in various African languages in which it can be shown that present-day exponents of semantic primitives have arisen from body-part terms. For example, Ameka (1994) states that words meaning 'back' and 'buttocks', respectively, are the etymological ancestors of the current exponents of A~EIt and UNDER in Ewe. Nevertheless, as he observes: 'although there is a semantic and conceptual link between their historical sources and these primitive notions, one cannot define these primitive terms through the body-part terms'.

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delivered to Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis.

spatial terms, polysemy and possession in longgu (solomon islands)

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