A Grammar of Atong [Doctoral Dissertation]
Jonkheer Egbert Joost Seino Clifford Kocq van Breugel aka Seino van BreugelA thesis submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia
enclitics. There are no prefixes or proclitics. Several phrasal enclitics can also function as clausal enclitics. Constituent order in a clause is pragmatically determined. Atong makes extensive use of zero anaphora, i.e. referents that are retrievable from the context (co-textual as well as real-world context) are usually omitted; no NP has to be obligatorily expressed in any clause. Semantic role marking of NPs is determined by different pragmatic and lexical factors. Clauses with multiple unmarked NPs are common and their semantic role has to be inferred from the context. Boundaries between word classes in Atong can be fuzzy, as not only verbs, but also nouns and members of several other word classes can function as predicate head.