22.4282, Books: Anthro Ling/Lang Documentation: Dixon (Ed), Onishi

Sat Oct 29 16:49:02 UTC 2011

LINGUIST List: Vol-22-4282. Sat Oct 29 2011. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 22.4282, Books: Anthro Ling/Lang Documentation: Dixon (Ed), Onishi

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1)
Date: 23-Oct-2011
From: Ulrich Lueders [lincom.europa at t-online.de]
Subject: A grammar of Motuna: Dixon (Ed), Onishi

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:48:49
From: Ulrich Lueders [lincom.europa at t-online.de]
Subject: A grammar of Motuna: Dixon (Ed), Onishi

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Title: A grammar of Motuna 
Series Title: Outstanding grammars from Australia 09  

Publication Year: 2011 
Publisher: Lincom GmbH
	   http://www.lincom.eu

Book URL: http://lincom-shop.eu 

Author: Masayuki Onishi
Editor: RMW Dixon

Paperback: ISBN:  9783862882076 Pages: 593 Price: Europe EURO 78.00

Abstract:

This is a first descriptive grammar of Motuna -  a Non-Austronesian language 
spoken by circa 16 thousand people (in 2000) in the "Siwai" area of the 
Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. It is one of the six languages 
belonging to the South Bougainville Family. This is written mainly on the 
basis of the analysis of narrative texts (three of which are given in Appendix) 
and other linguistic data provided by two Motuna speakers living in Australia.

Motuna has many unique typological characteristics (Chap 1). It has a small 
inventory of phonemes and a simple CV(C) syllable structure; morae play an 
important role in accent assignment, reduplication, and "dearticulation" of 
Ci/Cu syllables into three coda consonants (Chaps 2, 4 and 13). The 
language is both head- and dependent-marking - core arguments (S, O and A) 
are obligatorily cross-referenced by verbs, while A NP is optionally marked by 
an ergative (instrumental) case suffix (Chap 3).

Nominal and verbal morphologies of Motuna are highly complex and 
elaborate. All the nominals belong to a fully grammaticalised noun class 
system based on their natural genders (masculine/neuter, feminine, 
diminutive, local and manner), while some of them are optionally categorised 
by classifiers combined with numerals, demonstratives, verbs, etc. (Chaps 4 
and 8). Among nominals, kinship terms constitute possessive constructions 
where pronominal possessors are obligatorily marked by pronominal prefixes. 
Some local nouns have deictic functions, indicating locations or directions. 
Pragmatic functions of NPs are indicated by word order, case markings and 
the demonstrative/article (Chaps 3, 6, and 10).

Verbs can be classified according to the cross-referencing markings they 
take. About half the verb stems of Motuna are ambi-transitive, taking both 
transitive (A and O) and middle (S) suffixes. The rest are mostly intransitive. 
Intransitive verbs are of four types: (1) Sa type taking A-type suffixes, (2) So 
verbs taking O-type suffixes, (3) middle type, and (4) five most frequently 
used irregular verbs. Causative and applicative valency-changing suffixes 
productively derive transitive verbs from these stems (Chaps 12-14). Motuna 
has an extensive tense/aspect/mood system (Chap 15). Clauses are mainly 
combined by medial verbs (sensitive to switch-reference and relative 
aspects) and relative clauses (Chap 17). 

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     Language Documentation
                     Papuan

Subject Language(s): Siwai (siw)

Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=57977

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