17.292, Review: Lang Description/Papuan Lang: Holton (2003)

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-17-292. Fri Jan 27 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.292, Review: Lang Description/Papuan Lang: Holton (2003)

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org) 
        Sheila Dooley, U of Arizona  
        Terry Langendoen, U of Arizona  

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Lindsay Butler <lindsay at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our 
Book Discussion Forum. We expect discussions to be informal and 
interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially 
invited to join in. If you are interested in leading a book 
discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available 
for review." Then contact Sheila Dooley at dooley at linguistlist.org. 

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

1)
Date: 24-Jan-2006
From: Malcolm Ross < malcolm.ross at anu.edu.au >
Subject: Tobelo 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:04:32
From: Malcolm Ross < malcolm.ross at anu.edu.au >
Subject: Tobelo  
 

AUTHOR: Holton, Gary
TITLE: Tobelo
SERIES: Languages of the World/Materials 328
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2003
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-1265.html

Malcolm Ross, Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific 
and Asian Studies, The Australian National University

DESCRIPTION

This slim volume (iv + 99 pp) contains a sketch grammar (70 pages), 
texts (27 pages), and a bibliography (2 pages) of Tobelo, a Papuan 
language of the West Papuan family. Tobelo is spoken in parts of 
northern Halmahera, an island in eastern Indonesia to the northwest 
of New Guinea. Like other volumes in Lincom Europa's Languages of 
the World/Materials series, it offers an outline of the grammar which is 
aimed at readers with typological interests. It will also appeal to the 
much smaller readership of Papuanist linguists.

The work has six parts. Part 0 (pp. 1-4) is an introduction which 
places the language in its geographic, social and linguistic 
environment and briefly surveys previous studies. Part 1 (pp. 4-12) is 
a sketch of the phonology, with notes on differences between the 
dialect described and other Tobelo dialects. It provides a brief account 
of the phonemes, vowel sequences, syllable structure, stress and 
morphophonemics.

Part 2 (pp. 12-30) describes Tobelo's lexical categories: nominals (inc. 
pronouns and proper names), verbs, property concept words, and 
minor lexical categories (adverbs, numerals and a preposition). Two 
points of typological interest stand out in Part 2. Pages 17-19 and 27-
28 outline respectively the subsystems of demonstratives and of 
directional locative adverbs, and these provide a first glimpse of the 
complex directional system which occurs in Tobelo. The second point, 
made albeit briefly on pp. 22-23, is that property concept words do not 
form a lexical category of adjectives, but are a collection of roots 
which, depending on context, behave morphosyntactically as both 
nouns and verbs (the author has written about this in Holton 1999).

Part 3 (pp. 30-48) deals with morphology. Tobelo morphology is not 
particularly complex, but it is pervasive insofar as every occurrence of 
every word of a major lexical category is graced by a bound 
morpheme which indicates the word's lexical category, as well as 
serving other functions. Part 3 thus has subsections on the 
morphology of nouns and verbs and on category-independent 
morphology. Every noun is marked by one of the prefixes o- and ma- 
(pp 30-32: I return to this below), every verb by a subject co-
referencing prefix. If the verb is transitive, the subject prefix is followed 
by an object co-referencing prefix. Interestingly, the single argument 
of an intransitive verb is coreferenced by a subject prefix if the verb is 
semantically dynamic, but by an object prefix if it is stative (pp 37-39). 
In the latter case, the object prefix follows a third-person non-human 
subject prefix, functioning as a dummy. This sequence of dummy 
subject prefix and argument-coreferencing object prefix is also used 
as a construction which is functionally similar to an agentless passive 
(p67; see also example 290). Hence a sequence of subject prefix and 
object prefix is found with transitive, stative and passive-like verbs.

The subsection on category-independent morphology covers 
aspectual suffixes, negation and directional suffixes.

Part 4 (pp. 48-71) describes Tobelo syntax. There are subsections on 
the noun phrase, the directional system, word order, grammatical 
relations, simple and complex clauses, and discourse phenomena. 
Some of these subsections serve to pull together various threads 
introduced in Parts 2 and 3. This is particularly true of the subsection 
on the directional system (pp 50-53), which involves demonstratives, 
locative adverbs and directional suffixes but encodes a single system 
of semantic contrasts involving a seaward-landward axis and an 
upward-downward axis. This system is significant in that it entails 
speakers specifying direction in many circumstances where other 
languages would not require it. Such systems are apparently quite 
widespread in languages of eastern Indonesia, however, whether 
Papuan or Austronesian (see van Staden 2001, Bowden 2002).

Part 5 (pp. 71-97) comprises two texts, one narrative, the other 
procedural.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

My evaluation of this work falls into two distinct parts: content and 
presentation.

With regard to content, Holton provides us with a typologically 
informed account of Tobelo, and squeezes a remarkable quantity of 
information into 70 pages. He is able to do this because his analysis is 
thorough and allows him to make categorical statements, and because 
most of the time he has a fine command of the appropriate linguistic 
terms. The small criticisms below should not be seen as outweighing 
the generally excellent quality of the work.

