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

Wed Apr 5 10:05:13 UTC 2017

Thank you Martin.

I'm sorry, I phrased myself poorly.

What I was trying to get at were grammatical features of languages of the
pacific that reveals a higher resolved picture of the diversity than our
current more global and more "bland" set of features from Grambank does,
and I would argue many of WALS feature do as well.

I agree, there's a lot of interesting features in this realm. The other
relevant consideration is features that are commonly described in grammars
of languages in the pacific, a perhaps boring and unwanted condition but
unfortunately nonetheless relevant, unless we used other methods to fill in
surveys besides reading grammars.

I already noticed that the term oceania was confusing. I take it to mean
Melanesia + Micronesia + Polynesia, i.e. including lots of non-austronesian
languages of near oceania (near oceania = PNG, west papua, Solomons and
remote oceania = the rest + reef islands + santa cruz).

Let's maybe switch to the more encompassing and vague term "pacific" for
this thread?

/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 18:55, 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). 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> 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> 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
>>>
>>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>>> http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Kilu von Prince
>>
>> Dorotheenstr. 24
>> Raum 3.311
>> (030) 2093-9755 <030%2020939755>
>>
>> Postanschrift:
>> Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
>> Unter den Linden 6
>> 10099 Berlin
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
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> &
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