Switch-reference constructions in Iatmul: Forms, functions, and development Gerd Jendraschek Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC 3086, Australia Received 15 September 2008; received in revised form 11 February 2009; accepted 18 February 2009 Available online 21 March 2009 Abstract The paper presents the switch-reference constructions of the Papuan language Iatmul. I will start at the highest syntactic level, by illustrating the role of switch-reference in intersentential tail–head linkage. While switch-reference marking – in Iatmul and canonically – only links clauses, but not sentences, tail–head linkage links sentences, and indicates – at least in Iatmul – whether the following verb in a new sentence has the same or a different subject referent than the last verb of the previous sentence. It thereby helps to identify the subject referent in a system where overt noun phrases are used much less than in a language like English. Tail–head linkage is further used as a strategy to link independent clauses in a language without clause coordination. Chained clauses are also switch-reference marked, but a backgrounded subordinate clause can intervene between two linked clauses (‘skipped clause’) or within one clause (‘centre-embedded clause’) of the chain and thereby make it discontinuous. I will apply relevant criteria to show that the Iatmul clause-linking verb forms are morphosyntactically subordinate, but functionally ambiguous. When linked verbs share some or all of their arguments, we obtain a linkage at a level below the clause. Such constructions can evolve into complex predicates or collocations, which may ultimately lexicalize. # 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Switch-reference; Tail–head linkage; Subordination; Lexicalization; Papuan 1. Introduction 1.1. Switch-reference marked clauses Haiman and Munro (1983:ix) define canonical switch-reference (short: S/R) as ‘‘an inflectional category of the verb, which indicates whether or not its subject is identical with the subject of some other verb’’. Canonically, switch- reference systems thus ‘‘indicate coreference or disjoint reference between the subjects of adjacent, syntactically related clauses’’ (Stirling, 2001:14; see also Stirling, 1993:6–7 for a summarized version of the canonical view on switch-reference systems). In the simplest case, we have a sequence of two consecutive clauses. If the subjects of the two clauses have the same referent, this fact is marked on the first verb. 1 In this case, subject cross-reference on the verb of the first www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Lingua 119 (2009) 1316–1339 E-mail addresses: jendraschek@hotmail.com, g.jendraschek@latrobe.edu.au. 1 The illustration is based on a verb-final language where the switch-reference markers are suffixal. Where the marker is a prefix on the verb, the switch-reference marked clause tends to follow the reference clause (Lynch, 1983:210). 0024-3841/$ – see front matter # 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2009.02.005