PolynesianTapu in the ‘Deontic Square’:A Cognitive Concept, its Linguistic Expression and Cultural Context

Andrea Bender (bender@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de)Sieghard Beller (beller@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de)

Department of Psychology, University of FreiburgD-79085 Freiburg, Germany

Abstract

The Polynesian concept oftapu, introduced into Euro-pean languages as ‘taboo’, is the most salient example ofa deontic concept in Tonga. In order to examine whethertapuand its related concepts reflect cross-cultural equiva-lences, we pursue a comparative approach that is concep-tually grounded in the ‘deontic square’. By analyzingpreferences for linguistic expressions, implications ofgrammar, and the traditional cultural context, we foundremarkable similarities on a structural level. The mostsignificant difference lies in the concept of agency, whichis more prevalent in ‘Western’ than in Tongan culture.

IntroductionIn several Indo-European languages, we use ‘taboo’ ifwe want to indicate that something is absolutely forbid-den in a sense that it is not to be touched, not even withwords. Despite its current familiarity, ‘taboo’ is a loan-word from a Polynesian language, introduced in the sec-ond half of the 18th century by Captain James Cook(Lehmann, 1930). Particularly in Tonga, an island King-dom in the Southwestern Pacific,tapuwas traditionallyso salient a concept that it managed to attract the atten-tion of most early visitors (e.g., Martin, 1991). Our con-temporary frequent use of this term may suggest that wehave captured its meaning and that it was conceptuallycompatible with our own notion of prohibition, whilealso adding a certain quality (i.e., intensity) to it.

However, the term ‘tapu’1 contained a much broaderspectrum of meanings than was realized even by Cookhimself (Lehmann, 1930). Being a very attentiveobserver, he conceded not to fully understand the varietyof situations it referred to. Why, for instance, should itbe absolutely forbiddenfor a boy to touch his father’shead? This leaves us with the central question of howthe Polynesiantapu fits into our concept of prohibitionor, more generally, into a deontic system of social rules.

Social rules are at the core of living together in socialgroups. Their objective is to restrict the freedom of indi-viduals to do as they please in favor of group interests.Often, although not always, they try to facilitate cooper-ation and smooth relationships by indicating what ispermitted and what is forbidden in interaction. Thewhole set of social rules in a society constitutes anessential part of what defines a particular culture anddistinguishes it from others. With regard to content, weassume nearly infinite variety. However, the basic con-cepts, such asobligationandban, should be comparableacross cultures, at least to a certain degree.

In general, social rules are specified by the partiesinvolved, by the constraints they set or remove, and bytheir semantic content. At least two parties should beidentifiable: an authority who establishes, modifies, orlifts a rule, and those who are subject to the rule, that is,whose behavior is accordingly restricted – in linguisticterms:agent andpatient.

In English (and German) verbal constructions thesetwo roles can be expressed in different ways. In transi-tive constructions such as

(1) David forbids Mary to tell the story

the agent of the ban (David) is grammatically reflectedas subject, while the patient (Mary) is the grammaticalobject. Although these roles can be converted if the verbis reversed into its passive form, agent and patient arestill clearly identifiable:

(1a) Mary was forbidden by David to tell the story.

In modal constructions using deontic operators such as‘must’ or ‘may’, however, these roles themselves areaffected. Here, the patient of the rule turns not only intoa grammatical subject, but also into the apparent agentof the phrase, whereas the agent of the rule disappears:

(2) Marymust not tell the story.

The Polynesian language spoken in Tonga differsfrom English with regard to the fact that modal verbs donot exist and that there is not even a clear boundarybetween word categories such as verbs or nouns (Bros-chart, 1997). In addition, Tongan has an ergative align-ment (Dixon, 1994; Tchekhoff, 1979): transitive phrasesare not primarily based on a subject-object distinctionbut rather topicalize the event or the patient of an action.

1 Terms and their translations will be given in ‘single quota-tion marks’. Tongan terms are translated according toChurchward (1959), but are restricted as often as possibleto an-ing form conveying the central idea. A straight quota-tion mark ' signifies a glottal stop, a dash on top of a vowelindicates length (as in ‘faka'ata’). Tonganconceptswill beput in italics; sentences with numbers will remainunmarked, irrespective of language.

