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

[Hedvig Skirgård]

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

Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.
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