著者

野瀬 昌彦

出版者

滋賀大学経済学会

雑誌

彦根論叢 (ISSN:03875989)

巻号頁・発行日

no.第401号, pp.20-33, 2014-09

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Amele is a Trans-New Guinean languagespoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea.Amele has a strict subject–object–verbword order and rich verbal and nominal morphology.Roberts (1987) has already describedthe grammar of Amele based on the Haia dialect.His description is exhaustive, but thealternations of intransitive or transitive verbshave not been explained adequately, and thereis room for further examination. Moreover, hisresearch was conducted in the 1980s, and it ispossible that Amele has undergone changes inits grammatical properties from then on. Theauthor of this paper visited an Amele-speakingarea in 2006, and then started describing itsgrammar based on the Huar dialect. The authorhad already found several differencesbetween the Haia and Huar dialects in phonology,morphology and usages of discourse.This study examined verbal transitivity (i.e.,alternations of intransitive and transitive verbs)in Amele based on interviews and questionnairesto speakers of the Huar dialect. During2012–2013, this research was conducted by usinga questionnaire of 18 verbs from Nichols etal.’s (2004) list. They claimed that the sampleof 18 verbs can be classified as transitivizing, intransitivizing,neutral, and indeterminate types.For example, English “laugh” shows the transitivityalternation, i.e., intransitive “laugh” andtransitive (causative) “make laugh.” In this case,the verb “laugh” is transitivizing. Another verbpair, “die” and “kill,” are in lexical alternation,and they are realized in verb alternation by suppletion.Such suppletion is classified as anindeterminate type. This study examines Nicholset al.’s (2004) verb list in Amele, resulting inthe discovery of semantic orientations of verbalternations in Amele.First, Amele has many indeterminate-typeverbs, and some verbs such as “die” and “kill”have lexical alternations, and other verbs areambitransitive, formally identical in both intransitiveand transitive forms. Second, Ameledoes not have an intransitivizing type, as far asthe sample 18 verbs are concerned.Finally, this study claims that Amele does notappear to have an intransitivizing orientation,and the relations between intransitive and transitiveare realized using causative verb(s),identical (ambitransitive) forms, or lexical suppletion.Conversely, this study found that thereis a partial lack or omission of verbal inflections,particularly tense forms, person, andnumber, due to the oral investigation and spokendiscourse.