Subject-indexing and possessive morphology in Northwest Solomonic

Most Northwest Solomonic (NWS) languages employ possessor-indexing or former possessor-indexing morphology to index subject on verbs. Although the phenomenon of dependent-marking languages using cognate morphology to case mark possessors and subjects is well known, head marking in the form of subject agreement using possessor-indexing morphology of the kind seen in NWS is less well understood. Moreover, most instances of cognate possessor-indexing and subject-indexing morphology typically result from independent pronouns in parallel processes of grammaticalization. In NWS the subject-indexing function arose from a well-established preexisting possessor-indexing function, demonstrating a diachronic functional shift from nominal marking to verb marking. Moreover, in several NWS languages two possessor-indexing hosts encoding distinct semantic categories of possession occur in verbal constructions marking different kinds of events, raising the question of how a semantic distinction between kinds of entities can be meaningfully applied to categories of events. This article surveys functional and formal characteristics of synchronic “possessive” subject-indexing morphology across NWS, and proposes an originating nominalization construction in Proto-NWS from which the synchronic phenomena arose. It reappraises Ross's (The development of the verb phrase in the Oceanic languages of the Bougainville region, Pacific Linguistics, 1982) hypothesis on the origin of the phenomenon, and the hypothesis that two distinct clause structures are involved in the presence or absence of this morphology. It then investigates several key problems not previously addressed, including why the order of subject-indexing morphology and verb it accompanies is the reverse of the order of possessor-indexing morphology and noun in nominal constructions, and how distinct nominal categories of possession encoded by the two possessor-indexing hosts could be reinterpreted as a verbal distinction of event type.