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

[Hedvig Skirgård]

Hello again!

Thanks for those who have been sending comments and suggestions, let's keep
the thread going.

Just to clarify, when I wrote "oceania" above I did actually refer to the
geographic area, i.e. Polynesia + Micronesia + Melanesia. Apologies for the
confusion. (In fact, when I was growing up in Sweden, I was taught to also
include Australia in this region, but I've since learned that that's not
commonly done.) I realise that something like "pacific region" might have
been better. Apologies.

Either way, I'm interested to include languages of Melanesia, Polynesia and
Micronesia in this set.

I'll be working together with colleagues at ANU and in the Grambank
project. I'm a PhD student at ANU and one of the researchers at Glottobank.

/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 30 March 2017 at 16:34, Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear pacific linguists,
>
> What are interesting grammatical typological features for capturing the
> diversity of Oceania? (Please respond with concrete examples, and respond
> to the full list :).)
>
> 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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