Download or read book Bislama Reference Grammar written by Terry Crowley and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2004-05-31 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bislama is the national language of Vanuatu, the world's most linguistically diverse nation with at least 80 actively spoken Oceanic languages used by about 200,000 people. Bislama began as a plantation pidgin based on English in the nineteenth century, but it has since developed into a unique language with a grammar and vocabulary very different from English. It is one of very few national languages for which there is no readily available reference grammar. This book aims to fill this gap by providing an extensive account of the grammar of Bislama as it is used by ordinary Ni-Vanuatu. It does not, therefore, aim to describe any kind of artificial written norm but sets out to capture a range of different kinds of ways that Ni-Vanuatu will say things in various contexts, both written and spoken, formal and informal. The thrust of this volume is to show that Bislama has a grammar—an unfamiliar concept for those educated in Vanuatu. It also shows that Bislama is a language of considerable complexity, which will come as a surprise to many of its users, who have been taught to view their language as somehow "simple" and even "deficient."

Download or read book A New Bislama Dictionary written by Terry Crowley and published by [email protected]. This book was released on 2003 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A new Bislama dictionary is a substantially updated version of the first edition, which reflects the ever-changing vocabulary of Bislama, the national language of Vanuatu."--Back cover.

Download or read book Toward a Reference Grammar of Tok Pisin written by John W. M. Verhaar and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Kokota Grammar written by Bill Palmer and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-10-31 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work describes the grammar of Kokota, a highly endangered Oceanic language of the Solomon Islands, spoken by about nine hundred people on the island of Santa Isabel. After several long periods among the Kokota, Dr. Palmer has written an unusually detailed and comprehensive description of the language. Kokota has never before been described, so this work makes an important contribution to our knowledge of the Oceanic languages of island Melanesia. Kokota Grammar examines the phonology of the language and includes a lengthy section on stress assignment. It continues with chapters on nouns and noun phrases, minor participant types, possession, argument structure, the verb complex, clause structure, imperative and interrogative constructions, and subordination and coordination (including verb serialization). The typological interest of Kokota, along with its degree of endangerment and the paucity of information on Northwest Solomonic languages in general, combined with the level of detail given in the volume, make this a work of considerable interest to Austronesian linguists, typologists, syntacticians, phonologists, and all who are involved in describing and documenting endangered languages.

Download or read book A Grammar of Unua written by Elizabeth Pearce and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents a description of Unua, one of two dialects of Unua-Pangkumu, an Oceanic language of Malakula Island, Vanuatu. Unua has about 700 speakers who are bilinguals using Unua in local interactions and using the national language, Bislama, non-locally, as well as in local public and religious settings. The description is based on material collected in the field from speakers of different age-groups in the five Unua villages. The data corpus includes a substantial body of material: contemporary translations of the New Testament gospels; audio-recorded transcribed and glossed texts; and elicited material collected with a range of speakers. The analysis includes comparisons with other Malakula languages and is both of typological and historical-comparative interest. The data documentation is substantial and detailed.

Download or read book A Grammar of Nese written by Lana Grelyn Takau and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nese is a dying Oceanic language spoken on the island of Malekula, in northern Vanuatu. This book, based on first-hand fieldwork data, and without adhering to any particular syntactic framework, presents a synchronic grammatical description of Nese’s phonology and syntax. Despite being on the verge of extinction, with fewer than 20 living speakers, the language displays intriguing properties—including but not exclusive to the cross-linguistically rare apicolabial phonemes, interesting vowel-raising patterns in some word classes, and a discontinuous negation relationship that is obligatorily expressed with the irrealis mood marker. This book will probably be the last work published on Nese.

Download or read book A Grammar of Neverver written by Julie Barbour and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neverver is an Oceanic language spoken by just over 500 people on the high island of Malekula in Vanuatu. Drawing on an extensive corpus of field recordings collected between 2004 and 2008, the analysis reveals a very interesting phonological system with six prenasalized segments, rich systems of possession, tense/aspect/mood marking, valence change, and verb serialization. The grammar is of interest to specialists in Oceanic and Austronesian linguistics, as well as to general linguists, especially those interested in linguistic typology.

