A Grammar of Maybrat
A Grammar of Maybrat

Author: Philomena Hedwig Dol

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13:

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Maybrat is a Papuan language which is spoken in the central area of the Bird's Head Peninsula, Papua Province, Indonesia. Despite the fact that it is one of the larger local languages in Papua Province in terms of numbers of speakers, a comprehensive grammar on this language has hitherto not been published. This book aims to give an overview of the phonology, morphology and sy n tax of the Maybrat language as it is spoken by the people of Ayawasi. Ideally, this work can be used as a reference grammar: it gives information about the most important structural and typological aspects of Maybrat. With this in mind, the grammar is full of illustrative examples centred around contrasts in form and meaning, which are discussed in the text.

A Grammar of Lavukaleve
A Grammar of Lavukaleve

Author: Angela Terrill

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-07-22

Total Pages: 589

ISBN-13: 3110923963

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Lavukaleve is a Papuan Language spoken on the Russell Islands in the Central Province of the Solomon Islands. The phonology and morpho-phonology of Lavukaleve are described, as well as arguments adjuncts, the Lavukaleve predicate structure (including predicate types and core participant marking, the agreement suffix, focus constructions, tense, aspect and mood, word-level derivation, complex predicates), interclausal syntax, and the Lavukaleve discourse organisation. The book includes a list of affixes, a list of lexemes, and an appendix with Lavukaleve texts. The data used in this work was collected by the author during five field trips.

Number – Constructions and Semantics
Number – Constructions and Semantics

Author: Anne Storch

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-03-19

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9027270635

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This book is the outcome of several decades of research experience, with contributions by leading scholars based on long-term field research. It combines approaches from descriptive linguistics, anthropological linguistics, socio-historical studies, areal linguistics, and social anthropology. The key concern of this ground-breaking volume is to investigate the linguistic means of expressing number and countable amounts, which differ greatly in the world’s languages. It provides insights into common number-marking devices and their not-so-common usages, but also into phenomena such as the absence of plurals, or transnumeral forms. The different contributions to the volume show that number is of considerable semantic complexity in many languages worldwide, expressing all kinds of extendedness, multiplicity, salience, size, and so on. This raises a number of challenging questions regarding what exactly is described under the slightly monolithic label of ‘number’ in most descriptive approaches to the languages of the world.

The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area
The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area

Author: Bill Palmer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-12-04

Total Pages: 1036

ISBN-13: 3110295253

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The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of all major regions of the world. The island of New Guinea and its offshore islands is arguably the most diverse and least documented linguistic hotspot in the world - home to over 1300 languages, almost one fifth of all living languages, in more than 40 separate families, along with numerous isolates. Traditionally one of the least understood linguistic regions, ongoing research allows for the first time a comprehensive guide. Given the vastness of the region and limited previous overviews, this volume focuses on an account of the families and major languages of each area within the region, including brief grammatical descriptions of many of the languages. The volume also includes a typological overview of Papuan languages, and a chapter on Austronesian-Papuan contact. It will make accessible current knowledge on this complex region, and will be the standard reference on the region. It is aimed at typologists, endangered language specialists, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and all those interested in linguistic diversity and understanding this least known linguistic region.

Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Volume 3
Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Volume 3

Author: Tibor Kiss

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-03-10

Total Pages: 708

ISBN-13: 3110363682

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This Handbook represents the development of research and the current level of knowledge in the fields of syntactic theory and syntax analysis. Syntax can look back to a long tradition. Especially in the last 50 years, however, the interaction between syntactic theory and syntactic analysis has led to a rapid increase in analyses and theoretical suggestions. This second edition of the Handbook on Syntax adopts a unifying perspective and therefore does not place the division of syntactic theory into several schools to the fore, but the increase in knowledge resulting from the fruitful argumentations between syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. It uses selected phenomena of individual languages and their cross-linguistic realizations to explain what syntactic analyses can do and at the same time to show in what respects syntactic theories differ from each other. It investigates how syntax is related to neighbouring disciplines and investigate the role of the interfaces especially the relationship between syntax and phonology, morphology, compositional semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon. The phenomena chosen bring together renowned experts in syntax, and represent the consensus reached as to what has to be considered as an important as well as illustrative syntactic phenomenon. The phenomena discuss do not only serve to show syntactic analyses, but also to compare theoretical approaches with each other.

Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable
Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable

Author: Geoffrey Sampson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-02-26

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0199545219

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This fascinating book challenges the idea that languages are equally complex. Eighteen scholars look at evidence from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and change and social complexity. Their conclusions challenge conventional ideas about the nature of language and contemporary theory.

The Greater Awyu Languages of West Papua
The Greater Awyu Languages of West Papua

Author: Lourens de Vries

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-08-24

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1501506951

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This book is a comprehensive and authoritative description of the Greater Awyu family of Papuan languages. The book brings together many decades of research on Greater Awyu languages, including 10 years of field work by the author. The book presents a description of major patterns found in languages of the family: phonology, morphology, syntax and discourse. In addition, major aspects of the anthropological linguistics of Greater Awyu languages are described: counting systems, language names, kinship, linguistic ideologies, lexical substitution registers, avoidance and taboo. The linguistic patterns of Greater Awyu languages are systematically placed in the genetic, typological, areal and historical contexts of New Guinea. The long dialect continuums within the family, by reflecting different diachronic stages, offer a window on the origin of switch reference, clause chaining, topic markers, postpositions and double-headed relative clauses. The book is relevant for readers interested in the typological, historical and cultural linguistics of New Guinea but also for anthropologists and historians because the history and cultural practices of Greater Awyu speakers are a key part of the story of this language family.

Voice syncretism
Voice syncretism

Author: Nicklas N. Bahrt

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 3961103194

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This book provides a comprehensive typological account of voice syncretism, focusing on resemblance in formal verbal marking between two or more of the following seven voices: passives, antipassives, reflexives, reciprocals, anticausatives, causatives, and applicatives. It covers voice syncretism from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and has been structured in a manner that facilitates convenient access to information about specific patterns of voice syncretism, their distribution and development. The book is based on a survey of voice syncretism in 222 geographically and genealogically diverse languages, but also thoroughly revisits previous research on the phenomenon. Voice syncretism is approached systematically by establishing and exploring patterns of voice syncretism that can logically be posited for the seven voices of focus in the book: 21 simplex patterns when one considers two of the seven voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal syncretism), and 99 complex patterns when one considers more than two of the voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal-anticausative syncretism). In a similar vein, 42 paths of development can logically be posited if it is assumed that voice marking in each of the seven voices can potentially develop one of the other six voice functions (e.g. reflexive voice marking developing a reciprocal function). This approach enables the discussion of both voice syncretism that has received considerable attention in the literature (notably middle syncretism involving the reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative and/or passive voices) and voice syncretism that has received little or not treatment in the past (including seemingly contradictory patterns such as causative-anticausative and passive-antipassive syncretism). In the survey almost all simplex patterns are attested in addition to seventeen complex patterns. In terms of diachrony, evidence is presented and discussed for twenty paths of development. The book strives to highlight the variation found in voice syncretism across the world’s languages and encourage further research into the phenomenon.

Highly complex syllable structure: A typological and diachronic study
Highly complex syllable structure: A typological and diachronic study

Author: Shelece Easterday

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2019-11-13

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 3961101949

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The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language whose strongest cross-linguistic patterns are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure. Syllable patterns involving long sequences of consonants are both typologically rare and theoretically marginalized, with few approaches treating these as natural or unproblematic structures. This book is an investigation of the properties of languages with highly complex syllable patterns. The two aims are (i) to establish whether these languages share other linguistic features in common such that they constitute a distinct linguistic type, and (ii) to identify possible diachronic paths and natural mechanisms by which these patterns come about in the history of a language. These issues are investigated in a diversified sample of 100 languages, 25 of which have highly complex syllable patterns. Languages with highly complex syllable structure are characterized by a number of phonetic, phonological, and morphological features which serve to set them apart from languages with simpler syllable patterns. These include specific segmental and suprasegmental properties, a higher prevalence of vowel reduction processes with extreme outcomes, and higher average morpheme/word ratios. The results suggest that highly complex syllable structure is a linguistic type distinct from but sharing some characteristics with other proposed holistic phonological types, including stress-timed and consonantal languages. The results point to word stress and specific patterns of gestural organization as playing important roles in the diachronic development of these patterns out of simpler syllable structures.