Object marking in Manadonese

This paper examines object marking in Manadonese, a creolised Malay variety spoken in northern Sulawesi. Unlike typical western Malayo-Polynesian languages, Manadonese uses the preposition pa to mark both direct and indirect objects, with its distribution governed by the pronoun-animacy hierarchy. Objects higher on the hierarchy—such as pronouns, personal names, and kin terms—are more likely to be marked. The study outlines three stages of object marking: compulsory, optional, and zero marking. It also explores the possible origins of pa, suggesting influence from Portuguese through direct borrowing or calquing, potentially via Malay pada. This analysis contributes to understanding contact-induced grammatical change and highlights Manadonese’s unique syntactic features within the Austronesian language family (AI generated description, Copilot)