11.462, Books: Polynesian, NativeAmer, Celtic, Arabic Ling

Sat Mar 4 17:40:22 UTC 2000

LINGUIST List:  Vol-11-462. Sat Mar 4 2000. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 11.462, Books: Polynesian, NativeAmer, Celtic, Arabic Ling

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
            Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Associate Editors:  Martin Jacobsen <marty at linguistlist.org>
                    Ljuba Veselinova <ljuba at linguistlist.org>
		    Scott Fults <scott at linguistlist.org>
		    Jody Huellmantel <jody at linguistlist.org>
		    Karen Milligan <karen at linguistlist.org>

Assistant Editors:  Lydia Grebenyova <lydia at linguistlist.org>
		    Naomi Ogasawara <naomi at linguistlist.org>
		    James Yuells <james at linguistlist.org>

Software development: John H. Remmers <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
                      Sudheendra Adiga <sudhi at linguistlist.org>
                      Qian Liao <qian at linguistlist.org>

Home Page:  http://linguistlist.org/

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scott at linguistlist.org>
 ==========================================================================

Links to the websites of all LINGUIST's supporting publishers are
available at the end of this issue.

=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Fri, 03 Mar 2000 09:02:57 +0100
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA)
Subject:  Polynesian Langs:Pileni, ÅSHILD NÆSS

2)
Date:  Fri, 03 Mar 2000 09:05:25 +0100
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA)
Subject:  Native American Langs: Oneida, C. Abbott

3)
Date:  Fri, 03 Mar 2000 09:49:27 +0100
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA)
Subject:  Celtic Ling: Negation, Referentiality & Boundedness in Gwenedeg Breton

4)
Date:  Fri, 03 Mar 2000 10:14:44 +0100
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA)
Subject:  Palestinian Arabic: Rural Palestinian Arabic, 2nd Ed, K. N. Shahin

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 03 Mar 2000 09:02:57 +0100
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA)
Subject:  Polynesian Langs:Pileni, ÅSHILD NÆSS

Pileni
ÅSHILD NÆSS, University of Oslo

The Polynesian Outlier language Pileni is spoken by approximately 2,
000 people on a group of small coral islands in Temotu Province,
Solomon Islands. Situated in a fairly isolated area of the Pacific,
the islands have a long tradition of trade connections with the nearby
Reefs and Santa Cruz islands, whose little-described languages do not
appear to be Austronesian and so are totally unrelated to Pileni. This
prolonged language contact has resulted in a number of features in
Pileni which are highly unusual for a Polynesian language.

The language has little morphological case-marking and relies mainly
on a basic SVO word order for the differentiation of nominal
arguments, although word order is flexible according to certain rules.
Pileni is clearly a nominative-accusative language, although certain
morphosyntactic processes reflect what may be traces of an earlier
ergative morphology.

In the basics of its phonology and morphology Pileni resembles other
Polynesian languages, although the phonology is considerably more
complex than is common in these languages, with phonemic aspiration on
stops and a number of phonetically conditioned consonant alternations.
The language exhibits characteristic Polynesian features of morphology
such as the distinction between "o-type" and "a-type" possession and a
complex system of personal pronouns.

Since this is the first systematic description of the Pileni language
and based on a relatively limited material, it must be regarded as
preliminary and open to correction. It will, however, provide a useful
basis for further studies of the Pileni language.

ISBN 3 89586 932 5.
Languages of the World/Materials 325.
Ca. 90pp. Ca. EUR 28.46 / USD 32.50 / DM 56 / £ 20.

Ordering information for individuals: Please give us your creditcard
no.  / expiry date. Prices in this information include shipment
worldwide by airmail. A standing order for this series is available
with special discounts offered to individual subscribers.

Free copies of LINCOM'S newsflashes 18 & 19 are now available from
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de.

LINCOM EUROPA, Freibadstr. 3
D-81543 Muenchen
Germany
FAX +49 89 62269404
http://www.lincom-europa.com
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de.

-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 03 Mar 2000 09:05:25 +0100
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA)
Subject:  Native American Langs: Oneida, C. Abbott

Oneida
CLIFFORD ABBOTT, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

Oneida is an endangered language of the Iroquoian family of
northeastern North America. Among its more notable structural features
are: its relatively small phonemic inventory lacking in labials; its
use of whispered syllables; the complexity of the verbal morphology;
the dominance of verbal structures over nominal ones; and the
productive use of noun incorporation.

