Abstract
Abstract Following Evans et al. (2018a, 2018b), I use “engagement” to refer to grammatical encoding of the relative accessibility of an entity or state of affairs to the speaker and addressee. I refer to what is thereby encoded as the “engagement function”. How neatly does that function map on to grammatical categories of particular languages? Here I address that question with respect to the Papuan language Ku Waru, focusing on spatial and epistemic demonstratives, and definiteness and indefinite marking. I show that forms within each of those word/morpheme classes do serve engagement functions, but in cross-cutting and partial ways. I show how the engagement function is also achieved through poetic parallelism, prosody, gaze direction and other aspects of bodily comportment. In the examples considered, the engagement function is realised through interaction between those extra-linguistic features and the grammatical ones. The main thing that is added by grammatical engagement marking is an explicit signalling of the intersubjective accord that has been achieved on other bases. I hypothesize that that is true of engagement overall, and conclude by suggesting some ways to test that hypothesis and to advance the understanding of engagement more generally.
Highlights
The publication of Evans, Bergqvist and San Roque’s (2018a, 2018b) study of what they call engagement is a landmark event, for the ways in which it advances the comparative study of linguistic aspects of one the most distinctive of human capacities: intersubjectivity
How neatly does that function map on to grammatical categories of particular languages? Here I address that question with respect to the Papuan language Ku Waru, focusing on spatial and epistemic demonstratives, and definiteness and indefinite marking
In my view one of the most important questions raised by EBS’s work is, how neatly does the engagement function map on to grammatical categories of particular languages? Their opening discussion of Andoke auxiliaries is impressive for the extent to which the categories they signal do seem to show such a mapping, but EBS (2018a:119) acknowledge that engagement “borders on many more familiar linguistic categories” and “much of the time actual languages run some of these dimensions together”
Summary
The publication of Evans, Bergqvist and San Roque’s (2018a, 2018b) study of what they call engagement is a landmark event, for the ways in which it advances the comparative study of linguistic aspects of one the most distinctive of human capacities: intersubjectivity. Ku Waru is spoken in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea It belongs to the Trans-New Guinea family of Papuan languages, and, more immediately, to a dialect continuum within the Chimbu-Wahgi branch of that family that includes what Ethnologue classifies as four distinct languages: Melpa, Mbo-Ung, Imbonggu, and Umbu-Ungu. I will show that, of all the formal devices listed above, it is definite and indefinite marking that map most closely onto the engagement function, suggesting that that area of grammar in general may be an especially fertile field for the exploration of engagement, not just in “in article systems in western European languages” (EBS 2018a:117), and in the many languages around the world in which categories of definiteness and/or indefiniteness are attested. Before introducing the relevant grammatical devices in Ku Waru I will first provide some background details concerning its syntax
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