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

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Sign Language in Papua New Guinea
Sign Language in Papua New Guinea

Author: Adam Kendon

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-02-17

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 9027261822

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book presents in revised form and as a single monograph three papers on a sign language from the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea. Originally published in 1980, for more than twenty years these papers remained the only report of a sign language from that part of the world. The detailed descriptive analyses that the author provided are still fresh today, and in some respects they anticipate insights into the nature of sign languages that were not further explored until much more recently. The monograph is accompanied by two essays: Sherman Wilcox comments on value and relevance of the author’s work in the light of much more recent work on the linguistics of sign languages. An essay by Lauren Reed and Alan Rumsey provides an up to date survey of what is now known about sign languages in Papua New Guinea. Information about sign languages in the Solomon Island is also included.

The Papuan Languages of Timor, Alor and Pantar: Volume 3
The Papuan Languages of Timor, Alor and Pantar: Volume 3

Author: Antoinette Schapper

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-10-12

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 1501511157

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

These volumes present sketches of the Papuan languages scattered over the islands of Timor, Alor and Pantar. Together they give an authoritative and comprehensive overview of the unique and diverse grammars of the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages, a family of 'Papuan outliers' located at the western perimeter of Melanesia. While largely undescribed until recently, the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages are now among the most intensively studied Papuan families. In this third volume, five new sketches of members of the family are presented, all written by specialist linguists on the basis of original field work.

The Papuan Languages of New Guinea
The Papuan Languages of New Guinea

Author: William A. Foley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1986-11-20

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780521286213

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This introduction to the descriptive and historical linguistics of the Papuan languages of New Guinea provide an accessible account of one of the richest and most diverse linguistic situations in the world. The Papuan languages number over 700 (or 20 per cent of the world's total) in more than sixty language families. Less than a quarter of the individual languages have yet been adequately documented, and in this sense William Foley's book might be considered premature. However, in the search for language universals and generalisations in linguistic typology, it would be foolhardy to neglect the information that is available. In this respect alone, the present volume, systematically organised on mainly typology principles, is particularly timely and useful. In addition, the processes of linguistic diffusion are present in New Guinea to an extent probably paralleled elsewhere on the globe. The Papuan Languages of New Guinea will be of interest not only to general and comparative linguists and to typologists, but also to sociolinguists and anthropologists for the information it provides on the social dynamics of language content.

Hua, a Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea
Hua, a Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea

Author: John Haiman

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1980-01-01

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 9027230048

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

There is no country in the world where as many different languages are spoken as in New Guinea, approximately a fifth of the languages in the world. Most of these so-called Papuan languages seem to be unrelated to languages spoken elsewhere. The present work is the first truly comprehensive study of such a language, Hua. The chief typological peculiarity of Hua is the existence of a 'medial verb'construction used to conjoin clauses in compound and complex sentences. Hua also shows a fundamental morphological distinction between coordinate and subordinate medial clauses, the latter are not 'tense-iconic', the events they describe are not necessarily prior to the event described in later clauses. Moreover their truth is always presupposed. The distribution and behaviour of a post-nominal suffix - mo provides insights into the nature of topics, conditional clauses, and functional definitions of the parts of speech. In phonology, the central rules of assimilation are constrained by the universal hierarchy of sonority, which may, however, be derived from binary features. These are some of the areas in which the grammar of Hua is unusually perspicuous. The present work aims at a standard of completeness such that it would be a useful reference work for research in almost any theoretical topic.

A Grammar and Dictionary of Tayap
A Grammar and Dictionary of Tayap

Author: Don Kulick

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 632

ISBN-13: 1501512021

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Tayap is a small, previously undocumented Papuan language, spoken in a single village called Gapun, in the lower Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea. The language is an isolate, unrelated to any other in the area. Furthermore, Tayap is dying. Fewer than fifty speakers actively command it today. Based on linguistic anthropological work conducted over the course of thirty years, this book describes the grammar of the language, detailing its phonology, morphology and syntax. It devotes particular attention to verbs, which are the most elaborated area of the grammar, and which are complex, fusional and massively suppletive.The book also provides a full Tayap-English-Tok Pisin dictionary. A particularly innovative contribution is the detailed discussions of how Tayap’'s grammar is dissolving in the language of young speakers. The book exemplifies how the complex structures in fluent speakers’ Tayap are reduced or reanalyzed by younger speakers. This grammar and dictionary should therefore be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the mechanics of how languages disappear. The fact that it is the sole documentation of this unique Papuan language should also make it of interest to areal specialists and language typologists.