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This raises the following questions: How are deonticconcepts such as ban and obligation lexicalised in Ton-gan? What characteristics emerge from differences ingrammar and syntactical structure? How do these differ-ences reflect the relationship between the deontic con-cepts and between agent and patient? Our paperprimarily aims to analyze the deontic system in Tonganlanguage and culture and its equivalence with that inother languages. We start by specifyingban, obligation,permission,andreleaseand by showing that these con-cepts and their relations have psychological reality asmental models. We will then look at their linguisticexpression, comparing it with two Indo-European lan-guages (English and German). In order to understandsome of the peculiarities of their use in a traditionalPolynesian society, we will finally take into consider-ation the cultural origins and consequences oftapu inTonga.

The Cognitive ConceptsIn order to compare deontic concepts cross-culturally, aset of structural features is required to define these con-cepts and to check equivalences (cf. Wierzbicka, 1992).Among these could be the number of and the relationbetween deontic concepts as well as the implicationsthey have. With regard to social norms, four deonticconcepts are typically distinguished:ban, obligation,permissionand release (from obligation). They can bearranged in a so-called “deontic square of opposition”(see Figure 1), going back to the Greek philosopherAristotle. The square defines relations between all pairs(cf. Anderson, 1956), which must hold in aconsistentsystem of norms.

First, ban and obligation form a pair ofcontraries:atmost only one of them may be in effect at any time sinceit is not possible for an action to be forbidden and oblig-atory simultaneously. This corresponds with our intu-ition that social rules must allow either an action to betaken or to be omitted. Further, ban and obligation areinterchangeable concepts. To be obligated to take anaction, for example, implies that the omission of theaction is forbidden. Second, ban and permission on theleft side of the square, and obligation and release on theright are pairs ofcontradictories. Exactly one of each

pair is true in a particular situation: an action is eitherforbidden or allowed, and either obligatory or not.Third, from the contrary relation we know that a bannedaction cannot be obligatory. Instead its omission must bepossible, that is, the actionneed notbe done. Con-versely, if an action is obligatory, then it cannot bebanned but must bepermitted. Along the diagonals ofthe square the top thus implies the bottom. These pairsare calledsubalterns. Finally, the concepts at the bottomof the square form a pair ofsubcontraries: at least oneof them holds in each situation – an actionmaybe takenif there is no ban, or itneeds notto be taken if it is notobligatory – or both if no social rule at all is imposed.

Assuming that human behavior is socially unregulatedin its ‘natural state’, ban and obligation appear to be thebasic rules. Formulated as social norms, their mainobjective is to impose behavioral constraints that holdunder certain conditions for certain people. Setting anorm thus requires two roles and a certain content,reflected linguistically in a three-place predicate:

(3) CAUSE-OBLIGE (x,y,p) [ag(x)∧ pat(y[+anim])∧ p]

This predicate includes an agent (ag), a patient (pat),and the proposition (p) that is the topic of the rule (cf.Abraham, 2001). Note that while the patient is supposedto be animate, the agent need not be. In addition to theirrole as patients of a rule, people may also appear asagents with regard to the action constrained. In this rolethey need to know which behavioral constraints areimplied by norms, that is, they need to infer what they‘must’ or ‘may’ do in a particular situation.

Psychological experiments on deontic reasoning showthat people, irrespective of language or culture, have aclear understanding of the social norms resulting, forinstance, from promises or threats (Beller, Bender &Kuhnmünch, in prep.). People are also very accurate indetecting rule violations (e.g., Beller, 2001; Cosmides,1989; Holyoak & Cheng, 1995) and in inferring whatmust or may be done according to a given norm (Beller,2003). These latter empirical findings suggest that peo-ple build mental models of social norms and use theirimplications flexibly and in accordance with the deonticsquare. It thus seems justified to use this square as a con-ceptual basis for analyzing how deontic concepts arereflected in different linguistic systems.

Linguistic ExpressionsIn most Indo-European languages (such as English andGerman), social rules can be expressed as referring tothe deontic concept itself (e.g., ‘ban’/‘Verbot’) or to theact of posing them (‘to forbid’/‘verbieten’). In addition,modals can be used to express their implications andfocus on the person to whom a rule applies (‘somebodymust notdo something’/‘jemanddarf etwasnicht tun’).Not all of these expressions, however, can be formulatedin other languages, particularly with modal verbs. Evenwhen comparing them in related languages such asEnglish and German, differences become obvious.Figure 1: The deontic square of opposition.

