SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON OCEANIC LINGUISTICS
4-9 July,
University of the South
Pacific – Emalus Campus
Port
ABSTRACTS
Relative clauses where the
head noun is coreferential to a possessor in Hawaiian and
Jason
D. Cabral
Relative clauses where a head
noun is coreferential with a possessor in the modifying clause have been overlooked
in Hawaiian. Examples of the forms which such relative clauses take in texts
will be presented along with their similarity to parallel structures in Hawai’i
Creole English. The dates at which the Hawaiian texts were produced indicate
that the Hawaiian structure existed before the Hawai’i Creole English structure
developed, providing the possibility of Hawaiian substrata influence in this
instance.
Extensions of the term for ‘family
house’ in a non-house society
Ann
Chowning
In recent years a number of scholars,
following Blust (1980), have postulated that AN-speakers often extended the
term for ‘family house’ to a social group, and suggested that such speakers
possessed “house societies”. Although Pawley and Green (1998) state that “the
evidence for such figurative uses of *Rumaq seem to be lacking in
On the unity (or not) of North
and Central Vanuatu
Ross
Clark
Is there a subgroup of Oceanic
consisting of just the non-Polynesian languages of north and central Vanuatu,
from Efate to Hiw? This paper will review a century of surprisingly diverse
answers to this question, from Ray to Lynch, and present some evidence in
support of unity, with qualifications.
Protovariability and parallel development:
Reduced grammatical forms in Melanesian Pidgin
Terry Crowley
The three major national varieties
of Melanesian Pidgin (Tok Pisin, Solomons Pijin, Bislama)
all have pervasive transitive marking on verbs by means of a suffix
that is generally described in published descriptions as being of the basic
shape -Vm. In Bislama, however, the final vowel
of the suffix is fairly commonly lost in a variety of structural environments,
resulting in patterns such as Kare i
kam! ‘Bring it here’ in alternation with Karem i kam! The frequency of such reductions in the speech of predominantly
younger speakers and their rarity in the speech of older people bears all
the hallmarks of a recent innovation. However, very similar patterns of reduction
are also taking place in Tok Pisin. This paper examines the question of the
extent to which these might represent independent parallel developments, and
the extent to which these developments might point to a pattern of protovariability
at a much earlier stage in the history of Melanesian Pidgin.
1) Wurm et al. (1975) proposal, involving a dispersal of Papuan languages into the Bismarcks/Solomons from the Louisiade Archipelago, with a later intrusion of TNG languages into Bougainville
2) A naive geographical model of dispersal, in which languages spread into the Bismarcks, Bougainville, then the Solomons following the simplest possible progression along the archipelago from the NG mainland.
Cladistic methods show that the naive geographical model is very unlikely
to be correct, and produce some support for aspects of the Wurm proposal.
Robert Early
University of
the South Pacific
The
extensive multilingual repertoires of Pacific individuals and speech
communities are often noted. There is also a recognition
that within any particular Pacific language, there may be significant
geographical dialectal variation, and some Pacific languages also display
highly developed systems of social dialect specialisation.
Another domain of language use which may entail
the development of special varieties is that of play language, where the
phonology of the standard form is manipulated to produce varieties which can be
quite unintelligible to speakers of the standard language. These languages can
therefore serve as markers of a special group identity, and as an effective
means of keeping in-group communication exclusive and hidden from non-member
participation. However, the way that these language varieties are formed does
mean that the scrambling rule or code used to form them can often be broken
quite readily by other speakers.
This paper looks at some data taken from two
play languages, one based on Bislama and one based on Fijian, and analyses how
they are formed. Speakers who develop these special languages do so by
responding to underlying perceptions about segments and syllables, and so
analysis of the manipulations they undertake can show up what some of these
underlying perceptions must be.
Reconstructing
botanical taxonomies for Proto Oceanic
Bethwyn Evans
Australian National Univesity
It seems to be a human
universal to classify flora and fauna into hierarchies of labelled taxa .The
classification of plants by Arosi speakers includes the primary taxa ‘ai
to denote plants that are typically labelled “trees” in English, in contrast to
rari “herbs and shrubs”, warawaro “vines” and kaaringa “mushrooms”
.There are about 200 named ‘ai-type plants in Arosi, some of which are further classified
into different subtaxa. Studies of such folk taxonomies
cross-linguistically have shown certain universal tendencies in the types of
semantic categories distinguished and the ways in which the categories are
labelled (see Berlin 1992, Brown 1984) .This paper looks at botanical
taxonomies in Oceanic languages with the aim of reconstructing semantic
categories and their associated labels for higher order taxa of Proto Oceanic.
References:
Berlin,
Brent. 1992. Ethnobiological classification. Principles of
categorization of plants and animals in traditional societies.
Brown,
Cecil H. 1984. Language and living things. Uniformities in folk classification and naming.
The cruel destiny of vowels in fourteen Banks languages
Alexandre François
LACITO-CNRS,
Data collected in the fourteen languages
still spoken in the
Subgrouping
hypotheses in North Vanuatu
Alexandre François
LACITO-CNRS,
Polynesian loans in the Solomon
Islands
Paul Gerarghty
University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji
‘We-person’: What
does it mean, why does it mean it, and where does it come from?
