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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.
"An inter-disciplinary exploration of the history of humans in New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, which make up the biogeographic and cultural region that is coming to be known as Near Oceania, with particular reference to the people who speak Papuan (non-Austronesian) languages"--Back cover.
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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 lat...
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.
Volume 2 brings together four new sketches of Timor-Alor-Pantar languages. Each sketch is written by specialist linguists on the basis of their own original field work conducted in the last decade. The languages show significant grammatical variation which will be of great interest to typologists and historical linguists. A substantial introduction orients the reader in the major issues, both historical and typological, of TAP linguistics.
This volume provides descriptive sketches of the Papuan languages scattered over the islands of Timor, Alor, and Pantar at the western perimeter of Melanesia. Timor-Alor-Pantar languages are a group of related "Papuan outliers," which until recently were largely undocumented. This book provides an authoritative and comprehensive overview of the unique and diverse grammars of the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages.
This is a comprehensive description of a language spoken some 450 km offshore from the mainland of Papua New Guinea. The language is remarkable for its phonological, morphological and syntactic complexity. As the sole surviving member of its language family, and with little historical contact with surrounding languages, the language provides evidence of the kind of languages spoken in this part of the world before the Austronesian expansion. The grammar provides detailed information on the phoneme inventory, morphology, syntax and select semantic fields. Remarkable features include a 90 phoneme inventory including unique sounds, a morphology with thousands of non-compositional portmanteau el...
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 pa...
These volumes present descriptive sketches of the Papuan languages scattered over the islands of Timor, Alor, and Pantar. Together they comprise an authoritative and comprehensive overview of the unique and diverse grammars of the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages. The Timor-Alor-Pantar languages are a group of related "Papuan outliers" located at the western perimeter of the Melanesian area, which until recently were largely undocumented.