The current work is based on two and a half decades of field work in
the Wisconsin community of Oneidas where there are now fewer than a
couple dozen native speakers remaining. Other communities exist in
Ontario and New York state where the language is similarly endangered.
Despite the endangered status there is an oral literature, primarily
in the rich ceremonial tradition. The community actively invests in
language revitalization efforts and there is limited literacy in an
orthography not more than a few decades old.

Clifford Abbott is an associate professor in Information Sciences and
in American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay.
He has worked with the Wisconsin Oneida community since 1974
developing language revitalization materials. He has published
articles on Oneida texts and structure as well as a dictionary in
1996.

Outline of Oneida Grammar:
Setting
        related languages
        the speech community
Phonology
        phonemics
        suprasegmentals
        whispering
Morphology
        word classes - formaland functional
        verb morphology
                prefix system
                pronominal system
                stem structure and stem classes
                transitivity
                tense\aspect suffixes
                noun incorporation
        noun morphology
                possessive prefixes
                suffixes
                        locatives
                        plurals
                        others
        particles
                independent pronouns
                interrogatives
                adverbials
                syntactic particles
                discourse particles
Syntax
        basic structures
        complex structures
Text analysis
Charts
        prefix system
        pronoun system
        verb structure
        tense\aspect suffixes
Bibliography

ISBN 3 89586 555 9.
Languages of the World/Materials 301.
Ca. 60 pp. EUR 25.46 / USD 31 / DM 49.30 / £ 18.

Ordering information for individuals: Please give us your creditcard
no.  / expiry date. Prices in this information include shipment
worldwide by airmail. A standing order for this series is available
with special discounts offered to individual subscribers.

Free copies of LINCOM'S newsflashes 18 & 19 are now available from
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de.

LINCOM EUROPA, Freibadstr. 3
D-81543 Muenchen
Germany
FAX +49 89 62269404
http://www.lincom-europa.com
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de.

-------------------------------- Message 3 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 03 Mar 2000 09:49:27 +0100
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA)
Subject:  Celtic Ling: Negation, Referentiality & Boundedness in Gwenedeg Breton

Negation, Referentiality and Boundedness in Gwenedeg Breton
A Case Study in Markedness and Asymmetry

NATHALIE SCHAPANSKY, Simon Fraser University

Negative sentences are considered to be marked vis-a-vis their
positive counterparts. However, the markedness of sentence negation
cannot be solely defined in terms of the presence or absence of a
polarity particle, as shown for Gwenedeg, a Breton dialect spoken in
south central Brittany, in the area known as Morbihan. Gwenedeg Breton
has been ignored in theoretical works because of its low prestige and
its phonological differences, which are reflected in its own spelling
system respected in this work.

Breton, a verb-second language (V2), displays both negative and
positive sentence particles. The markedness of sentence negation is
realized rather by structural and semantic/pragmatic asymmetries.

Structural asymmetries (chapter two) are associated with Breton
V2. They relate to the notion of Predicate Domain, which must be
bound. Whereas the negative particle binds the predicate domain, its
positive counterparts do not. Hence preverbal noun phrases (NPs) serve
to bind the predicate domain in affirmative but not in negative
sentences. Two of the three preverbal positions available in
affirmative sentences remain accessible in negative
sentences. Semantic/pragmatic asymmetries (chapter three) pertaining
to the V2 order relate to referentiality. In Breton, referential NPs
can bind the predicate domain and appear preverbally while
non-referential NPs marked by the preposition ag 'of'
cannot. Potential binders for the predicate domain depend also on
auxiliary selection. The auxiliary 'to be' associated with states
shows, in the present tense, four forms demanding subject or
non-subject binders. They are sensitive to the position and
definiteness of their subjects and two of them do not occur in
negative sentences. The auxiliary 'to have', associated with events,
demands a referential subject and has no preferred binders. However,
this auxiliaryis used with eventive readings of state predicates
obtained obtained only with referential subject. In negative sentences
(chapter four), semantic asymmetries relate to aspect--event
predicates are interpreted as stative--, and to the irrealis
modality,-- indefinite NPs are interpreted as non-referential under
the scope of negation. In Breton, this rule applies to the universal
quantifier with a wide scope reading and to the existential quantifier
with a narrow scope reading, being replaced in negative sentences by
negative polarity items.