David
Gil
Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology,
From Vanuatu, up through the
Solomons and New Guinea, across the Indonesian archipelago, and up to the
Southeast coast of mainland China, a noun meaning ‘person’ may be used in
construction with one or more pronouns in order to derive complex pronouns.
Addition of ‘person’ generally has the effect of assigning a plural interpretation
to a pronoun that is otherwise either singular or unmarked for number. Moreover,
in the case of first person pronouns, addition of ‘person’ sometimes but not
always has the further effect of forcing an exclusive interpretation onto
a pronoun that is otherwise either inclusive or unmarked for the inclusive/exclusive
distinction.
The first part of this paper
provides a description of the pronoun-‘person’ construction, focusing on Bislama
and Tok Pisin, varieties of Malay/Indonesian, and dialects of Southern Min
Chinese. The second part attempts to provide an explanation for why the pronoun-‘person’
construction is invariably plural and sometimes exclusive. The third part
offers a somewhat speculative account of the history of the construction,
suggesting that it originated in trade languages of
A freely accessible computerised database of Austronesian basic vocabulary
Simon Greenhill, R. Blust, & R.D. Gray
(Greenhill: University of Auckland)
The Austronesian lexicon is of great interest to both academics and the public. However, most of this information is contained in books and journals, which can be difficult to access quickly and efficiently. Robert Blust at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has collected a large number of Swadesh 200 word lists from Austronesian languages. We have built these lists into a large dynamic database and have it placed on the internet. The purpose of the database is to make this data freely available for any interested parties, allow easy searching within and between lexical items and facilitate comparison between languages. The database currently contains word lists from over 220 languages, and over 42,000 lexical items. This talk will describe the database system, the technologies underlying it (PHP, MySQL, Unicode) and the use of this database. Any comments, additions or suggestions for the database will be gratefully received.
An evidentiality contrast
in Pingilapese auxiliary verbs
Ryoko Hattori
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
East-West Center
The Pingilapese (Austronesian, Micronesian subgroup) canonical
morpheme order is subject –
e/ae – verb
– object.
Good and Welley (1989), the only known study of Pingilapese, reports that the
particles e (/e/) and
ae (/E/)
mark an NP as subject, and that the two forms are in free variation. Through
the analysis of data elicited from native speakers of Pingilapese, however, I
claim that e and ae are not subject markers in the traditional sense. Rather, I
propose, they are auxiliary verbs that convey a contrast involving evidentiality
– the speaker’s relative certainty about the
truth of the proposition expressed (Chafe 1986, Mushin 2001, and Payne 1997).
While e encodes a high degree of evidentiality, ae encodes a low
degree of evidentiality. This is the first time that a grammatically expressed
evidentiality contrast has been reported for a Micronesian language (Kenneth
Rehg, personal communication).
Oral versus
written stylistics in Hawaiian
Emily Hawkins
University of Hawai’i at Manoa
This paper discusses some specific
differences between written and spoken Hawaiian, particularly looking at sentence
types and the verb phrase. Simplification of tense/aspect features is coupled
with greater detail in the postposed verbal particles along with intonation
features. The integration of new and old observations based both on oral samples
and reported speech reveals significant differences between written and spoken
Hawaiian that heretofore have been overlooked in teaching the language.
Eye, 'heart'
and place: idioms in Maskelynes
David Healey
SIL, Vanuatu
This paper describes the three
Maskelynes nouns most commonly used to form idioms. Besides their primary
physical meanings of eye, inside(s), and place, they occur far more commonly
in idioms with extended meanings. Eye idioms are often associated with round
shapes that sometimes include a centre point. Inside idioms are usually associated
with emotions and the inner being or 'heart'. Place idioms are usually associated
with weather and ambient conditions. The structure and function of these idioms
are described in this paper.
English loanword
adaptions into Polynesian languages
Jonathon Herd
University of Toronto
This study considers patterns
of English loanword adaption into several Polynesian languages, including
Tongan, Hawaiian, NZ Maori, Rarotongan, Tahitian and Niuean, and focuses on
nativization patterns for non-native consonants. While certain cross-linguistic
adaption tendencies are universally maintained (e.g. devoicing of voiced plosives),
other non-native segments - particularly fricatives - are subject to various
repairs intralinguistically. I argue that both these generalized and language-particular
patterns of adaption fall out naturally as a consequence of individual underlying
phonological structure, which is subject to a constrained degree of cross-linguistic
variation. Patterns of diachronic sound change are investigated and used as
evidence for internal phonological organization within each host language,
by implementing a phonological model employing contrastive features, and conceptualizing
sound change as the result of either neutralisation or reinterpretation of
underlying feature contrast. This analysis has implications both for our conception
of nativization and our view on the internal organization of sound systems.