Ban Obligation

Permission Release

contraries

subcontraries

cont

radi

ctor

ies

cont

radi

ctor

ies

subalterns

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Modal Verbs in German and EnglishAlthough modals in English and German derive from acommon source, their present day usage differs withregard to at least two aspects (Abraham, 2001): contraryto English, German modals have retained their catego-rial polyfunctionality (as epistemics and deontics) andin particular their full deontic root load. In English, only‘must’ and partly ‘may’ are still used deontically, buteven these are increasingly substituted by ‘have to’ and‘be permitted to’. When negated, modals switch differ-ently (see Table 1): in English, the stronger rulesobliga-tion andbanare expressed with the same word, namely‘must’ (negated in the second case), while the weakerrulespermissionandreleasetake different terms: ‘may’and ‘need not’. In German, mutually exclusive rules areexpressed with one term each:obligation and releasewith ‘müssen’,permissionandban with ‘dürfen’ (bothnegated in the second case).

The crossing of terms for concepts focuses on differ-ent aspects of the square: the choice of one term for con-trary concepts in English indicates a focus on thenecessityimplied by the rule, while in German sameterms are used forcontradicting pairsas the preferredrelation. The crossing may also be due to a difference inscope. In German, the modal is under the scope of thenegation – the deontic rule itself is then negated:

(4) Ermuß gehen [It isnecessary that he goes]. —Ermuß nichtgehen [It isnot necessarythat he goes].

In English, it rather seems as if the negation were underthe scope of the modal verb, for instance:

(5) Hemust go [It isnecessary that he goes]. —Hemust notgo [It is necessarythat he doesnotgo].

Differences in the expression of deontic concepts maybe even more salient when crossing the boundary of lan-guage families and looking at equivalents in Tongan.

Deontic Concepts in TonganWith regard to the concepts themselves and the act ofposing them, Tongan offers apparently similar optionsfor phrasing, with the exception that nouns and verbsoverlap to a certain degree (Broschart, 1997). Modalverbs, however, do not exist, and in order to express theimplication for the person to whom a rule applies, oneneeds to use indirect constructions.

The concept of ban is expressed with the adjec-tive/intransitive verb/noun ‘tapu’. The original meaningof ‘tapu’ included, among other things, ‘prohibiting, for-bidden, unlawful, sacred, holy’:

(6) 'Okutapu ['a] e 'alu ta'e kofu ['i] he hala 'i Tonga.(lit. ‘It is forbiddenthe going without clothing on aroad in Tonga.’)

Although formulations withtapu are perfectly accept-able, many Tongans seem to prefer indirect formulationswith the negated contradictory ‘'ikai ngofua’:

(6a) He'ikai ngofua ['a] e 'alu ta'e kofu ['i] he hala 'iTonga.(lit. ‘It is not allowedthe going without clothing ona road in Tonga.’)

This may be due to the fact that in certain contexts‘tapu’ is regarded as too strong. Deontically, however,both formulations are equivalent. The act of posing aban can be expressed, for instance, by adding the suffixifor transitive verbs, thus obtaining ‘tapui’ (‘to forbid’).

Despite the grammatical differences between bothlanguages, the rule and its posing can be translated with-out major divergence (see Table 2). What cannot bemade analogously in Tongan is the construction with amodal verb. The English modal phrase

(7) The boymust not touch his father’s head

will again be translated with reference to the concept:

(7a) He'ikai ngofua ke ala ['a] e tamasi'i ki he 'ulu 'o'ene tamaí.(lit. ‘It is not allowed that is being touched by theboy [to] the head of his father.’)

(7) and (7a) differ not only according to the use or lackof modals, but also with regard to word order, relation-ship between agent and patient, and its ergative con-struction. Before we highlight these differences in thenext section, let us briefly look at the other deontic con-cepts: permission, obligation, and release (see Table 3).

The term that fits best as the opposite or, more precise,as the contradictory of ‘tapu’ is ‘ngofua’:

(8) 'E ngofuape ke ke va'inga, kaikehe, 'e'ikai ngofuake ke ngaue ['i] he 'aho Sapaté.(lit. ‘It is allowed that you play, however, it isnotallowed that you work on a Sunday.’)

Table 1: Deontic modals in English and German (thediverging distribution of ‘must’/‘müssen’ regardingstrong vs. weak formulation is highlighted).

formulation

English German

positive negative positive negative

strong must must not müssen nicht dürfen

weak may need not dürfen nicht müssen

Table 2: Prohibiting in German, English, and Tongan.

