“Now the story’s turning around”: Associated motion and directionality in Ende, a language of Papua New Guinea

In this paper, we provide one of the first descriptions of associated motion in a Papuan language. Ende, a language of southern Papua New Guinea, has one directional affix that codes path towards the deictic centre when combined with verbs of motion or transfer. When this affix is combined with other verbs, it gives rise to interpretations of an associated, secondary motion event. This type of “deictic associated motion” was first explicitly described by Belkadi (2015) in several languages of Africa. Ende’s deictic associated motion system is unlike prototypical associated motion systems, such as that in Kaytetye (Pama- Nyungan, Australia), in that Ende does not have dedicated affixes that code associated motion. Instead, Ende’s associated motion expression relies on inference on the part of speakers and hearers to give rise to the motion readings. Accordingly, we propose the terms dedicated associated motion and inferential associated motion to distinguish these two very different associated motion systems, one of which relies on dedicated affixes or other structures, and the other, which relies on speakers’ and hearers’ inferences.