Bugenhagen, Robert D. (1990). Experiential constructions in Mangap-Mbula. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 183-215. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599441
A variety of constructions used to express experiential notions in the Austronesian language Mangap-Mbula are examined and their meanings explicated. By an “experiential situation” is meant a situation in which something “happens” to an animate entity – someone or something who is able to know that something is happening. Furthermore, the animate entity does not affect or produce any other entity, including himself/herself. Experiential situations are encoded in Mangap-Mbula by six overall construction types:
- uninflected experiential verbs with coreferential Experiencer Subjects and Objects
This subclass contains just five items, two of which are explicated: menmeen ‘happy (about)’ and kaipa ‘selfishly rejoice (over)’.
Since there are only a few verbs in the language which encode experiential notions, a number of other constructions are employed as well. They include: - inflected experiential verbs with experiencer subjects
This subclass includes verbs of knowledge; verbs of perception, including –re ‘see, look’ and –leŋ ‘hear, listen’; verbs encoding semi-controllable physical states; the verb –mbot ‘stay, be at, be alive’; verbs encoding emotional responses, including –morsop ‘be startled’, –murur ‘be surprised’, and –twer ‘worried about, longing for’); verbs encoding uncontrolled physical states; the verb –moto ‘fear’; the verb –mbel ‘be in trouble’ - inflected experiential verbs with experiencer objects
- a construction involving the verb –kam, a polysemous form which can be variously glossed as ‘do, cause, receive, get’
- a construction in which the forms le– and ka– are added immediately following the verb
- body image expressions
More important than all of the above, however, are body image constructions, in which a body part plus a verb function together as a kind of composite predicate.
The final section of the paper is a study of the different encodings of the notion of ‘fear’.