Conditions on pronominal marking in Alor-Pantar languages: Complete pronominal marking dataset

The 'Conditions on pronominal marking datasets' were obtained through the use of
video stimuli designed to study to study variation in the patterns of pronominal
marking in five non-Austronesian languages of Alor and Pantar (Abui, Adang, Kamang,
Teiwa and Western Pantar) of eastern Indonesia.

We examined the varying role of conditions on grammatical relation marking (namely
animacy and volitionality) by looking at differences between members of a single
family. This enabled us to see the degree of variation permitted within closely
related languages. Conditions on argument marking are manifested in different ways.
Those languages with syntactic alignment index objects with a prefix, those which
have semantic alignment index objects and some subjects with a prefix. In 42 video
clips we systematically varied animacy and volitionality values for participants in
one and two-participant events. These clips were used in fieldwork to elicit
descriptions of the events. The data show that animacy of the object is an important
factor which favours indexation of the object on the verb in all four languages to
varying degrees. Volitionality, on the other hand, is a factor in the semantically
aligned languages only. While the presence of a prefix on the verb is semantically
motivated in many instances, marking is not directly determined by verbal or
participant semantics, and lexical factors must also play a role.

The datasets were created for the project 'Alor-Pantar languages: Origins and
theoretical impact', funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
through European Science Foundation-EuroBabel.