Selected topics in the phonology and morphosyntaxof Laboya : A field study

Abstract: The present study investigates selected topics in the phonology and morpho-syntax of Laboya, a largely undescribed Austronesian language of Sumba island in eastern Indonesia. The study was carried out during nine weeks of field work. The language data is comprised by collected questionnaires and free narratives. The results of the study show that Laboya is a head-marking language, in which grammatical relations are encoded by clitics hosted by the verb. There are two sets of pronominal clitics indexing the subject and object arguments of verbs, as well as the possessors of noun phrases. Definiteness is important for the choice of clitics indexing the verb arguments. In addition, there are several highly frequent clitical elements with various functions. The patterns of their co-occurrence and interaction are accounted for. Negation demonstrates different patterns for main, subordinate and imperative clauses.Relative clauses are post-nominal and introduced by two distinct proclitics for subjective and objective relative clauses respectively. Noun phrases of all argument types are accessible for relativization.The phonology of Laboya is rather typical for Sumbanese languages, having a five vowel system and a contrastive vowel length. There are around twenty consonants, three of which are implosives. The phonology of Laboya differs somewhat from neighbouring languages by the de-prenasalization of formerly pre-nasalized voiced plosives, and by the frequent deletion of word-final vowels /i/ and /u/.