Leti, a Language of Southwest Maluku
Leti, a Language of Southwest Maluku

Author: A. Engelenhoven

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-12-28

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 9004486909

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Leti is spoken on the island with the same name near the Indonesian-East Timorese border. This small Austronesian language became known among linguists for the complex patterns of metathesis permeating its entire grammar. Besides little discussed topics, like its intricate deictic system and lexical parallelism, this book provides information on intriguing features of the Leti language that remained undescribed, such as singing, naming, storytelling and the semantics of the indexer clitic. A complete version of the Sailfish myth that underlies the structures of all Southwest Malukan island communities has been added. The entire text is provided with interlinear glosses. All lexical items in the text and in the description have been inserted in a word list together with all lexical parallels. Being the first exhaustive study of a Southwest Malukan language, this description is a valuable contribution to the typological study of East Indonesia and East Timor and to Austronesian linguistics. The abundance of examples makes it of interest also for linguists with a theoretical orientation in phonology, syntax and semantics. The 'insider's perspective' approach provides essential information for students of ethnolinguistics and oral traditions in the region.

The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia
The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia

Author: Alexander Adelaar

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-06-27

Total Pages: 1089

ISBN-13: 019880735X

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This volume presents the most wide-ranging treatment available today of the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia and their outliers. It offers a comprehensive account of the historical relations and typological diversity in the group, including current debates in their prehistories and descriptive priorities for future study.

Songs of Memory in Islands of Southeast Asia
Songs of Memory in Islands of Southeast Asia

Author: Nicole Revel

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2013-09-17

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1443852805

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Twenty-three years of joint endeavors and extensive field collecting of the narratives referred to in the present volume have resulted in the availability of a multimedia archive of Philippine epics, ballads and rituals both at the Pardo de Tavera collection of the Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University, and online. The linguists, anthropologists, and ethno-musicologists who have contributed to this book have long been conscious of the close links between ‘Intangible Heritage’ and ‘Tangible Heritage’. In the Philippines, sung narratives have been recorded in situ (through both audio and audio-video media), transcribed, translated, digitized, and analyzed by scholars and knowledgeable persons from fifteen cultural communities in the islands of Luzon, Panay, Palawan, Mindanao, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi. Meanwhile, other scholars have dedicated their lifelong research to the Mergui Archipelago, central Sulawesi, southwest Maluku, and East Timor. Emerging from international collaboration, the scholarship provided here seeks not only to safeguard and comprehend the uniqueness and evolving beauty of ancient sung narratives that are currently performed in the islands of Southeast Asia, but also to defend their vitality in today’s changing world. This collection of twelve essays is the most recent achievement of ongoing studies of performances by singers of tales and ritualists in contemporary socio-cultural contexts by means of pioneering initiatives in the Digital Humanities, multiple analytical approaches and expert use of our growing technical capacity to safeguard and explore Intangible Heritage.

Austronesian Undressed
Austronesian Undressed

Author: David Gil

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 9027260532

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Many Austronesian languages exhibit isolating word structure. This volume offers a series of investigations into these languages, which are found in an "isolating crescent" extending from Mainland Southeast Asia through the Indonesian archipelago and into western New Guinea. Some of the languages examined in this volume include Cham, Minangkabau, colloquial Malay/Indonesian and Javanese, Lio, Alorese, and Tetun Dili. The main purpose of this volume is to address the general question of how and why languages become isolating, by examination of a number of competing hypotheses. While some view morphological loss as a natural process, others argue that the development of isolating word structure is typically driven by language contact through various mechanisms such as creolization, metatypy, and Sprachbund effects. This volume should be of interest not only to Austronesianists and historians of Insular Southeast Asia, but also to grammarians, typologists, historical linguists, creolists, and specialists in language contact.

Endangered Languages of Austronesia
Endangered Languages of Austronesia

Author: Margaret Florey

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0199544549

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This book explores the challenges to linguistic vitality confronting many minority languages in the highly diverse and geographically far-flung Austronesian language family. The contributions bring together Indigenous language activists and academic researchers with a long-standing commitment to language documentation.

Oral Traditions in Insular Southeast Asia
Oral Traditions in Insular Southeast Asia

Author: Aone van Engelenhoven

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2024-04-15

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1527560627

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Insular Southeast Asia is made up of six nations, which are characterised by an extraordinary diversity of cultures and languages. Consequently, oral tradition in the region is similarly heterogeneous and may be performed in poetry, storytelling, singing or a combination of all three. Its study may be perceived from various academic angles. The present edition contains eleven contributions which discuss oral tradition from different perspectives, covering ecocriticism, poetics, semiotics, linguistics, folkloristics and politics. This volume explores expressions of oral folklore from different corners of Insular Southeast Asia and exemplifies diverse and alternative approaches to oral poetry and storytelling.

