Subject: addendum to coston 's object affixes

in his summary of object affixes ( linguist list : vol-6 - 235 . fri 17 feb 1995 ) , simon corston observes : languages with object affixes but which lack affixes indicating other grammatical relations do occur , but would appear to be uncommon . that , however , really depends on what we mean by object affixes ( and subject affixes for that matter ) . so - called subject and object affixes fall into three types : ( i ) nonreferential / nonanaphoric agreement markers ; ( ii ) ' functionally ambiguous ' agreement markers ( i . e . functioning as both nonreferential / nonanaphoric agreement markers and anaphoric / referential markers depending on the context ) ( bresnan and mchombo 1987 ) ; and ( iii ) anaphoric or referential markers . the nuclear micronesian group provides an interesting case for the foregoing distinction . for instance , in woleaian , the subject markers are independent words , whereas the object markers are suffixes . but they are both functionally ambiguous agreement markers . in kusaiean , the subject and object markers are also independent words and suffixes , respectively . but they are all referential pronouns . for more detailed discussion of the nuclear micronesian languages see my paper : ' the verb - object bonding principle : with special reference to nuclear micronesian languages ' ( see refs below ) . if the complexity in subject and object affixes ( viz . the three types mentioned above ) is disregarded , probably corston 's observation may hold . but if only anaphoric / referential subject and object markers are taken into account , it may be a different story . in fact , in the same paper i have used a small convenience sample of 40 languages to ascertain whether the verb - object bonding principle ( as proposed in tomlin 1986 : ' a transitive verb and its object form a more cohesive , unified syntactic and semantic whole than do a transitive verb and its subject ' ) is evident in the pronominal system as well : e . g . object pronouns are more tightly bonded to the verb than subject pronouns are . the upshot of this investigation is that object pronouns ( e . g . affixes ) are more tightly bonded to the verb than subject pronouns ( e . g . independent words ) . this suggests that insofar as referential / anaphoric markers are concerned , ' languages with object affixes but which lack affixes indicating other grammatical relations ' may be crosslinguistically common , rather than uncommon . refereneces bresnan j . and s . mchombo 1987 . topic , pronoun , and agreement in chichewa . language 63 : 741-782 . givon , t . 1976 . topic , pronoun , and grammatical agreement . in subject and topic , ed . by c . n . li , pp . 149-188 . new york : academic press . tomlin , r . s . 1986 . basic word order : functional principles . london : croom helm . song , j . j . 1994 . the verb - object bonding principle : with special reference to nuclear micronesian languages . oceanic linguistics 33 . 2 ( in press ) . jae jung song university of otago new zealand
