[Lingtyp] Grammatical diversity of Oceania, suggestions for features?
Hedvig Skirgård
hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com
Wed Apr 5 03:24:00 UTC 2017
Hi David,
That's an excellent idea! Thanks. Some of these I know from reading other
papers of yours, and some already overlap with Reesink, Dunn et al and with
Grambank. Would it be possible however to get some more detailed definition
on them? For example, what constituted "optional TAM marking"? What did it
take for a language to be classified as "yes" for that feature?
/Hedvig
*****
*Tōfā soifua,*
*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.
On 5 April 2017 at 13:14, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
> Hi Hedvig,
>
> in Gil (2015) I define a Mekong-Mamberamo area extending from Mainland
> Southeast Asia through the Indonesian archipelago and into western new
> Guinea, characterized by 17 features which I've listed below. In the final
> section of the paper, I briefly discuss the extent to which these 17
> features "overflow" from the Mekong-Mamberamo area into Oceania, due to the
> spread of Austronesian languages from New Guinea into the Pacific. So you
> may wish to follow up on this and examine the extent to which the languages
> of Oceania exhibit these features.
>
> Best,
>
> David
>
> Gil, David (2015) "The Mekong-Mamberamo Linguistic Area", in N.J. Enfield
> and B. Comrie eds., *Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, The State of
> the Art*, Pacific Linguistics, DeGruyter Mouton, Berlin, 266-355.
>
> *17 Mekong-Mamberamo Properties*
>
> 1. passing gesture
>
> 2. repeated dental clicks expressing amazement
>
> 3. conventionalized greeting with 'where'
>
> 4. 'eye day' > 'sun' lexicalization
>
> 5. d/t place-of-articulation asymmetry
>
> 6. numeral classifiers
>
> 7. verby adjectives
>
> 8. basic SVO word order
>
> 9. iamitive perfects
>
> 10. 'give' causatives
>
> 11. low differentiation of adnominal attributive constructions
>
> 12. weakly developed grammatical voice
>
> 13. isolating word structure
>
> 14. short words
>
> 15. low grammatical-morpheme density
>
> 16. optional thematic-role flagging
>
> 17. optional TAM marking
>
>
> On 05/04/2017 10:21, Hedvig Skirgård 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
>
> <http://www.ioling.org>www.ioling.org
>
> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
> <http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.>http://humans-who-read-grammar
> s.blogspot.
>
>
>
>
> 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
>
> <http://www.ioling.org>www.ioling.org
>
> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
> <http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.>http://humans-who-read-grammar
> s.blogspot.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
> --
> David Gil
>
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>
> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <+49%203641%20686834>
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>
>
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