30.139, Books: A grammar of Komnzo: Döhler

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-139. Wed Jan 09 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.139, Books: A grammar of Komnzo: Döhler

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Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2019 19:39:46
From: Sebastian Nordhoff [Sebastian.Nordhoff at langsci-press.org]
Subject: A grammar of Komnzo: Döhler

 


Title: A grammar of Komnzo 
Series Title: Studies in Diversity Linguistics  

Publication Year: 2018 
Publisher: Language Science Press
	   http://langsci-press.org
	

Book URL: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/212 


Author: Christian Döhler

Electronic: ISBN:  9783961101252 Pages: 468 Price: Europe EURO 0 Comment: Open Access


Abstract:

Komnzo is a Papuan language of Southern New Guinea spoken by around 250 people
in the village of Rouku. Komnzo belongs to the Tonda subgroup of the Yam
language family, which is also known as the Morehead Upper-Maro group. This
grammar provides the first comprehensive description of a Yam language. It is
based on 16 months of fieldwork. The primary source of data is a text corpus
of around 12 hours recorded and transcribed between 2010 and 2015. Komnzo
provides many fields of future research, but the most interesting aspect of
its structure lies in the verb morphology, to which the two largest chapters
of the grammar are dedicated. Komnzo verbs may index up to two arguments
showing agreement in person, number and gender. Verbs encode 18 TAM
categories, valency, directionality and deictic status. Morphological
complexity lies not only in the amount of categories that verbs may express,
but also in the way these are encoded. Komnzo verbs exhibit what may be called
‘distributed exponence’, i.e. single morphemes are underspecified for a
particular grammatical category. Therefore, morphological material from
different sites has to be integrated first, and only after this integration
can one arrive at a particular grammatical category. The descriptive approach
in this grammar is theory-informed rather than theory-driven. Comparison to
other Yam languages and diachronic developments are taken into account
whenever it seems helpful.
 



Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Language Documentation

Subject Language(s): Wára (tci)


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=133213




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