Download or read book A Grammar of Daakaka written by Kilu von Prince and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reference grammar is the first description of the endangered Oceanic language Daakaka. This language is spoken by about 1000 speakers on the island of Ambrym, Vanuatu. The data on which the analysis is based were collected by the author during a documentation project between 2009 and 2012. All structural levels of the language are discussed, including discussions of reduplication patterns and orthography design, nominal and verbal subclasses, clause types and information structure and the different types of subordinate clauses. Particular emphasis is given to the intricate system of nominal possession, the system of TAM- and polarity markers and serial verb constructions. Literary genres of the region and related art forms such as songs and the symbolic sand drawings are discussed in the final chapter. The grammar will be especially relevant to readers with an interest in Oceanic languages, general typology and theoretical linguistics as well as those with a broader interest in the region.

Download or read book A Grammar of Mavea written by Valérie Guérin and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spoken on Mavea Island by approximately 32 people, Mavea is an endangered Oceanic language of Vanuatu. This work provides grammatical descriptions of this hitherto undescribed language. Fourteen chapters, containing more than 1,400 examples, cover topics in the phonology and morphosyntax of Mavea, with an emphasis on the latter. Of particular interest are examples of individual speaker variation presented throughout the grammar; the presence of three linguo-labials (still used today by a single speaker) that were unexpectedly found before the rounded vowel /o/; and a chapter on numerals and the counting system, which have long been replaced by Bislama’s but are remembered by a handful of speakers. Most of the grammatical descriptions derive from a corpus of texts of various genres (conversations, traditional stories, personal histories, etc.) gathered during the author’s fieldwork, conducted for eleven months between 2005 and 2007.

Download or read book A Grammar of South Efate written by Nicholas Thieberger and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-07-31 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents topics in the grammar of South Efate, an Oceanic language of Central Vanuatu as spoken in Erakor village on the outskirts of PortVila. It is one of the first such grammars to take seriously the provision of primary data for the verification of claims made in the analysis. The research is set in the context of increasing attention being paid to the state of the world’s smaller languages and their prospects for being spoken into the future. In addition to providing an outline of the grammar of the language, the author describes the process of developing an archivable textual corpus that is used to make example sentences citable and playable, using software (Audiamus) developed in the course of the research. An included DVD provides a dictionary and finderlist, a set of interlinearized example texts and elicited sentences, and playable media versions of most example sentences and of the example texts.

Download or read book Creole Studies Phylogenetic Approaches written by Peter Bakker and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book launches a new approach to creole studies founded on phylogenetic network analysis. Phylogenetic approaches offer new visualisation techniques and insights into the relationships between creoles and non-creoles, creoles and other contact varieties, and between creoles and lexifier languages. With evidence from creole languages in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific, the book provides new perspectives on creole typology, cross-creole comparisons, and creole semantics. The book offers an introduction for newcomers to the fields of creole studies and phylogenetic analysis. Using these methods to analyse a variety of linguistic features, both structural and semantic, the book then turns to explore old and new questions and problems in creole studies. Original case studies explore the differences and similarities between creoles, and propose solutions to the problems of how to classify creoles and how they formed and developed. The book provides a fascinating glimpse into the unity and heterogeneity of creoles and the areal influences on their development. It also provides metalinguistic discussions of the “creole” concept from different perspectives. Finally, the book reflects critically on the findings and methods, and sets new agendas for future studies. Creole Studies has been written for a broad readership of scholars and students in the fields of contact linguistics, biolinguistics, sociolinguistics, language typology, and semantics.

Download or read book The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages written by Claire Bowern and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 1179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages is a wide-ranging reference work that explores the more than 550 traditional and new Indigenous languages of Australia. Australian languages have long played an important role in diachronic and synchronic linguistics and are a vital testing ground for linguistic theory. Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive and accessible guide to the their vast linguistic diversity. This volume fills that gap, bringing together leading scholars and junior researchers to provide an up-to-date guide to all aspects of the languages of Australia. The chapters in the book explore typology, documentation, and classification; linguistic structures from phonology to pragmatics and discourse; sociolinguistics and language variation; and language in the community. The final part offers grammatical sketches of a selection of languages, sub-groups, and families. At a time when the number of living Australian languages is significantly reduced even compared to twenty year ago, this volume establishes priorities for future linguistic research and contributes to the language expansion and revitalization efforts that are underway.