German English Tongan

verbieten { to forbid } tapuito prohibit

verboten { forbidden

} tapu('ikai ngofua)prohibited

Verbot ban

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The transitive verb in the sense of ‘allowing’ is derivedby affixing faka- as in the following example:

(9) 'Oku fakangofua'e Tevita 'a Mele ke ne fakahoko['a] e talanoá.(‘David allows Mary to tell the story.’)

While in general,ngofuais the opposite oftapu in acontradictory pair, a second type of permission is lexica-lised. Distinguished from a state in which something isusually allowed (ngofua) is the state where somethingwas forbidden before but from which the ban has beenremoved. In this second case, the proper term dependson the particulartapu removed – ‘fu'ia’, for instance, isused for removingtapufive days after a funeral, ‘fu'ipa’for the same act after ten days, and ‘fakamalele’ refersto lifting all restrictions imposed after a death.

Permission can also be indicated by the term‘faka'ata’, which denotes ‘removing restrictions, permit-ting, allowing’. It also means ‘removing any rules at all’and thus has a close connection to the release concept.

Two words exist for ‘obligation’, depending on thecontext or connotation. The first, ‘mo'ua’, refers to‘being encumbered, busy, or indebted’, while the sec-ond, ‘fatongia’, is an obligation in the sense of duty.Although ‘fatongia’ would be the preferred term,‘mo'ua’ contributes to derived forms of obligation aswell, such as ‘fakamo'ua’ (‘to obligate’). An interestingconnotation of ‘mo'ua’ is ‘suffering as the result ofbreaking a prohibition’. In order to express implicationsfrom the rule (corresponding to a modal phrase), achange in terms is required from ‘fatongia’ to ‘pau’:

(10) Kuopau ke u 'alu.(‘I must go’, lit. ‘It has beendecided that I go.’)

Basically carrying the epistemic meaning ‘certain,decided, necessary, inevitable’,pau is also used to helpconvey the deontic sense of ‘must’. In addition, sen-tences withpau can be phrased in correspondence to anegation of the English type (resulting in a ban), as in:

(11) Kuopau ke 'oua te tau fai ha me'a pehe.(‘We must not do any such thing’,i.e., ‘Wemust refrain from doing any such thing.’)

To sum up, the Tongan deontic terms are indeedrelated to each other in accordance with the relationshipdefined within the deontic square: negated contradicto-

ries are used as equivalents, as when terms used for bans(‘'ikai ngofua’) explicitly refer to the permission con-cept; in other cases semantic connections do exist. Andthe term for release (‘faka'ata’), with its connotation‘free from any rule’, expands into the sphere of permis-sion. It is remarkable that even without polyfunctionalmodals, most equivalent expressions in Tonga carry thesemantic polyfunctionality of deontic and epistemicreading as well, particularly ‘ngofua’ and ‘pau’.

Agent and PatientWhile the phrasing of deontic concepts and rules and theact of posing these rules can be carried out correspond-ingly in Tongan (yet with semantically conditionedexceptions), one particular transformation cannot bemade analogously, and that refers to modals. If wereturn to (7) and (7a), we can elucidate significant dif-ferences between English modal phrases and their Ton-gan equivalents.

Assuming, as does the Tongan scholar Futa Helu, that“the earlier the position of an idea in the normal syntaxof sentences the more important it is” (1999, p. 189), wecan conclude that English (and German) put consider-able emphasis on the actor, while in Tongan the actionitself is more significant. As indicated by the word orderin (7a), the focus here would thus be on theconceptitself (i.e., on the ban) and on the action that is forbiddenrather than on the person – either agent or patient. InEnglish (7), the focus is at least as much on the patient(the one to whom the rule applies) as it is on the ruleitself.

This focus is further reflected in the predominantlyergative alignment of Tongan. An ergative constructiongives prominence to topic or event rather than subject(cf. Duranti, 1994; Tchekhoff, 1979). The focus of Ton-gan phrases thus remains on the rule, whereas in English– with the choice of a rule formulation, as in (1), or itsmodal implication (2) – one of either parties of the rule(agent or patient) will be focused upon. The construc-tion with a modal verb transforms the patient of a rule,for instance the boy in (7), into the subject (and agent)of the implication phrase. In Tongan (7a), on the otherhand, the boy is not the subject, but the agent of anaction that is the topic of the rule. Consequently, whileIndo-European languages (at least English and German)tend to focus on single persons as agents or patients,Tongan formulations, with the prominence they give totopic, rather reflect certain aspects of a situation.