Genitive relative constructions in
Polynesian languages
Jonathon Herd, Diane Massam, and Catherine MacDonald
In this paper we examine aspects of the genitive
relative construction in four Polynesian languages: Hawaiian, Maori, Niuean,
and Tongan, with a focus on Maori and Niuean. In this construction, the subject
of a relative clause, cleft, or question can appear as a genitive alongside the
head. This construction is known within Polynesian studies (e.g. Clark, 1976,
Hawkins, 2000, Baker 2002), but its grammatical properties have not been
studied in detail. We study the properties of the construction and extend the
discussion to related constructions in Maori (actor emphatic), Malagasy
(bodyguard), Tongan (nominalizations), and English (‘It is her game to lose.’).
A Niuean cleft example of the genitive relative construction appears below.
Ko e tama fifine fulufuluola haana ne lagomatai.
Ko child girl beautiful
3ps.GEN T/A help
‘It is the beautiful
girl that he helped.’
Ups and downs in Tokelau
Robin Hooper
University of Auckland
Tokelauan contains a morpho-syntactically defined set of directional adverbs which are reflexes of Proto Polynesian forms. The set comprises mai ‘towards speaker’/venitive, atu ‘away from speaker’/anditive, ake ‘upwards’ and ifo ‘downwards’. In addition to meanings directly related to the vertical axis, ake and ifo figure prominently in the linguistic expression of the system of spatial organisation. They also exhibit a number of semantic extensions to more abstract domains, and these form the subject of this paper. Meanings related to the widely attested metaphors up is more (better, higher status, older) and down is less (lower status etc.) are not unexpected, but other metaphorical uses are less transparent, for example those connected with thought, introspection and perception. Some aspectual functions can also be detected.
Aspects of Pileni
phonology
Even Hovdhaugen
The Polynesian
language Pileni has compared to most other Polynesian languages a rather
complicated phonology. The purpose of this paper is to look at Pileni phonology
from three perspectives:
a) the relationship between Pileni and the other Polynesian
languages,
b)
recent/ongoing phonological changes in Pileni, and
c) the relationship to the neighbouring Äiwo language.
This is a report
from a research project in progress and the paper will probably contain more questions
than answers.
Bidialectal effects on
reading: Word recognition in Hawai‘i Creole English
Aya Inoue
In
heterogeneous linguistic situations, the relation of the spoken to the written
language is more complex for bilingual/bidialectal speakers than
monolingual/monodialectal speakers. This
paper investigates the effects of different orthographic and phonological
systems as factors in visual word recognition by dialectal speakers. Hawai‘i Creole English (HCE), the English
lexifier creole spoken in Hawai‘i, is phonologically different from Standard
English (SE), but like many other creole languages it has no widely accepted
orthography. SE-HCE bidialectal speakers
and monolingual SE speakers were tested with familiar visual forms (items in
SE, loanwords from substrate languages) and unfamiliar visual forms (items in 2
HCE spelling systems, pronounceable nonwords).
The experimental results suggest the inhibitory effect of bidialectalism
for the processing of unfamiliar visual forms.
Bidialectal speakers arguably have more complex orthography to phonology
mappings from the dual phonological systems (HCE, SE) they command.
Cyrtosperma taro in Yap
Ritsuko Kikusawa
It
has been suggested that the introduction of Cyrtosperma
cultivation into
On the development
of the number systems of Oceanic pronouns
Ritsuko Kikusawa
Proto-Oceanic
pronoun system has been reconstructed as having a simple singular-plural
contrast (Loss, Ross and Crowley 2002). A comparison of the reconstructed
system for Proto-Extra Formosan and that for Proto-Polynesian supports this
reconstruction. However, Oceanic languages today commonly exhibit
multiple-number pronominal systems, where the dual (and other) number(s) are
observed as well as singular and plural. A question arises here then as to how
the Oceanic languages developed the multiple-number systems, and what the
motivation was for these parallel changes to take place.
In this paper, pronominal forms in
Oceanic languages are first examined to confirm that the development of the
multiple-number system took place relatively recently, certainly after the
split of the Oceanic languages. Then, possible motivations for these changes
are discussed, paying particular attention to the existence of “first person
dual inclusive” (or, “1+2 singular”) in the original system, which is
considered to be one of the preconditions.
Being or
not in Banoni
Piet Lincoln
In 2002, I reported on some interesting problems with marking of case roles in Banoni, particularly that with givng the recipient is coded on the verb like a transitive object.
1. Na ko ta mani-gho vai borogho
I 1sg:real fut give-2sg obl pig
I am giving you a pig.
Now, we will look at some other verbs for which the transitive object suffix is even less expected:
2. teese pode-gho?
coconut born-2sg
Do you have a coconut?
3. no tani-gho va-daame?
you:sg be-2sg cause-good
Are you well?
4. ghamam ghi-ghina-mam na dzoko
1excl:pl REDUP-not-1excl:pl human:pl child
We have no children.
Parallels are sought in nearby languages that have cognates of the Banoni podo: Mono-Alu poro 'born' and Roviana podo 'born.' Mono-Alu does have a similar possessive use of poro, more explanatory observations are still being sought.
Phonological
and lexical convergence in central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea
Eva Lindström
Stockholm University
This paper re-examines the area of phonological convergence in north central New Ireland first noticed by Malcolm Ross (1988). This area centres on Kuot, the only non-Austronesian language in the province, and extends with varying force through two languages on either side of it. The distribution of shared phonological processes and phonotactic features is studied using additional data from field notes and published sources.
In trying to interpret the history of contact that has given rise to the convergence, reference is also made to lexical borrowings, and some preliminary conclusions are drawn.
Ross, Malcolm 1994. "Areal phonological features in north central New Ireland". In Dutton, Tom and Darrel T. Tryon (Eds) Language Contact and Change in the Austronesian World. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter
.
Daniel Long
In this paper, I explore the state of
Japanese loanwords used in several languages of the former Micronesian region
colonies (including Chamorro, Carolinian, Ponapean, Kusaiean, Trukese, Palauan,
Mokilese and Woleaian) .To understand the socio-historical context in which
such words entered these languages, I briefly review linguistic aspects of the
Japanese administration .In my analysis of loanwords, I first focus on entries
in available dictionaries, but then analyze data from current fieldwork on
Saipan into various sociolinguistic facets of Japanese loanwords there
including: semantic fields covered by Japanese loanwords, differences in words
which have entered Saipan Chamorro and Saipan Carolinian, (un)awareness of the
Japanese origin of the loanwords, (in)comprehensibility of Japanese loanwords
in communication between Guam and Saipan speakers, role that communication with
Guam people plays in the realization of words’ Japanese origin, the use of
Japanese-origin loanwords by Saipan speakers as an argot in the presence of
Guamanians.
The
Central/Southern “boundary problem” in Vanuatu subgrouping
John Lynch
University of the South Pacific
In
coining the term “boundary problem”, Pawley (1999:128) referred to “the messy,
overlapping groupings that stem from old dialect chains”. A number of such
problems can be found within the Southern Oceanic subgroup (consisting of
the languages of Vanuatu and New Caledonia), though only one will be discussed
here. The languages of Efate share a number of innovations exclusively with
the reasonably well-established Central Vanuatu subgroup, and especially with
the languages of Epi immediately to the north. At the same time, however,
they appear to share other innovations exclusively with Erromangan, which
on other grounds clearly belongs to the quite well-established Southern Vanuatu
subgroup. The paper will assess the value of different kinds of innovations
in making subgrouping hypotheses, and will also partly foreshadow an overall
subgrouping hypothesis for this whole subgroup.
Reference:
Pawley, Andrew. 1999.
Chasing rainbows: Implications of the rapid dispersal of Austronesian languages
for subgrouping and reconstruction. In Selected
papers from the Eighth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics,
ed. by Elizabeth Zeitoun and Paul Jen-Kuei Li, 95-138.
Anna Margetts
Saliba, an Oceanic language
of
|
(1) |
ye-sikwa-he-beku-ø |
(2) |
ye-kabi-dobi |
|
|
3sg-poke-caus-fall-3sg.o |
|
3sg-touch-go.down |
|
|
‘he
poked it to make it fall’ |
|
‘he
reached down’ |
|
(3) |
ye-he-kata-namwa-namwa-i-gai |
(4) |
se-paisowa-gehe |
|
|
3sg-caus-learn-red-good-app-1ex.o |
|
3pl-work-finished |
|
|
‘she
teaches us properly’ |
|
‘they
finished working’ |
In this paper I present
an analysis of such complex verbs where the different functions of non-initial
stems are associated with separate positional slots in the constructions.
Saliba complex verbs are mostly composed of two stems but sequences of three
stems also occur. Based on this, four positional slots can be distinguished and
each slot is associated with stems performing a certain type of function. There
is a functional transition between the initial open-class stems with their
lexical meaning to the increasingly grammaticalized, closed-class stems in the
slots towards the right.
V1 (head) - V2 (result) - V3 (directionality) - V4 (adverbial/aspectual function)
Structural slots in Saliba nuclear-layer
serialization
These positional slots are not identical with the
slots in the surface structure of a serial verb but are abstracted from examples
with three stems that show the ordering constraints of co-occurring stems.
The analysis of complex verbs in terms of positional slots allows
us to describe different types of serial constructions in a more systematic
manner than approaches which exclusively refer to the surface structure of
the construction.
The attrition of Japanese negation: the case
of Palauan Japanese
Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain
This is a progress report on research investigating Japanese dialect contact and subsequent language obsolescence in the former Japanese territory of Palau (1914-1945). Japanese occupation led both to a large Japanese immigrant population and considerable Japanese-Palauan bilingualism on the part of the native islanders. Subsequent American rule (1945-1994), however, halted the expansion of the Japanese speech community there.
We will examine some methodological and theoretical issues involved in language death studies; with what should the use of a dying language (Japanese in this case) be compared? - with formal standard or colloquial Japanese of the mainland or with the fluent spoken Japanese of older speakers in Palau? We address this by comparing rememberers and semi-speakers in Palau with fluent speakers in Palau and with Japanese speakers in Japan.
Our results highlight the necessity of comparing rememberers and semi-speakers
with fluent speakers from the same community, and not with fluent speakers
in a geographically distant community.
A
computationally assisted analysis of Tahitian oral tradition
David
Meyer
There is a long history of
manual linguistic analysis of poetry and oral tradition .A method is described
here that applies computational linguistic algorithms to assist in the
identification of poetic patterns of Tahitian oral tradition .The linguistic
patterns are considered to be poetic when they exhibit repeated structure that
is not found in similar analyses of Tahitian prose .The data comes from a
corpus collected by John Orsmond in the early 19th century .The principal
technique applied is a modification of Rens Bod’s Data-Oriented Parsing
algorithm.
A quantitative study of
animacy effects in Bislama
Miriam
Meyerhoff
It has been suggested that animacy
constrains several variables in Bislama. These include: the alternation between
zero and pronominal anaphors in subject and object positions (Crowley 1990:241,
326-7); the alternation between oli
and i with 3p subjects (
References:
Crowley,
Terry. 1990. From Beach-la-Mar to
Bislama: The emergence of a national language.
—— 2002. Serial
Verbs in Oceanic: A descriptive typology.
Meyerhoff,
Miriam. 2000. The emergence of creole subject-verb agreement and the licensing
of null subjects. Language
Variation and Change. 12. 203-230.
Reflexives
and intensifiers in New Caledonian and Polynesian
languages
Claire
Moyse
In New Caledonian and Polynesian
languages, the semantic middle notion may be either unmarked or marked with
the Proto Oceanic reciprocal prefix *paRi- in order to describe some grooming
actions, collective events or natural reciprocal events. On the other hand,
reflexive constructions - although they may present several marking patterns
including this type of "reciprocal" derivation - usually only require
the presence of an intensifier marking the coreferency between the subject
and the pronominal object. I will present the different reflexive constructions
in which intensifiers are attested and will try to draw a typological classification
of these intensifiers.
Determination
and quantification in Pileni
Åshild Næss
In Næss (2000), a grammar sketch of the
Polynesian Outlier Pileni, I listed eight different forms under the heading of ‘determiners’.
However, it is not entirely obvious that all these forms have the same formal
status, and labelling them ‘determiners’, rather than, for instance, ‘quantifiers’,
in some cases seems to be a rather arbitrary decision. For
example, some but not all of the ‘determiners’ may be combined, and the precise
semantic parameters that govern their distribution are not at present clearly
understood. In this paper I will reexamine the Pileni ‘determiners’,
partly on the basis of new data, and make an attempt at a clearer
characterisation of their function and distribution, as well as discussing the
question of whether the forms should all be attributed to the same formal
class.
Reference:
Næss,
Åshild. 2000. Pileni. Languages of the World/Materials
325.
Proto Oceanic fish names
Meredith
Osmond
Building on the work of Paul Geraghty and
Robin Hooper, I have reconstructed around 180 fish names for Proto Oceanic.
Other than providing the full list, my intention in this limited time is to
discuss briefly the difficulties of working in this particular semantic field
and to single out a handful of examples which pose interesting problems of
semantic reconstruction.
Patterns of stability and
change in Oceanic terms for plant and animal taxa
Andrew
Pawley
Oceanic languages spoken by
coastal communities on high islands in Melanesia and western Polynesia
generally have between 1000 and 2000 named categories (taxa) of plants and
animals .The largest domains are plants (usually between 500 and 1000 taxa),
fish (200-500), and marine invertebrates (100-250), with smaller terminologies
for land invertebrates (50-100), birds (30-150), reptiles, mammals and
amphibians. Proto Oceanic was almost certainly spoken in the
Reconstructions
of the lexicon of Proto Oceanic have so far yielded barely 400 names for animals
and plants (including about 150 fish, 44 marine invertebrates, 73 land
invertebrates, 27 birds and over 100 plant names). This amounts to roughly 20
percent of the estimate of 2000 POc taxa .It appears that certain kinds of
lexemes have been more stable than others. Explanations for patterns of
stability and change will be sought in (a) the geographic distributions of
particular species and genera, (b) inherent properties of the referents and
their relation to humans (morphological and behavioural salience, usefulness,
prominence in ritual and cosmology), and (c) the linguistic properties of
lexemes, e.g. their internal structure and their rank in the taxonomy.
The various uses of ko in Māori: A unified
analysis
Elizabeth Pearce
Although
there is general agreement that ko belongs to the class of prepositional particles in Māori
(Biggs 1969, Bauer 1997, Harlow 2001), the singularity in the category
assignment of ko appears not to match
up with a multiplicity in its uses. In this paper I argue that, despite the
seeming diversity of its uses, the common characteristic of ko is that it has a
specificational function. This means that the apparent diversity is not an effect of
multiple functions or meanings associated with ko itself, but simply that there are a number of different
syntactic constructions which involve
the specificational function.
I therefore argue that the role of ko is specificational when it occurs as
a marker introducing constituents of all of the following types: (i) equational
predicates, (ii) topic
constituents, (iii) focused constituents, (iv) individuated referents of a
pronoun, and (v) naming phrases (Bauer 1997: 221). In developing this argument,
I show first that ko
is unlike other prepositions in that it fails to contribute a locational
meaning (place or time) and/or it fails to mark an argument role in the
sentence (of the type: agentive, benefactive, comitative, etc.). In this
respect, ko
is like a copular in its ‘bleached’ semantics.
The second part of the argument consists of showing and motivating the
various syntactic configurations in which ko-constituents
can be located.
I
conclude that ko
can be viewed as a prime exemplar of the particle class, the class of items
which are ‘grammatical words’ (Biggs 1969: 51).
References
Bauer, Winifred. 1997. The Reed Reference Grammar of Māori
(with William Parker, Te Kareongawai Evans and Te Aroha Noti Teepa).
Biggs, Bruce. 1969. Let's Learn Maori. Revised
1973.
Harlow, Ray. 2001. A Māori Reference Grammar.
Sulka of East New Britain, a
mixture of Oceanic and Papuan traits
Ger
Reesink
Max
Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,
Sulka is known in the
literature as a Papuan isolate of
On the other
hand, Sulka’s possessive constructions and its plural noun formation (many
declensions) suggest an older Papuan strain. There seems to be evidence of an
early contact with Oceanic languages of southern New Ireland, while a more
recent layer of evidence (lexical items and social organization, as expressed
in names of the clans belonging to the matrilineally defined moieties) points
to contact with Sulka’s present neighbour, Oceanic Mengen.
Linguists, Literacy, and the Law of Unintended Consequences
Kenneth L. Rehg
In 1970, the Pacific and Asian Linguistics Institute of the University of Hawai‘i launched a fourteen year effort designed to document and support the languages of Micronesia. The first goal of this undertaking was to prepare grammars and dictionaries of these languages, the second was to train Micronesian educators in the principles and practices of bilingual education, and the third was to develop vernacular materials for use in Micronesian schools. This paper assesses the consequences of those endeavors, both intended and unintended. In particular, it focuses upon the concept of ‘standard orthography’ and how that notion, in Micronesia and elsewhere, has commonly impeded the development of vernacular language literacy. More contentiously, it considers the possibility that the conventional goals of vernacular literacy programs might, in some circumstances, be counter-productive; that is, rather than enhancing linguistic vitality, they might, in fact, diminish it.
Proto Oceanic flora terms
The present phase of of the Oceanic Lexicon
Project concerns the reconstruction of Proto Oceanic terms for flora and fauna.
In her paper for this conference Bethwyn Evans examines the organisation of
Proto Oceanic plant terminology and higher-order flora taxa. In this paper
I present reconstructions of terms for individual plants and lower-order taxa
and discuss some of the difficulties I have encountered in making these reconstructions.
Galeya dictionary project
Galeya is a member of the Papuan Tip cluster
spoken on
Enseignement expérimental des langues
et de la culture kanak à l'école primaire publique de la Nouvelle-Calédonie
Afin de mettre en œuvre l'accord de Nouméa qui dispose que "(les)
langues kanak sont, avec le français, des langues d'enseignement et
de culture en Nouvelle-Calédonie", et que "(leur) place dans
l'enseignement et les médias doit être accrue et faire l'objet
d'une réflexion approfondie", un enseignement expérimental
des langues et de la culture kanak a été mise en place à
partir de l'année 2002 à l'école primaire publique de
la Nouvelle-Calédonie. En 2004 ce dispositif concerne 9 sites.
Notre communication s'attachera à rappeler les circonstances politiques
de la misa en place de cette expérimentation (Accords de Nouméa)
et les finalités qui lui sont assignées.
Nous présenterons également l'organisation du dispositif d'enseignement,
de formation, d'évaluation, les programmes et les supports.
Language and cultural preservation as a cultural
goldmine:
an indigenous researcher's perspective on integrity and intimacy in the dialogue
between language and culture
This paper is in the spirit of sharing ideas
and opinions with those in the Pacific Island countries who are passionate
about keeping local languages and cultures well and alive in local communities,
as I am.
When I consider the issue of integrity and intimacy in the dialogue between
language and culture, I begin to wonder if there is indeed a need to re-consider
three (at the moment) most important related areas with regards to language
and cultural preservation(s).
The first issue deals with the criteria used in the classification of languages
into two categories: languages under threat of dying out and those that are
perceived as not immediately facing the threat of extinction. The second issue
addresses western traditional means and strategies for preservation of local
languages and cultures in contrast to oral traditions prevalent in Pacific
Island countries. Thirdly, at this point in time in the history of a research
tradition introduced in the Pacific region since Euro-american colonization,
I feel the time has come to raise the level of interaction and participation
between internal/local and external/international academic researchers with
regards to studying and researching local languages and cultures. This would
be instead of external academic researchers, as now, working exclusively with
individuals in local communities who do not have the necessary scientific
training but are experts of their specific cultures and languages.
Subject in Pukapuan: absolutive or agentive
argument or no subject?
The category 'subject' in ergative Polynesian languages has long been debated. It was widely argued or assumed during the 1970s and 1980s that the ergative and not the absolutive argument is the subject of a transitive clause, although some linguists held the opposite view. More recently it has been argued that the notion of 'subject' has no usefulness or that the features used to diagnose the category subject are spread between the ergative and absolutive arguments, or even that ergative clauses are in fact intransitive and that the absolutive argument is the subject.
Pukapukan clauses which are semantically transitive (containing an agent
and a patient in a two argument clause) may exhibit casemarking ranging from
'ergative' to 'accusative' as well as a third option 'passive'. The features
of subjecthood are investigated for each core argument of clauses in the different
casemarking patterns. While the identification of subject is clear for intransitive
clauses and transitive clauses of the 'accusative' pattern, it is concluded
that the notion of 'subject' is not very helpful for either the 'ergative'
or the 'passive' pattern since both arguments (the agent and the patient)
exhibit subject-like properties. Tests for 'object-hood' are also largely
inconclusive. Two conflicting views of the category 'subject' in ergative
Polynesian languages are discussed with reference to the 'ergative' pattern
in Pukapukan.
Pukapuka's place in Polynesia:
"East is east, west is west and never the twain shall meet?"
Pukapuka in the northern Cook Islands lies
on the border of the western and eastern cultural areas of Polynesia. Pukapukan
belongs to the Samoic-Outlier subgroup of Nuclear Polynesian according to
the traditional subgrouping hypothesis of Pawley (1966), yet it also shares
a number of features with East Polynesian languages (including 25% of the
exclusively Eastern vocabulary listed in POLLEX). On the basis of shared sporadic
changes, Marck (2000) proposed a new subgrouping of Ellicean languages that
does not include Pukapuka but which does include its near neighbours Samoan
and Tokelau. Marck's evidence is re-examined and Pukapuka's relationships
within (and beyond) Polynesia are discussed in relation to vocabulary, grammar,
cultural items, fauna and flora and with reference to oral traditions of migrations
and voyaging.
Chronology of Rotuman
consonant changes
Hans
Schmidt
Afrika-Asien-Institut,
Abteilung für Südseesprachen, Hamburg
Many more sound changes have
occurred in Rotuman than in its rather conservative relatives, the Polynesian
languages and Fijian. The most recent one was documented by Horatio Hale and
some missionaries in the 19th century as a “change in progress”. It
was one crucial piece of evidence that helped Biggs (1965) to identify
loanwords from closely related languages (“indirectly inherited words”) within
the Rotuman lexicon.
In this paper, I will try to
group some consonant changes together and determine their sequence as well as
compare the Rotuman development with general beliefs about the order of consonant
changes.
An analysis of the function of te in Apma (Central Pentecost,
Cindy Schneider
This is a work-in-progress analysis of the te particle in
Apma. Te exhibits a variety of
functions, but it is difficult to come up with a single defining term that
encompasses all of its uses. While it can frequently be glossed as a completive
or emphatic marker, there are also numerous examples where a
completive/emphatic gloss would be inappropriate – and alternative glosses
reflect an assortment of disparate functions. It is possible that te’s function is
tied to the TAM of the verb, or to the type of verb (for example, active versus
stative). Furthermore, when an overt object is specified, te can appear either before or
after the direct object. In this paper I will give examples of the contexts in
which te is
used in Apma. I will also look at the way similar-looking particles are treated
in other
Genres in Kilivila
Dr Gunter Senft
Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics,
It has always
been problematic to classify text genres for non-Indo-European languages,
especially if this classification is based on the tradition of, and the
technical terms defined in, European philology and text or discourse analysis.
After a brief discussion of the technical term ‘genre’ and the function the
various ‘genres’ are claimed to fulfil, this paper presents a first emic
typology of genres in Kilivila, the language of the Trobriand Islanders (Papua
New Guinea) providing illustrative examples of various types of these genres.
The typology is not only based on the Trobriand Islanders’ own metalinguistic
terms for these genres, but also on the relationship these genres have with the
‘situational intentional varieties’ which are also distinguished - and labelled
- by the native speakers of this language.
Topicalization
in Palauan revisited: a text-based study
Shimoji Michinori
This study will focus on topicalization in Palauan, which
involves three sentence structures schematically shown below.
Structure 0: Pron. [ VP ] (NP0)
Structure 1: NP1 [ VP ]
Structure 2: NP2 [actr-VP ] (NP3).
Structure 0 is an unmarked structure from which Structures 1 and 2 are derived
by topicalization. Structure 0 has the pronominal subject, which may be specified
by a lexical NP (NP 0). In Structure 1, NP1 indicates the topic/ Actor. Structure
2 has the non-Actor topic (NP 2). The verb in Structure 2 obligatorily carries
a pronominal prefix co-referential with the Actor argument, which may be specified
by NP2 following the verb.
In previous studies (Josephs 1975; Lemaréchal 1991), no statements
have been made regarding the presence or absence of restrictions on topicalization
of non-Actor NPs. I will show that, in recorded texts, the frequency of topicalization
differs depending on the semantic role of the NPs.
Grammaticalization
and structural scope increase - Evidence from possessive-classifier-based
benefactive marking in Oceanic languages
Dr Jae Jung Song
This paper
discusses the development of possessive classifiers into benefactive markers in
Oceanic languages. On the basis of Tabor and Traugott’s (1998) Diachronic
String Comparison, this change episode will then be demonstrated to involve
structural scope increase contrary to the widely held assumption that scope
decrease is a manifestation of grammaticalization. The paper also identifies as
an empirically testable hypothesis the strong connection between scope
increase, and the formal identity between source items and their
grammaticalized descendants.