Morphology
Morphology

Author: Jeffrey P Punske

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2023-12-12

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1119667836

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The first comprehensive morphology textbook written in the framework of Distributed Morphology, firmly grounded in cross-linguistic theory Distributed Morphology is the theoretical framework that views morphology as syntactic, proposing that there is no divide between the construction of words and the construction of sentences. The first text of its kind, Morphology: A Distributed Morphology Introduction provides a thorough overview of Distributed Morphology using data and problem sets from a diverse selection of the world’s languages. Divided into two parts, this valuable resource begins by describing the basics of morphology and then moves into an exploration of more advanced topics in morphology including morphosyntactic operations, cyclic derivation, the Mirror Principle, and non-compositional language. Each chapter includes a glossary of key terms, learning objectives, further readings, and illustrative examples to reinforce learning. Exercises and problem sets encourage students to develop their understanding and build confidence in the application of theory to practice. Through this valuable text, students will develop comprehension in morphological parsing and glossing, the concept of the lexicon, the different types of morphemes, the idea of paradigms, the basic practice of morphological analysis, and more. Offering detailed yet accessible coverage of morphological theory from the perspective of Distributed Morphology, this textbook: Introduces the methodology used in morphology, the basic assumptions of Distributed Morphology, and key concepts from lexical grammatical approaches to language Covers essential phonology, feature interaction, paradigms as linguistic objects, core ideas of syntax and syntactic derivation, and derivation and inflection in Distributed Morphology Includes a Quick Reference Guide with glossing abbreviations from the Leipzig Glossing Rules, a full IPA chart with instructions, and charts of phonological features Provides access to a companion website containing solutions to problem sets and additional instructor resources Morphology: A Distributed Morphology Introduction is the ideal textbook for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in morphology courses or with an interest in specializing in morphology. Offering students an unparalleled overview of this growing field of morphology, this text will ensure that developing morphologists are well-equipped to employ the latest methods in Distributed Morphology to their own research and study.

What Language Is
What Language Is

Author: John McWhorter

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-02-12

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1101644451

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New York Times bestselling author and renowned linguist, John McWhorter, explores the complicated and fascinating world of languages. From Standard English to Black English; obscure tongues only spoken by a few thousand people in the world to the big ones like Mandarin - What Language Is celebrates the history and curiosities of languages around the world and smashes our assumptions about "correct" grammar. An eye-opening tour for all language lovers, What Language Is offers a fascinating new perspective on the way humans communicate. From vanishing languages spoken by a few hundred people to major tongues like Chinese, with copious revelations about the hodgepodge nature of English, John McWhorter shows readers how to see and hear languages as a linguist does. Packed with Big Ideas about language alongside wonderful trivia, What Language Is explains how languages across the globe (the Queen's English and Surinam creoles alike) originate, evolve, multiply, and divide. Raising provocative questions about what qualifies as a language (so-called slang does have structured grammar), McWhorter also takes readers on a marvelous journey through time and place-from Persian to the languages of Sri Lanka- to deliver a feast of facts about the wonders of human linguistic expression.

Rote-Meto Comparative Dictionary
Rote-Meto Comparative Dictionary

Author: Owen Edwards

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2021-11-25

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1760464570

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This comparative dictionary provides a bottom-up reconstruction of the Rote‑Meto languages of western Timor. Rote-Meto is one low-level Austronesian subgroup of eastern Indonesia/Timor-Leste. It contains 1,174 reconstructions to Proto-Rote-Meto (or a lower node) with supporting evidence from the modern Rote-Meto languages. These reconstructions are accompanied by information on how they relate to forms in other languages including Proto‑Malayo‑Polynesian etyma (where known) and/or out-comparisons to putative cognates in other languages of the region. The dictionary also contains two finder-lists: English to Rote-Meto, and Austronesian reconstructions with Rote-Meto reflexes. The dictionary is preceded by three introductory chapters. The first chapter contains a guide to using the dictionary as well as discussion of the data sources. The second chapter provides a short synchronic overview of the Rote-Meto langauges. The third chapter discusses the historical background of Rote-Meto. This includes sound correspondences, the internal subgrouping of the Rote-Meto family, and the position of Rote-Meto within Malayo-Polynesian more broadly. Searchable electronic versions of the comparative dictionary are provided in two formats at http://hdl.handle.net/1885/251618. The first electronic version is a Lexique Pro export of the dictionary. The Lexique Pro file contains the same data and information in the book version of the dictionary, but does not contain the introductory chapters. See the "About Rote-Meto" tab of the Lexique Pro file for more information on this version of the dictionary. The second electronic version is a text file. It is formatted as a tab separated file and is intended to be read in spreadsheet format. This text file does not contain all the data and information in other versions of the Rote-Meto Comparative Dictionary and should be used in conjunction with these other versions. See the associated readme for more information on what data is included and excluded from that text file.