Language Contact and Documentation: Contacto Linguistico y Documentacion

336 Ulrike Mosel
(13) a. Me=paa gono bene ta naono me pou bona.
and=tam get art piece wood and beat 4sg
‘And (he) got the stick and beat him.’
(Viv_01R.141)
b. Me Matakehoo paa pou bona bene ta naono.
and.art Blindeye tam beat 4sg art piece wood
‘And Blindeye beat him with a stick.’
(Viv_01E.117)
5.3 Resolution of complex contructions into paratactic
constructions
The changes made by the editors do not necessarily lead to more complex
structures. In a number of cases we also find the reverse process so that a
complex construction in the oral version is replaced by a less complex one.
The examples (14) and (15) illustrate the replacement of a serial verb construction
by a paratactic construction and a Tail-Head construction, respectively.
5.3.1 Serial verb construction > paratactic construction
In the oral version of (14) the predicate is formed by a serial verb construction
with two (di)transitive verbs navuhu ‘hit s. o./s.th. (with)’ and booboha ‘break
s.th. (with)’.
(14) a. me navuhu booboha bono sinivi
and hit break art canoe
‘and hit the canoe to pieces’
(Aro_02R.114)
In the edited version the serial verb construction is split up, and since the
subject of the additional clause is o sinivi ‘the canoe’, the predicate of the second
clause must be intransitive to render the meaning of navuhu booboha.
(14) b. me navuhu bono sinivi me=o sinivi paa hata va-kavara
and hit art canoe and=art canoe tam bad advr-finished
‘and hit the canoe and the canoe got completely damaged’
(Aro_02E.130)