Person markers in Gutob

Abstract

Abstract Gutob is notorious for its variable placement of agreement markers. Gutob has independent pronouns and, for first and second persons, postverbal pronominal clitics which function as subject agreement markers. The placement of the pronominal clitics is quite complex, and has not been studied extensively. Pronominal clitics cannot only attach to verbs, but also to certain adverbs preceding the predicate. Furthermore, the placement of pronominal clitics within the verb complex varies considerably between different auxiliary constructions. The aim of this article is to present a new analysis of person markers in Gutob. Firstly, a discussion of the placement of person markers in sentences with different types of predicates will be given. Secondly, person markers at different positions will be compared on the basis of co-occurrence possibilities and morphosyntactic criteria. It will be argued that person markers in sentence-initial and postverbal position fall into two separate categories: independent pronouns and agreement markers. However, preverbal person markers cannot be assigned to either category, as they share features of both.