Word-building and Agglutination in South-Eastern Papua

Abstract

The Melanesian and non-MN languages alike belong to the group known as agglutinating, i.e. they are able to form compound words out of a number of elements, many of which are incapable of independent existence. In this they are not entirely different from the MN languages to the east of them, and yet there is a difference, and that not merely of degree but of kind. Prefixes and suffixes play their parts in these languages, as they do in SEP, but the power of adding indefinitely suffix to suffix is much more limited in insular MN than in SEP. Such a compound word as Suau ