31.1691, Books: Niuean: Massam

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-1691. Tue May 19 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.1691, Books: Niuean: Massam

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Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 21:52:01
From:  Oxford University Press [HumanitiesMarketing at oup.com]
Subject: Niuean: Massam

 


Title: Niuean 
Subtitle: Predicates and Arguments in an Isolating Language 
Series Title: Oxford Studies of Endangered Languages  

Publication Year: 2020 
Publisher: Oxford University Press
	   http://www.oup.com/us
	

Book URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/niuean-9780198793557?utm_source=linguistlist&utm_medium=listserv&utm_campaign=linguistics 


Author: Diane Massam

Hardback: ISBN:  9780198793557 Pages: 384 Price: U.S. $ 90.00


Abstract:

This volume explores the grammar of Niuean, an endangered Polynesian language
spoken on the island of Niue and in New Zealand, with a focus on the issue of
predication. Since Aristotle, it has been claimed that a sentence consists of
a subject and a predicate. Niuean constitutes the perfect testing ground for
this claim: it displays verb-subject-object word order, in which the subject
interrupts the predicate, and has an ergative case system, in which subjects
are not clearly distinguished from objects in their marking for grammatical
case.

Diane Massam uses the framework of generative grammar to carry out a detailed
analysis of the internal structure of Niuean predicates and arguments, as well
as the relations between them, touching on many other topics including the
nature of displacement, word formation, determiners, and thematic roles. The
proposal is that Niuean complex predicates are formed via successive
inversion, prior to the merge of all arguments (high argument merge), and that
the predicate undergoes fronting to initial position across the arguments,
with the same structure found also in nominal clauses. The conclusion is that
Niuean does not have a subject in the usual sense, and this is related to the
fact that the language has isolating morphology, lacking all tense and
agreement inflection and nominative case. Instead, the language exhibits low
absolutive predication, applicative ergative agents, and predicate fronting in
lieu of subject extraction. The book extends our understanding of
cross-linguistic sentence structure and grammatical case, and will be of
interest to scholars in the fields of Austronesian linguistics, typology, and
theoretical linguistics.
 



Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Morphology
                     Syntax
                     Typology

Subject Language(s): Niuean (niu)


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=143517




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