[Lingtyp] Grammatical diversity of Oceania, suggestions for features?

Thu Apr 6 04:00:48 UTC 2017

I rather interpreted the question as meaning “what features might indicate that Oceania forms a distinctive linguistic area?”
since essentially a list of shared features was being put forward which were presumed not to be so common elsewhere. Hence
the nature of my comment that more retracted articulation for voiced coronals is quite common elsewhere (see also
contributions from Olle Engstrand and Mark Donohoe).

“Oceania” is certainly an ambiguous term: I agree that in any specific case its scope needs to be made explicit.
In my own work I use the term to refer geographically to the area east of Wallace’s line and west of the 
western coastline of the Americas. Linguistically I use it to refer to the languages in this area
that do not belong to families which are more “at home” in another area; in this case it means that Oceania
includes Australian and the various “Papuan” groups, but excludes Austronesian since this family is anchored in 
South-East Asia and Aleut and the “Eskimo” languages since these relate to language families the majority of 
whose members are in North America. 

Ian

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 02:55, Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
> 
> I must say that I find the question ("what are interesting grammatical typological features for capturing the diversity of Oceania?") a bit odd.
> 
> Reesink & Dunn were specifically concerned with inferring prehistory, and one might ask which grammatical features are the most conservative (or stable). But this would hardly be an Oceania-specific question.
> 
> I'm not sure what is meant by "capturing the diversity of" something. When an area is relatively uniform in salient features (e.g. with respect to word order, or vowel systems), then one needs less salient features to see internal diversity. But are there salient features with respect to which "Oceania" is relatively uniform?
> 
> In other words, which feature would NOT be "interesting"?
> 
> And here's another question: What is "Oceania"? This term has so many different meanings that I'm confused by it (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania>). Do at least the specialists in Oceanic languages agree to use it in the sense of "the language area of Oceanic languages (i.e. including New Zealand and parts of New Guinea), i.e. in a sense that is not even mentioned by the Wikipedia article.
> 
> Best,
> Martin
> 
> 
> On 05.04.17 10:32, Kilu von Prince wrote:
>> Hi Hedvig,
>> 
>> what an intriguing proposal! I'm working on a comparative project on Oceanic languages of Melanesia, so there are quite a number of things that come to my mind. For the time being, I'd suggest the following:
>> 
>> * Portmanteau subject-agreement markers that simultaneously encode TMA information (y/n)
>> * Modes of negation: simple marker, circumfix/ circumclitics, or portmanteau TMA markers that simultaneously encode polarity
>> * Using "finish", "it is finished" etc. frequently to structure a narrative, or more generally as a marker of perfectifity (y/n)
>> * Using serial verb "go" to indicate passage of time in a narrative (y/n)
>> 
>> These are not necessarily the only or most interesting things to look at from our perspective, I'll have to think about it some more. Feel free to contact me directly for further exchange of ideas.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Kilu
>> 
>> On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Kilu von Prince <kilu.von.prince at hu-berlin.de <mailto:kilu.von.prince at hu-berlin.de>> wrote:
>> Hi Hedvig,
>> 
>> what an intriguing proposal! I'm working on a comparative project on Oceanic languages of Melanesia, so there are quite a number of things that come to my mind. For the time being, I'd suggest the following:
>> 
>> * Portmanteau subject-agreement markers that simultaneously encode TMA information (y/n)
>> * Modes of negation: simple marker, circumfix/ circumclitics, or portmanteau TMA markers that simultaneously encode polarity
>> * Using "finish", "it is finished" etc. frequently to structure a narrative, or more generally as a marker of perfectifity (y/n)
>> * Using serial verb "go" to indicate passage of time in a narrative (y/n)
>> 
>> These are not necessarily the only or most interesting things to look at from our perspective, I'll have to think about it some more. Feel free to contact me directly for further exchange of ideas.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Kilu
>> 
>> On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 4:21 AM, Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com <mailto:hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Dear typologists,
>> What are interesting grammatical typological features for capturing the diversity of Oceania? I sent this message earlier to the mailing list for pacific linguistics, but I thought I'd try here as well since I didn't get any response there yet.
>> 
>> I work with a grammatical survey of the world's languages, Grambank, and I'm also personally interested in Oceania in particular for my PhD project. I've been doing some thinking as to what features would be interesting to cover to more accurately capture the grammatical diversity of Oceania in particular, besides the feature set that we already have for the world-sample.
>> 
>> One guide are the features that Reesink, Dunn et al used in their publications on Sahul and Melanesia (see attachments and references listed below).  They've taken in input from a lot of previous literature and commentary, so it's a good set.
>> 
>> Besides those, do you have other suggestions?
>> 
>> From a rather Samoan-centric perspective, I'd be inclined to add features like these:
>> 
>> Is there a "neutral" choice in attributive possession, i.e. not alienable/inalienable, dominant/subordinate?
>> Can the agent be expressed as the possessor of the verb instead of encoded in the more canonical ergative/nominative manner?
>> Can TA markers be entirely dropped in main clauses?
>> Is number of absolute arguments expressed by reduplication on the verb?
>> Clearly these need further refinement, I just wanted to give some examples. Looking forward to more suggestions!
>> 
>> Tōfā soifua,
>> Hedvig Skirgård
>> 
>> References:
>> Dunn, Michael, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A. Foley & Stephen C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309. 2072–2075. 
>> 
>> Dunn, Michael, Robert A. Foley, Stephen C. Levinson, Ger Reesink & Angela Terrill. 2007. Statistical reasoning in the evaluation of typological diversity in Island Melanesia. Oceanic Linguistics 46(2). 388-403. 
>> 
>> Dunn, Michael, Stephen C. Levinson, Eva Lindström, Ger Reesink, & Angela Terrill. 2008. Structural phylogeny in historical linguistics: Methodological explorations applied in Island Melanesia. Language 84(4). 710-759 
>> 
>> Reesink, G., Singer, R., & Dunn, M. (2009). Explaining the linguistic diversity of Sahul using population models. PLoS Biology, 7(11), e1000241. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000241
>> 
>> Reesink, Ger & Michael Dunn (2012) Systematic typological comparison as a tool for investigating language history. in Nicholas Evans and Marian Klamer (eds) Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 5 Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century. pp. 34–71
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ***
>> Hedvig Skirgård
>> 
>> PhD Candidate
>> The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
>> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
>> School of Culture, History and Language
>> College of Asia and the Pacific
>> Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
>> The Australian National University
>> Acton ACT 2601
>> Australia
>> 
>> Co-chair of Public Relations
>> Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics
>> www.ioling.org <http://www.ioling.org/>
>> 
>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
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>>  <http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot./>
>> 
>> 
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>> -- 
>> Dr. Kilu von Prince
>> 
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> -- 
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Ian Maddieson

Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico
MSC03-2130
Albuquerque NM 87131-0001

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