Pacific Linguistics: new publications

[Malcolm Ross]

PACIFIC LINGUISTICS is happy to announce the publication of
the titles below:

A grammar of Tetun Dili
by Catharina Williams-van Klinken, John Hajek, Rachel Nordlinger

The Lolovoli dialect of the North-East Ambae language,
Vanuatu
by Catriona Hyslop

A Grammar of Limilngan: A Language of the Mary River Region,
Northern Territory, Australia
by Mark Harvey

Taba: description of a South Halmahera Austronesian language
by John Bowden

The history and typology of western Austronesian voice
systems
edited by Fay Wouk and Malcolm Ross (editors)

These works are described below.

Prices are in Australian dollars (one Australian dollar is
currently equivalent to about US$ 0,52).

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A grammar of Tetun Dili

by Catharina Williams-van Klinken, John
Hajek, Rachel Nordlinger
PL 520

Tetun Dili is an Austronesian language spoken as a first
language in Dili, East Timor.  It is also spoken as a lingua
franca throughout much of this fledgling nation, and is set
to become its national language.  This grammar describes the
basic structure of Tetun Dili, covering phonology and
morphology, as well as phrase-, clause- and sentence-level
syntax.  It is based on a corpus of both spoken and written
texts, supplemented by elicitation.  While the focus is
primarily on the spoken language, comparisons are made with
both written and liturgical varieties.  In contrast to the
more conservative Tetun Terik variety, Tetun Dili shows
strong Portuguese influence after centuries of contact,
particularly in its lexicon and phonology.  This work
constitutes the most detailed grammatical description to
date of any language of East Timor, complementing an earlier
description of Tetun Terik as spoken in West Timor.  ISBN: 0
85883 509 6 AUS $24.75 International $22.50

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The Lolovoli dialect of the North-East Ambae language,
Vanuatu

by Catriona Hyslop
PL 515

North-East Ambae is a member
of the Northern Vanuatu linkage of Oceanic.  It is a
conservative Oceanic Language, has strict AVO/SV word order
and possesses head-marking characteristics.  This
description includes a detailed analysis of the system of
spatial reference that operates in the language.  Possessive
and associative constructions are also described in detail.
2001 ISBN 0 85883 453 7 xxxvi + 476 pp.  AUS $59.40
International $54.00 Weight 1000g

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A Grammar of Limilngan: A Language of the Mary River Region,
Northern Territory, Australia

Mark  Harvey, PL 516

This grammar provides a description of Limilngan, a previously
undescribed and now extinct language of northern Australia.
Australian languages generally show a high degree of
structural similarity to one another.  Limilngan shows some
of the common Australian patterns, but in other areas it
diverges significantly from them.  It has a standard
Australian phonological inventory, but its phonotactic
patterns are unusual.  Some heterorganic clusters such as
/kb/ are of markedly higher frequency than homorganic
clusters such as /nd/.  Like a number of Australian
languages, Limilngan has many vowel-initial morphemes.
However, historically these result from lenition and not
from initial dropping as elsewhere in Australia.

Like many northern languages, it has complex systems of both
prefixation and suffixation to nominals and verbs.
Prefixation provides information about nominal
classification (four classes), mood, and pronominal
cross-reference (subjects and objects).  Suffixation
provides information about case, tense, and aspect.
Limilngan differs from most Australian languages in that a
considerable amount of its morphology is unproductive,
showing complex and irregular allomorphic variation.

Limilngan is like most Australian languages in that it may
be described as a free word order language.  However, word
order is not totally free and strictly ordered phrasal
compounding structures are significant (e.g. in the
formation of denominal verbs).  2001 ISBN 0 85883 461 8 AUS
$44.55 International $40.50

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Taba: description of a South Halmahera Austronesian language

John Bowden
PL 521

Taba is an Austronesian language spoken in the Halmahera
region of eastern Indonesia.  This book is the only
comprehensive modern grammar of any language from the South
Halmahera-West New Guinea subgroup that is a sister to the
much better documented Oceanic branch.  Taba is a mixed
split-S and accusative language with a rich variety of
phonemic consonant clusters, a complex system of
directionals, and many other features of interest to both
Austronesianists and general typologists.  The analysis of
ditransitive clauses is a major innovation: the author
contends that ditransitives exhibit a mixed primary object
and 'split-P' pattern of argument alignment.  The grammar
also contains a wealth of information on the sometimes
radical changes occuring in contemporary Taba under the
impact of Malay.

John Bowden is a Research Fellow in Linguistics at the
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the
Australian National University.  After completing his
undergraduate studies at the University of Auckland and a
doctorate at the University of Melbourne, he spent a year as
a post-doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute
for Psycholinguistics.  This grammar is a revised version of
his PhD dissertation.  His major research interests are in
languages of the east Nusantara region, in grammatical
typology, and in language contact phenomena.  AUS $69.85
International $63.50

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The history and typology of western Austronesian voice
systems

Fay Wouk and Malcolm Ross (editors)
  PL 518

The 'focus' systems of western Austronesian languages have
long intrigued grammarians, typologists and historical
linguists, and this book significantly expands accessible
information on them.  It is the outcome of a workshop on
focus held at the Eighth International Conference on
Austronesian Linguistics in Taipei in December 1997.  Part I
contains three overview contributions: one on some of the
typological issues of ‘focus’ languages (Nikolaus
Himmelman), on possible histories of western Austronesian
voice (Malcolm Ross), and on the history of voice systems
and on their study (Robert Blust).  Part II, ‘Languages of
Sulawesi’, has descriptive papers by Mark Donohue, Phil
Quick and Nikolaus Himmelmann and a historical contribution
by David Mead.  Part III, on the rest of Indonesia and
Malaysia, has descriptive papers on Karo Batak (Clodagh
Norwood), Riau Indonesian (David Gil) and Bonggi (Sabah,
Michael Boutin), a comparative account of the languages of
Lombok and Sumbawa (Fay Wouk), and a descriptivehistorical
account of Javanese (Gloria Poejosoedarmo).  The
contributions in Part IV concern the Philippines and Taiwan.
They range from Sama languages in the extreme southwest of
the region (Jun Akamine and JoAnn Gault), through
Hiligayonon and Yogad in the centre and north of the
Philippines (Walter Spitz), to Seediq of northern Taiwan
(Arthur Holmer).  Erik Zobel examines Chamorro and Palauan
evidence diachronically and proposes a new Nuclear
Malayo-Polynesian subgroup.  ISBN: 0 85883 477 4 AUS $76.45
International $69.50

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Orders may be placed by mail, e-mail or telephone with:

Publishing, Imaging and Cartographic Services (PICS)
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies The Australian
National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Australia
Tel: +61 (0)2 6125 3269 Fax:    +61 (0)2 6125 9975

mailto://Jo.Bushby@anu.edu.au

Credit card orders are accepted.

For our catalogue and other materials, see:

http://pacling.anu.edu.au (under construction)

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Other enquiries (but not orders) should go to:

The Publications Administrator Pacific Linguistics Research
School of Pacific and Asian Studies The Australian National
University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia

Tel: +61 (0)2 6125 2742 Fax: +61 (0)2 6125 4896

mailto://jmanley@coombs.anu.edu.au
--
_____________________________________
Dr Malcolm D. Ross
Senior Fellow
Department of Linguistics
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
CANBERRA ACT 0200