Suffixal object pronouns in the Fijian languages: Geographic distribution and typological implications

This paper examines object pronouns in the Fijian languages, focusing on communalects in which they are realized as verbal suffixes. In many Fijian communalects, object pronouns occur inside the predicate but remain independent phonological words. In others, especially in Western Fijian communalects, certain object pronouns are phonologically integrated with the verbal base as monosyllabic suffixes. A third pattern is also attested, in which object pronouns occur outside the predicate. The study adopts a conservative phonological criterion for identifying suffixal forms: only short monosyllabic postverbal object forms whose integration with the verbal base can be diagnosed phonologically are treated as suffixal. On this basis, data from a subset of Paul Geraghty’s hand-plotted linguistic maps of Fiji were digitized and mapped using QGIS. The analysis focuses on 2sg, 3sg, 3du, and 3pl object pronouns. The maps show that suffixal object pronouns are concentrated mainly in Western Fijian communalects, but their distribution does not simply follow the traditional Eastern–Western division. Typologically, the suffixal forms are noteworthy because object indexing is morphologically integrated with the verbal base more closely than subject indexing is, a pattern that may be interpreted as evidence of a stronger head-marking profile in the domain of object indexing.