However, more than the linguistic expression, it is therule itself that topicalizes relation. We therefore need toturn to the cultural context in order to gain a full com-prehension.

Cultural ContextIf we wish to understandtapuas the defining rule of theTongan deontic system, we need to look more thor-oughly at its religious origins and social consequences.

Table 3: Tongan Deontic Terms.

Deontic Concept/Rule Act ofPosing Rule Implication

English Tongan

ban tapu tapui tapu / 'ikai ngofua

permission ngofua fakangofua ngofua

obligation fatongia fakamo'ua /fakafatongia

kuo pau ke

release faka'ata tuku'ange 'ikai fiema'u

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Origins and Consequences ofTapuThe term ‘tapu’ means ‘forbidden or prohibited’ and isstill widely used in this sense today. Traditionally, how-ever, its semantics included also, and essentially,‘sacredness’ – a meaning that at first glance seemsincompatible with our notion of prohibition (cf. Shore,1989). The ‘Tohi Tapu’ (the Bible) is the ‘holy book’rather than the ‘forbidden book’; yet the latter wouldhave to be translated in just the same way, as ‘tohi tapu’.

Something beingtapu in the sense of ‘forbidden’ wasrather a consequence of its being sacred, that is, loadedwith the supernatural powermana. Mana, a core con-cept of Polynesian worldview, contained a broad spec-trum of meanings: it implied or induced prestige,influence, supernatural power, or luck. It could beloaded like energy and was attributed to people, ani-mals, things, or actions. With people, it was particularlythe higher ranking who were endowed withmana(Leh-mann, 1930). The contact between people of differentrank was regarded as dangerous for both sides and there-fore strictly regulated by avoidance rules, thetapu(Shore, 1989).

This connection betweenmanaandtapuexplains whytwo types of permission needed to be distinguished: onegenerally permissible (ngofua) and one permissible afterthe removal of restrictions. The first category concernedthe sphere of littlemana, thus not dangerous for any-body, while the second category was marked by greatmana and therefore first needed to be de-sacralized.Severaltapuapplied, for instance, during times of deathand funeral (particularly prone tomana), others duringpregnancy and lactation. Mosttapu, however, were con-cerned with social contact (Gifford, 1929; Lehmann,1930; Shore, 1989).

According to the Tonganfahu principle, sisters arehigher in rank ('eiki) than their brothers, older people arehigher than younger people, and nobles are higher thancommoners. Among the relationships restricted bytapuwere therefore those between brothers and sisters,between women and their sisters-in-law, and in particu-lar between fathers and their children. The restraint thatmarks their relationship involves physical separation:children were not allowed to sit in their father’s lap, usehis belongings, eat his leftover food or, as stated in theintroductory example, touch his head (Gifford, 1929;Morton, 1996). The latter example is prototypical forthe protecting objective of manytapuby preventing themost dangerous act: to touch the head wheremana isconcentrated.

Agent and Patient in TonganTapuNot only wasmana the legitimation of atapu, it wasalso its source and, in a sense, even itsagent. Althoughin certain cases atapu could be imposed by religiousspecialists, the causative force lay in thetapu itself. Atapu thus did not need to be looked after by any kind ofauthority, but was regarded as being capable of protect-ing itself (Lehmann, 1930; Martin, 1991). Conse-

quently, the Tongan language provides a number ofterms for consequences of breaking atapu: ‘fula’, forinstance, denotes the swelling up as the result of eatingfood left over by a chief; ‘hangatamaki’ refers to anabscess or carbuncle caused by breaking atapu on atree; and scented oil was considered to be spoilt (‘talai’)if the woman preparing it had broken atapu.