Download or read book Pacific Languages in Education written by France Mugler and published by [email protected]. This book was released on 1996 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This collection of articles and interviews explores policy, practice and attitudes relating to the use of Pacific languages in education systems of most Pacific Island countries and territories, from pre-school to tertiary level. It records history ; it deals with current attitudes and prejudices ; and it focuses attention on perceived problems with the medium of education in many parts of the region."--Back cover

Download or read book Weaving Theology in Oceania written by Beatrice Green and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clear assessment of our needs in a global society, and sound creative solutions from an Oceanic perspective and beyond, form the subject matter of this book. Here, the cries of suffering from women in violent relationships, people yearning for growth and dignity, others with mental and emotional trauma, and mother Earth herself are heard, and enlist support and direction from those whose energy and insight are centred in faith, hope and love and firmly anchored in Christian professional academic endeavour. The book is patterned after the woven mats, roof and sails of the great ocean-going canoe to image the diversity of content of this extraordinary gathering of hearts, hands and minds. While it reflects the global scholarly Christian concern and outreach indicative of our times, and a theological approach that is interactive and interdependent, it reveals a ‘weaving’ that is unfinished because the voyage must continue onwards, in an attitude of deep listening and open questioning. As such, the work gathered here represents an energetic contribution towards courageous engagement in the travail that characterises our extraordinary transitional era as we move towards a new consciousness, and the book will be of particular interest to academic theologians, educationalists, Church authorities and pastoral workers from the Oceanic region. However, it will also inspire and inform comparable groups from other parts of the world simply because what is presented here has universal implications.

Download or read book The Structure of Creole Words written by Parth Bhatt and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together articles that are focused on segmental, syllabic and morphological aspects of creole words, thus contributing to the ongoing debates about the nature of phonology and morphology and their role in emergence and development of these languages. The papers cover a wide range of creole languages with different lexifier languages and address empirical, typological, historical and theoretical issues, drawing our attention to hitherto unknown phenomena or offering interesting new analyses of established facts. With contributions from: Parth Bhatt, Alain Kihm, Thomas Klein, Emmanuel Nikiema, Ingo Plag, Marina Pucciarelli, Jean-Louis Rougé, Eric Russel-Webb, Shobha Satyanath, Emmanuel Schang, Mareile Schramm, Norval Smith, Marleen van de Vate and Tonjes Veenstra.

Download or read book Impossible Persons written by Daniel Harbour and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-10-28 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking, comprehensive formal theory of grammatical person that recasts its empirical foundations and re-envisions its theoretical core. Impossible Persons, Daniel Harbour's comprehensive and groundbreaking formal theory of grammatical person, upends understanding of a universal and ubiquitous grammatical category. Breaking with much past work, Harbour establishes three core theses, one empirical, one theoretical, and one metatheoretical. Together, these redefine the data subsumed under the rubric of “person,” simplify the feature inventory that a theory of person must posit, and restructure the metatheory in which feature theory as a whole resides. At its heart, Impossible Persons poses a simple question of the possible versus the actual: in how many ways could languages configure their person systems, in how many do they configure them, and what explains the size and shape of the shortfall? Harbour's empirical thesis—that the primary object of study for persons are partitions, not syncretisms—transforms a sea of data into a categorical problem of the attested and the absent. Positing, innovatively, that features denote actions, not predicates, he shows that two features alone generate all and only the attested systems. This apparently poor inventory yields rich explanatory dividends, covering the morphological composition of person, its interaction with number, its connection to space, and properties of its semantics and linearization. Moreover, the core properties of this approach are shared with Harbour's earlier work on number features. Jointly, these results establish an important metatheoretical corollary concerning the balance between richness of feature semantics and restrictiveness of feature inventories. This corollary holds deep implications for how linguists should approach feature theory in future.

Download or read book Onsets written by Nina Topintzi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-08 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of the 'onset', i.e. the consonant(s) before the vowel of a syllable, is critical within phonology. While phonologists have examined the segmental behaviour of onsets, their prosodic status has instead been largely overlooked. In fact, most previous accounts have stipulated that onsets are insignificant when it comes to the 'heaviness' of syllables. In this book Nina Topintzi presents a new theory of onsets, arguing for their fundamental role in the structure of language both in the underlying and surface representation, unlike previous assumptions. To capture the weight behaviour of onsets, a novel account is proposed that relates their interaction with voicing, tone and stress. Using numerous case-studies and data from a variety of languages and phenomena (including stress, compensatory lengthening, gemination and word minimality), the book introduces a model that reflects the true behaviour of onsets, demonstrating profound implications for syllable and weight theories.