29.2656, Diss: Wano; Trans-New Guinea; Typology: Willem Burung: ''A grammar of Wano''

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-2656. Mon Jun 25 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.2656, Diss: Wano; Trans-New Guinea; Typology: Willem Burung: ''A grammar of Wano''

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Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 11:06:58
From: Willem Burung [willem.burung at stcatz.ox.ac.uk]
Subject: A grammar of Wano

 
Institution: University of Oxford 
Program: D.Phil. in Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2017 

Author: Willem Burung

Dissertation Title: A grammar of Wano 

Linguistic Field(s): Typology

Subject Language(s): Wano (wno)

Language Family(ies): Trans-New Guinea


Dissertation Director(s):
Mary E Dalrymple
Wolfgang D.C de Melo
Peter K Austin

Dissertation Abstract:

This thesis is a descriptive analysis of Wano, a Trans-New Guinea language
found in West Papua which is spoken by approximately 7,000 native speakers.
The thesis includes: (i) an introduction of Wano topography and demography; a
brief ethnographic sketch; some sociolinguistic issues such as name taboo,
counting system and kinship terms; and typological profile of the language in
chapter 1; (ii) morphophonological properties in chapter 2; (iii) forms and
functions of nouns in chapter 3; (iv) verbs in chapter 4; (v) deixis in
chapter 5; (vi) clause elements in chapter 6; and (vii)
intransitive/transitive non-verbal predication in chapter 7; (viii) clause
combination is consecutively observed in terms of coordination and
subordination in chapter 8; serial verb constructions in chapter 9; clause
linking in chapter 10; and bridging linkage in chapter 11. Chapter 12 sums-up
the overall thesis.

Wano has 11 consonantal and 5 vocalic phonemes expressed through their
allophonic variations, consonantal assimilation and vocalic diphthongs. The
only fricative phoneme attested is bilabial fricative /β/. There are two open
and two closed syllable patterns where all consonants are syllable-onset,
while approximants can also be syllable-coda. Vowels are syllable-nucleus.
Stress is syllable-final which will be penultimate in cliticization. The
phonology-morphology interface provides a significant contribution to the
shaping of conjugational verbs, which, in turn, plays an essential role to an
understanding of Wano verbal system where distinction between roots, stems,
citation forms, sequential forms and tense-aspect-mood is defined.

Wano is a polysynthetic language that displays an agglutinative-fusional
morphology. Although the alienable-inalienable noun distinction is essentially
simple in its morphology, the sex-distinction of the possessor between kin
terms allows room for semantic-pragmatic complexity in the interpretation of
their various uses. Wano has four non-verbal predications, consists of
experiential event, nominal, adjectival, and deictic predicates. Wano is a
verb-final language that allows pronominal pro-drop and has no rigid word
order for arguments. A clause may consist only of (i) a single verb, (ii) a
single inalienable noun, (iii) a serial verb construction, (iv) a combination
of an inalienable noun with a verb, and or (v) a combination of an inalienable
noun with a serial verb construction. To maintain discourse coherency, Wano
makes use of tail-head linkage construction.

The thesis consists of: pre-sections (i-xxxiii), contents (1-478),
bibliography (479-498), and appendices (499-594) that include verb paradigms,
noun paradigms, some oral texts and dialectal wordlist.




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