Frustration, culmination, and inertia in Kimaragang grammar

Abstract

The FRUSTRATIVE particle in Kimaragang marks unrealized expectations or intentions, counterfactuals, etc. Copley & Harley (2010) propose a unified account for frustratives, non-culminating accomplishments (‘I killed the snake but it didn’t die’) and the “imperfective paradox”, based on Dowty’s (1979) concept of “inertia”. I argue that this analysis makes the wrong predictions for Kimaragang. The distribution of frustratives and non-culminating accomplishments in Kimaragang reveals a number of differences not predicted by the Copley & Harley analysis. These differences in distribution reflect in part a difference in the kind of expectation that is involved. In non-culminating accomplishments, the unachieved result is specified by the meaning of the verb, whereas frustrative clauses may involve expectations that are based on cultural factors, knowledge of the world, etc. I sketch out an alternative analysis of Kimaragang frustratives which treats expectation and intention as modal concepts.

Keywords

Kimaragang, Dusunic, Austronesian, frustrative, optative, inertia, culmination, accomplishment, counterfactual

How to Cite

Kroeger, P., (2017) “Frustration, culmination, and inertia in Kimaragang grammar”, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1): 56. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.146

Download

Download PDF

653

Views

349

Downloads

1

Citations

Share

Authors

Paul Kroeger (GIAL and SIL Intl., 7500 W, Camp Wisdom Road, Dallas, Texas)

Download

Issue

Publication details

Dates

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Identifiers

Peer Review

This article has been peer reviewed.

File Checksums (MD5)

  • PDF: a60828b004ffd2e8e9fb8ad480c3bd72