With regard to the structure for social rules (3), a Ton-gan phrase always retains the predicate pattern: the com-monly known source oftapuused to be the obliging partor agent, the proposition is the restricted action, and thepatient are those to whom this restriction applies (usu-ally lower ranking people). Therefore, in a sentencesuch as

(12) 'Oku tapu ke ala ['a] e tamasi'i ki he 'ulu 'o 'enetamaí.(lit. ‘It is tapu that is being touched by the boy [to]the head of his father.’)

the agent of thetapu is mana, possessed by the fatherand concentrated in his head, whereas the topic of thetapu is the restricted action, and the person who wouldbe the agent of this action, namely the boy, is the (onlyimplicit) patient. In the English modal equivalent (7) theparty imposing the rule completely disappears. Agree-ing with Abraham (2001, p.19f.) that root modals arecausatives involving at least a covert agent, we wouldthus argue that this agent isresponsiblefor the obliga-tion. Instead, the subject (the boy) is suggested to beresponsible as agent. Even when retranslating the Ton-gan phrase into:

(13) It isnot allowedthat the boy touches his father’s head.

it still seems plausible that the ban has more to do withthe boy than anything regarding the father or his head.

Summing up the relationship between Tongan deonticconcepts, both ban and permission had to do withmana:havingmanamade sacred and thus required avoidance(both aspects oftapu); equal or lowmanadid not andresulted inngofua. As with tapu, the obligationfatongiaresulted from a difference in rank: traditionally,fatongiadenoted the enforced labor of commoners for chiefs, butits meaning has extended to the duties and correctbehavior in social relations, including attitudes andemotions such as obedience, love ('ofa), or respect(Morton, 1996). Accordingly, agent of thefatongiawerethe high ranking.2

2 Taking into consideration the relational information hiddenin Tongan possessive classes supports this interpretation.All words to which a possessive can be applied belong toeither the'e- or ho-class. As Bennardo (2000) showed, thisdistinction reflects the direction of the relationship:origi-nating from the possessor ('e-class) vs.towards the pos-sessor (ho-class). Accordingly, ‘hoku fatongia’ (‘my duty’)is conceived of as the dutyimposed on mewhile ‘'eku tapu’(‘my ban’) rather refers to an intrinsic feature orinternal-izedduty. The agent of the rule would thus need no furtherexpression.

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DiscussionWhen the term ‘taboo’ entered the vocabulary of Euro-pean languages, it was used in the sense of ‘strictly for-bidden’, and lacked the notion of ‘sacred’ that was anessential part of the Polynesian concept oftapu. Withthe increasing influence and success of Christian mis-sionaries during the 19th century, this religiously moti-vated use of the term even diminished in Tonga itself.And although some of the oldtapu are still in practice,most are not. The headtapu, for instance – preventingthe dangerous contact of lower-ranking children withthemanaconcentrated in their father’s head – is adheredto by less and less families (Morton, 1996). Althoughtapuno longer implies sacredness in its practical use, itssemantic load still conveys this reading, and people hes-itate to call a prohibition atapu if they consider the termtoo strong or not appropriate in a profane context. Invarious cases (cf. 6a and 8) a paraphrase is preferred,nowadays even for the headtapu(7a).

Despite this additional reading, the deontic conceptsexpressed in English and Tongan are comparable and fitequally well into the deontic square. They differ, how-ever, with regard to the ranking of action over actor andof patient over agent. If grammar is seen as an index ofculture that “represents standardized judgments or con-ventions on the environment” and that “reveals a charterof morality […], i.e. a set of rules or beliefs for behaviorof the people who speak a language” (Helu, 1999,p. 188; see also Duranti, 1994), then these linguisticcharacteristics of Tongan should reveal at least a certainconcept of agency. If this is the case, it should also haveconsequences on more complex cognitive processes, forinstance on attribution patterns, on emotion-elicitingappraisals, or on conflict management.

The question of psychological reality still remainsopen. Whether these differences do mould deontic men-tal models or the perception of agency and how theyrelate to actual behavior has to be accounted for empiri-cally. Some findings from previous research on a differ-ent topic indicate that people in Tonga tend not to holdagents as responsible for action outcomes as those inWestern cultures do. Instead, they seem to make stron-ger attributions to situational factors than personal onesand also appear to react with anger less often than Euro-peans (Beller, Bender & Kuhnmünch, in prep.). Eventu-ally conflicts are reduced (Bender, 2001) – and that mayvery well be due to the fact that people are less oftentopicalized as agents in daily talk.

AcknowledgmentsWe are grateful to Sione Faka'osi forbeing a patient and never-failing source of information andto Giovanni Bennardo and Stefan Wahl for discussion andvaluable comments. We dedicate this paper to Hans Spadawho provided the space for this convergence of ideas.

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