Kuwae:
the story in Namakir
Wolfgang B. Sperlich
UNESCO
Following
a rendition of the story in Namakir by Chief Masoeripu, I will present the
text and its analysis along the lines established by Ellen Facey in her Nguna
Voices. After introducing the ethnographic context I will touch on dilemmas
of transforming oral performances into text, and then I will focus on style
and rhetoric and the grammatical devices used.
How
long do we have? Dating the changes of Oceanic through the witness of
archaeology
Matthew Spriggs
The
linguistic sequence of changes that produced Proto-Oceanic and its sub-groups
can be compared to aspects of the spread of the Lapita Culture, its ancestors
and successor cultures in the Pacific as a datable archaeological sequence in
the same region. This comparison is particularly easy for areas not settled
pre-Lapita in Remote Oceania, but perhaps is also as persuasive for areas
settled for much longer time spans in Near Oceania and Island Southeast Asia.
The latest thinking on such dates will be aired and compared with the
relatively dated sequence (or sequences) of linguistic change for the Oceanic
languages.
Taivosa: A case of deliberate language
shift
Apolonia Tamata
University of the South Pacific
One way to mourn the death of a close relative is to cease speaking one’s dialect and shift to speak the dialect spoken by the deceased relative. This is called biuvosa, or taivosa, in Nasarowaqa Fijian and its occurrence anywhere else is not known. This paper will provide some background on the custom of taivosa and a brief description of the dialects concerned to portray their relationship. The extent of the shift to the other dialect will also be explored as well as the reactions of those who have had to tolerate the change in the language.
The
role of second language acquisition theory and practice in Pasifika language
maintenance in New Zealand
Melenaite Taumoefolau
University of Auckland
This paper is about how second language acquisition theory and practice can inform Pasifika language maintenance by communities and by the school system in New Zealand. Studies show that Pasifika youth in New Zealand are shifting from Pasifika languages to English. I draw on research and literature on second language acquisition to explain why and how this shift is taking place, and to explain how second language acquisition theory can inform language maintenance efforts and make them truly successful. When groups of people shift from one language to a more dominant one, they are becoming engaged in language acquisition of the dominant language. This happens because the conditions for acquiring another language are satisfied, whether intentionally or not. For language maintenance to be successful, language acquisition of the dying language needs to take place.
Angela Terrill
Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics,
This paper examines the extent to which linguistic borrowing can be
used to shed light on the existence and nature of early contact between
speakers of Papuan and Oceanic languages. The question will be addressed by
taking one Papuan language, Lavukaleve, spoken in the
The results of this type of
study provides information on the nature of cultural contact during the
last 3500 or so years since speakers of Oceanic languages first arrived in
Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered
Cultures
Nicholas Thieberger
PARADISEC
(paradisec.org.au) is a distributed digital archive of material related to
languages of the Pacific and
While it has been
possible for some years now to play audio files on computers, there has been no
simple method for working interactively with field recordings in order to
provide citable references. Such references provide an authority for example
sentences that we routinely use in our research as linguists. As part of my PhD
I developed a methodology for linking text and audio which I will demonstrate
in this paper.
Teanu and other languages
of Vanikoro
Benjamin Tua
On Vanikoro in the
Solomon Islands, the Vano and Tanema languages are now extinct, and the Teanu
language has only a small number of speakers left. In this paper I will describe
the linguistic situation on Vanikoro today, and will also present some information
about my on-going work on the Teanu language.
Structure,
style, and content in dictionary entries for an Oceanic language
David
S. Walsh
This paper
arises from current work on a bilingual dictionary for an Oceanic language---Raga,
North Pentecost,
What's
in a name, an orthography, or a cluster bomb?
David
S. Walsh
Three recent problematic
published statements concerning an OC language, Raga, are considered. The
first concerns an allegedly preferred language name; the second concerns an
allegedly established orthography; and the third concerns the alleged non-presence
of consonant clusters. Some associated issues are explored, and an attempt
is made to set the record straight.
Aspects of noun classification in Savosavo
Claudia
Wegener
Max
Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,
Savosavo is a Papuan language spoken in
the
The Hawaiian “ka/ke” article system: The
historical development of a gender-like system
William
H. Wilson
Hawaiian is
distinctive within Eastern Polynesian in dividing lexemes into classes based on
their use of reflexes of the Proto Eastern Polynesian “definite” article *te .There
is both phonological and morphological conditioning for the distribution of the
two allomorphs ka and ke (and a few less common variants.) A number of minimal pairs exist, e.g., ka pā ‘wall’ and ke pā ‘plate.’ While ka is clearly the innovative form, it is
also the unmarked form in Hawaiian. The change from ke to ka in Hawaiian can
be related to phonological rules of Hawaiian that resulted in surface strings
of article plus base that could be interpreted as deriving from more than one
underlying form. An underlying form with ka
rather than ke was chosen and later
surfaced in the language in deliberate speech. Morphological rules predicting
the distribution of ka were later
expanded in both their phonological and semantic conditioning.