Non-referential NPs marked by ag, which represent undefined substes of
entities, must occur in postverbal position. Pragmatic asymmetries
relate to the distinction presupposition versus assertion, and to
metalinguistic negation, a marked kind of negation, which does not
affect the aspect of event predicates nor the referentiality of NPs
under its scope.  Hence the universal quantifier with a wide scope
reading, the existential quantifier with a narrow scope reading, and
the eventive reading of state predicates can occur under the scope of
metalinguistic negation. This analysis is extended to other languages.

ISBN 3 89586 918 X.
LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 05.
Ca. 200 pp. EUR 48.06 / USD 52 / DM 94 / £ 31.

Ordering information for individuals: Please give us your creditcard
no.  / expiry date. Prices in this information include shipment
worldwide by airmail. A standing order for this series is available
with special discounts offered to individual subscribers.

Free copies of LINCOM'S newsflashes 18 & 19 are now available from
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de.

LINCOM EUROPA, Freibadstr. 3
D-81543 Muenchen
Germany
FAX +49 89 62269404
http://www.lincom-europa.com
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de

-------------------------------- Message 4 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 03 Mar 2000 10:14:44 +0100
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA)
Subject:  Palestinian Arabic: Rural Palestinian Arabic, 2nd Ed, K. N. Shahin

RURAL PALESTINIAN ARABIC, 2ND EDITION
KIMARY N. SHAHIN
Birzeit University

This sketch describes a rural (fellahi) dialect of colloquial
Palestinian Arabic, that of the pre-1948 Palestine village of Abu
Shusha.  It is used by a dwindling number of speakers on the West Bank
and Gaza strip, and in locations around the Arab world and elsewhere.
Abu Shusha Palestinian is endangered.  This is due to the original
dispersion of its speakers and resulting interdialect contact, the
increasing age of its speakers, and pressure from Standard Arabic (as,
in general, on all non-urban varieties of the language) for speakers
to conform to more urban and educated speech.  Like all Arabic
colloquials, it is unwritten.

The phonemic, morphological, and syntactic systems are described.  A
sample text is presented with interlinear gloss and translation. Two
features are highlighted. The first is the vowel system, which has
many more important systematic distinctions than traditionally assumed
for Arabic. The second is the discourse, specifically, structures and
strategies as found in the sample text.

The documentation of the sketch will help in furthering work on
comparative Arabic dialectology.  This second edition improves on the
first in documentation and analysis.  New material includes verb types
(strong vs. weak) and bibliographic update.

ISBN 3 89586 960 0.
Languages of the World/Materials 28.
50 pp. USD 32.50 / DM 49.30 /  £ 19.90.
2nd edition: 03/2000

Ordering information for individuals: Please give us your creditcard
no.  / expiry date. Prices in this information include shipment
worldwide by airmail. A standing order for this series is available
with special discounts offered to individual subscribers.

Free copies of LINCOM'S newsflashes 18 & 19 are now available from
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de.

LINCOM EUROPA, Freibadstr. 3
D-81543 Muenchen
Germany
FAX +49 89 62269404
http://www.lincom-europa.com
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 If you buy one of these books, please tell the publisher or author that you saw it on LINGUIST.

 The following publishers contribute to the support of The LINGUIST List:

 MAJOR SUPPORTERS

         Blackwell Publishers

                  http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/

         Cambridge UP -USA
                  http://www.cup.org

         Cascadilla Press
                  http://www.cascadilla.com/

         John Benjamins

                  http://www.benjamins.com/
         Oxford UP

                  http://www.oup-usa.org/

         Routledge
                  http://www.routledge.com/

         St. Jerome Publishers
                  http://www.mcc.ac.uk/stjerome

 OTHER SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS

         Finno-Ugrian Society
                  http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/sus/

         Orientalia et Africana
                  http://orient218.orient.gu.se/afrikanska/afrpubl.html

         Pacific Linguistics

                  http://pacling.anu.edu.au

         Vaxjo: Acta Wexionesia

         Virittaja Aikakauslehti
                  http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/kks/virittaja.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-11-462