As my description of the content above hopefully indicates, Tobelo 
has some features of considerable typological interest. One is the 
directional system, and Holton describes this well within the obvious 
constraints of such a sketch. Another interesting feature is the 
morphological behaviour of property concept words. Here the author 
seems to assume that he need not provide a description because he 
has published on it elsewhere. This is a pity, as it leaves the reader 
ignorant of when a property concept word behaves like a verb and 
when like a noun. Across languages it is common enough for property 
concept words to be verbs or to be nouns, but it is less usual for the 
same property concept roots to display both behaviours in a single 
language, and a more detailed account of this phenomenon would 
thus have been appropriate. A third matter of interest is how a 
speaker chooses between the noun markers o- and ma-. As far as I 
can see, this question is not answered, although we are given hints. 
Example 165 shows then when a generic referent is first introduced in 
discourse, it is marked with o-, and on its second mention it is marked 
with ma-. This is intriguing, as the example shows that the distinction 
is not one of specificity or definiteness, as Holton notes on page 67. 
He hints on page 66 that o- is used for first mentions and is therefore 
referential indefinite, but this is evidently not the whole story, as it tells 
us little about the status of ma-. We are also shown that ma- is used 
instead of a possessor prefix when the possessor is non-human (pp. 
32, 49).

Linguistic infelicities are very few. One concerns the use of an 
applicative prefix to 'reference' an instrumental argument. We are told 
that because the instrumental argument is not coreferenced by a 
prefix on the verb, 'the object remains an oblique' (p. 42). This is an 
odd statement. If the coreness of an argument is defined only by the 
presence of a coreferencing prefix, then what is the function of the 
applicative prefix? It is surely to render the instrument a core 
argument, its coreness being marked in this instance by the 
applicative prefix rather than by a coreferencing prefix.

A possible infelicity of a different kind is the assertion that certain 
Tobelo features are 'contact-induced Austronesian features ' (p 3). 
Such statements are common in the literature, but it is impossible to 
substantiate them. Holton says that among the North Halmahera 
languages Tobelo is the most conservative in its retention of non-
Austronesian (i.e. Papuan) typological features. This might or might 
not be true, but the assertion presupposes that the history of the West 
Papuan family is well known, and it isn't. Furthermore, its relationship 
(if any) with other Papuan families is unknown, so we can have little 
idea which morphosyntactic features are inherited and which copied 
through contact. Holton takes the presence of subject prefixes on 
verbs to be 'Papuan'. He may well be right, but other specialists in the 
region would disagree, as such prefixes are the norm in local 
Austronesian languages. He assumes that the inclusive/exclusive 
distinction in first-person plural pronouns and the directional system 
are of Austronesian origin, but the inclusive/exclusive distinction is not 
uncommon among Papuan languages, and directional systems like the 
one in Tobelo crop up in Papuan and Austronesian languages from 
eastern Indonesia eastward into western Oceania. As Austronesian-
speakers settled the region from west to east, this allows an inference 
that such directional systems were present in the Papuan languages 
of eastern Indonesia and were copied by Austronesian-speakers as 
they moved through the region.

The presentation of the book detracts sadly from its content. The 
reduction of evident A4 typesetting by 50% to an A5 page-size makes 
reading a real physical effort, as the Times font is effectively only 8-
point size (the usual publisher's size is 11-point). This is compounded 
by a strange typsetting glitch which frequently introduces a space 
after the first character of a word. When several such gaps occur in a 
line, readability is severely affected. For example, on page 39: 'As n 
oted i n s ection 4.8.1 o nly referential p articipants m ay b e i ndexed 
u sing t he o bjective paradigm.'

There are signs that the final copy was not proofread. How else 
could 'know' appear for 'known' in the first line of the text on page 1?! 
I will not list further English typos (they are many). On p. 11 -aoikoka 
appears in apparent error for (I assume) -aikoka. I am left wondering 
what typos occur elsewhere in the Tobelo examples.

There are just a few errors that were evidently already in the 
submitted electronic manuscript. On p. 18 we are told that 'there is no 
downward punctual demonstrative', but it is present in the table 
immediately above this statement. It is the downward areal 
demonstrative that is missing. On p. 32 we find 'proceeded' 
where 'preceded' was intended.

It is a little distressing that a piece of work of pleasing quality should 
be rendered so troublesome to read by poor typesetting and miniscule 
print size. I have no doubt, however, that it will finish up on many 
linguists' bookshelves, as it is a well-organised sketch which contains 
valuable information.

REFERENCES

Bowden, John (2002) Taba: Description of a South Halmahera 
Austronesian language. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Holton, Gary (1999) Categoriality of property words in a switch-
adjective language. Linguistic Typology 3: 341-360.

Staden, Miriam van (2000) Tidore: a linguistic description of a 
language of the north Moluccas. PhD dissertation, University of 
Leiden. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Malcolm Ross is a professor in the Department of Linguistics in the 
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian 
National University in Canberra. His interests include the Austronesian 
and Papuan languages of the New Guinea region and the 
Austronesian languages of Taiwan, with a particular focus on the 
linguistic histories of these regions.





-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-17-292