Morphological Complexity in Wawonii: A Documentation of Affixation Patterns in a Threatened Language

Abstract

This study aims to describe the affixation system in the Wawonii language, encompassing types of affixes (prefixes, infixes, suffixes, and circumfixes), the allomorphs that arise in affixation processes, and their derivational and inflectional meanings. Data were collected through fieldwork on Wawonii Island, Southeast Sulawesi Province, using a language documentation approach and morphological analysis based on both spoken and written corpora. This study employed distributional methods and the markup reading technique, drawing on the morphophonemic frameworks of Matthews and Hayes. The findings reveal that Wawonii exhibits a complex and productive affixation system, with prefixes such as {moN-}, {me-}, {pa-}, {po-}, {in-}, {um-}, {te-}, {ko-}, {ndo-}, and {meka-}; infixes {-in-}, {-um-}; as well as circumflexes {pe-...-a}, {poN-...-a}, {pompoko-...-a}, {meka-...-ako}, and {meka-...-ira}; and suffixes {-akuo}, {-akono}, {-akitao}, {-akondo}, {-si}, {-omo}, and {-o}. Affixation processes frequently involve nasal assimilation, elision, and phoneme alternation as part of morphophonemic operations. Furthermore, pronominal-benefactive suffixes such as {-akuo}, {-akono}, {-akitao}, and {-akondo} encode both agent and recipient information within a single morpheme. Wawonii exhibits characteristics of an agglutinative morphology, with distinct affix boundaries and reciprocal, causative, and resultative affixes that reflect local innovations within its morphological system. These findings reinforce the position of Wawonii within the Bungku-Tolaki subgroup of the Austronesian family, with nasal affixation such as {moN-} serving as a distinctive feature also found in related languages across Southeast Sulawesi.

Access to Document

Other files and links

• Link to publication in Scopus
• Open Access Version Available

Fingerprint