c


 
 


Crowley, T. (1998). An Erromangan (Sye) grammar. 3
 
 
   
 x
19 ² x1.


Ôon-verbal clauses are those which consist of a nominal topic and a following non-verbal comment.
The topic in such constructions can be either a pronoun or a noun, as illustrated by the following, in which
the topic and comment are each surrounded by square brackets

^  ^
 

 

xSG IÔ EF woman good
'You are a good woman.'

^



   ^ 


body POSS-xSG kava
'Your body is the kava.'

When the topic is a specific unmodified noun, it is more common for it to be followed in a topic-
comment construction by the topic marker  demonstrative , which indicates that the noun phrase
represents given information, with the new information following in the comment, for example

^

  ^





devil TOPIC devil female
'The devil was a she-devil.'

When the topic is a generic noun, it is not followed by the topic marker, and there is usually instead
an independent third person pronoun between the topic and the comment, as in the following

^
    ^
       



fermented .breadfruit 3SG IÔ EF food PURP-COÔST time cyclone
'Fermented breadfruit is a food for times of cyclone.'

The comment can take a variety of forms, with the examples just cited involv? ing a range of noun
phrase comments. The comment can also be an adjective, a prepositional phrase, a demonstrative or a
possessive pronoun, for example

^3   
 
^  

PL leaf-COÔST tree many LOC road
'Many leaves of trees were on the road.'

There is one constituent which only ever appears in the comment position within a non-verbal clause,
and that is the form which has the following shapes

 after forms ending in 

 after forms ending in 


elsewhere
 These forms appear as comments after nominal or pronominal topics, and they indicate that the
referent of the topic noun phrase is being pointed at, for example

c


 

      

other.one that·s.it 3SG that·s.it
'That's the other one.' 'That's him/her'

Ôon-verbal clauses are also involved in the expression of ambient events, in which the existence of
some entity or the pertinence of some state is simply asserted with no topic expressed, and the comment
appears on its own. Thus

^       ^3    

afternoon PL-prawn only and-shellfish
'It is afternoon.' 'There were only prawns and shellfish.'

Topicless comments of this type are often used to introduce the topic of a story, for example

  


coconut and-kava
'(This story is about) the coconut and the kava.'

Ambient clauses of this type can include the normal range of additional clause level constituents that
lie outside the comment itself, such as temporal adverbs, for example

[Ôevip] ninu.
rain yesterday
'There was rain yesterday.'

A topic can also have zero realization when it has been previously mentioned in the discourse. We
therefore find the following prepositional phrase functioning as a comment to a previously mentioned noun
phrase topic referring to the powers of the kava spirit

^  


   



PURP-COÔST 3SG
PRES-MR
kill-COÔST people
'It is for killing people.'

There is no lexical verb in Sye meaning 'have' or 'possess'. This meaning can only be expressed by
presenting a possessive noun phrase in the comment slot in a topicless non-verbal clause. Thus

^ 



IÔ EF book POSS
lSG
¶I have got a book.'

Ôegation with verbal clauses is expressed by means of the prefix



. With non-verbal clauses,
however, negation is expressed by the free form negator
 (or its shortened variant
) which appears
between the topic and the comment. Thus


^
 ^

     ^
 ^
lSG ÔEG woman river there ÔEG fish
'I am not a woman.' 'The river there has no fish.'

Topicless non-verbal clauses are negated in the same way, with

 appearing before the ambient
comment. Thus

 ^       ^



ÔEG lSG ÔEG money POSS
lSG
'It was not me.' 'I've got no money.'

In fact, the negative marker

 can independently mark either topic or comment, for example

p
 ^ ^  
  ^ 
 ^  

ÔEG xSG LOC office POSS-xSG xSG ÔEG LOC office POSS-xSG
'It wasn't you in your office.' 'You were not in your office.'

When the negative marker appears before a comment that begins with the indefinite premodifier
,
the sequence of
 is generally - though not obligatorily realized irregularly as a single word

. Thus

^
       ^
  


ÔEG-IÔ EF fish ÔEG-IÔ EF FOO POSS
3PL
'There are no fish.' ¶They have no food.'

With verbs, the emphatic negative is expressed discontinuously by means of the prefix



 and
the post-object suffix !
. Emphatic negation with non-verbal clauses is expressed by adding the negative
emphatic marker 
 directly to
, which is then phonologically reduced in the same way to
. Thus,
contrast the following unmarked and emphatic negative constructions

^ 
 ^    ^ 

  ^
xSG ÔEG good xSG ÔEG-EMPH good
'You are not good.' 'You are not good at all.'

The negative marker

 can appear on its own in a clause with no overt topic or comment,
functioning as a pro-verb, referring to a negatively inflected verb. Thus

    
"     "    
xSG
RECPAST-BR
take or ÔEG xSG
RECPAST-BR
take-PERF ÔEG-COÔT
' id you take it or not?' 'Have you taken already taken it? Ôot yet.'

These sentences could be expressed fully as follows (though such forms would be rarely
encountered)

     


"
xSG
RECPAST-BR
take or xSG
RECPAST-ÔEG-BR
take
' id you take it or did you not take it?'

  "    
  

 
xSG
RECPAST-BR
take-PERF lSG
RECPAST-ÔEG-BR
take-COÔT
'Have you taken already taken it? I have not taken it yet.'

 is frequently used after the conditional subordinator  'if· in conditional constructions such
as the following where a hypothetical negative event is being contrasted with another event, as in the
following


#  

   
if ÔEG lSG
FUT-MR
stay LOC house
'If it doesn't happen, I will stay at home.'

While Sye clearly belongs typologically to the set of subject-prominent rather than topic-prominent
languages (Li and Thompson 19 ), we still find instances in the corpus of topic-comment patterns that are
structurally parallel to what we find in topic-prominent languages such as Chinese. There may be an initial
topic, with a comment consisting of an entire clause, with the topic and the comment separated by an
intonation break. Thus

#
 

lSG ÔEG money

would not normally be interpreted as 'I am not money' (though such an interpretation would be logically
possible). Rather, it would normally be interpreted with  ¶I· as the topic, about which is asserted
 

'there is no money', that is 'As for me, there is no money', that is, 'I have no money'.

The comment clause in such cases can also be a verbal clause, for example

   # 

 


  
soil LOC place here 3PL
RECRAST-ÔEG-EM-MR
plant yam
'As for the soil here, yams are not planted.'

In this case, the topic which is being addressed is the soil in this particular place, about which the
assertion is made that yams are not planted because, presumably, the soil is not of the right kind.