ko2SGtinggalstayiniD.PROXko tinggal ini2SG stay D.PROX'you live here'As (1) illustrates, demonstratives and locatives function primarily to provide spatial orientation.
In Papuan Malay’s two-term demonstrative system, one is used to indicate proximity of the referent to the speaker and the other is used distally.
bawabringmacewomanniD.PROXketoruma-sakithospitalbawa mace ni ke ruma-sakitbring woman D.PROX to hospital'(I) brought (my) wife here to the hospital'de3SGadaexisttuD.DISTde ada tu3SG exist D.DIST'She is over there'By drawing the hearer’s attention to specific objects or individuals in the discourse or surrounding context, the speaker is able to use demonstratives to provide spatial orientation whether the referent is perceived as being spatially close to the speaker, or further away.
saya1SGingatrememberiniD.PROXIseIsesaya ingat ini Ise1SG remember D.PROX Ise'I remembered, what's-her-name, Ise'skarangnowsa1SGituD.DISTsimpangstoresratusone.hundredributhousandskarang sa itu simpang sratus ribunow 1SG D.DIST store one.hundred thousand'Now I (already), what's-its-name, set aside one hundred thousand (rupiah)'Locatives are a class of words that signal distance, both spatial and non-spatial, and consequently provide orientation for the hearer in a speech situation.
The proximal locative sini is reconstructed in PWMP as *si-ni and has retained the semantic function of indicating closeness.
A number of other WMP languages also share the form and meaning of sini including: Aborlan Tagbanwa, Sangil, Kayan, and Malay.
The WMP language that is most similar to Papuan Malay in this regard is Aborlan Tagbanwa where both the form and designated spatial distance are shared.
It cannot be assumed, however, that this is the case for all WMP languages as Bontok shares the form sana but is used to indicate proximity to the hearer rather than just distance from the speaker.
A further example is presented below; FitriFitripuPOSSiniD.PROXFitri pu iniFitri POSS D.PROXFitri's (belongings,right.there)**words in brackets indicate the understood referent of a personal pronoun or demonstrative, established from the context of the utterance As shown in (13), the long punya possessive marker can also be reduced to the short pu, an alteration which appears to be independent of the syntactic or semantic properties of the possessor and possessum.
''This is most common when the possessor is a singular personal pronoun (two instances of which are found in (14)), and provides an explanation for why 'Hendro punya ...' is observed in (11), rather than the reduced theoretical possibility of 'Hendro=p'.
A final canonical possibility is the total omission of the possessive marker (indicated with a ø symbol), but this is generally restricted to inalienable possession of body parts and kinship relations, the former seen in (4) below; adu,oh.no!bapafatherø mulutmouthjahatbe.badskaliveryadu, bapa ø mulut jahat skalioh.no!
'father's mouth')Other, less typical/more complex 'non-canonical' combinations are also possible, where the possessor and/or possessum can consist of verbs, quantifiers and prepositional phrases.
JayapuraJayapurapuPOSSduatwoblastensorangpersonyangRELluluspass(a.test)kaorJayapura pu dua blas orang yang lulus kaJayapura POSS two tens person REL pass(a.test) or'aren't there twelve people from Jayapura who graduated?'
The possessive marker can also direct attention to an action or object's beneficiary, where the benefiting party occupies the possessor position; dong3PLsualreadyblibuyde3SGpunyaPOSSalat~alatREDUP~equipmentiniD.PROXdong su bli de punya alat~alat ini3PL already buy 3SG POSS REDUP~equipment D.PROX'they already bought these utensils for him' (lit.
'the being tasty of the cooking')As indicated by the insertion of adverbials in the English translation otherwise syntactically absent in Papuan Malay (20), the verbal-possessor-punya-verbal-possessum construction elicits emphatic meaning and tone.
The difference to (19) being that in (20), the verbal quality of the possessum constituent is being superimposed upon another verb element, rather than to a pronominal possessor, to encode emphasis or assertion.
A final possibility in Papuan Malay possessive constructions is elision of the possessum, in situations where it can be easily established from context; ituD.DISTde3SGpunyaPOSSø itu de punya øD.DIST 3SG POSS {}'those are his (banana plants)'Unlike the general freedom of possessive marker form for both canonical and non-canonical constructions (11-20), the long punya form is almost exclusively used when a possessum is omitted, possibly as a means of more markedly sign-posting the possessum's elision.
D:demonstrative L:locative PROX:proximal MED:medial REL:relativizer The table below shows the 18 consonant phonemes of Papuan Malay.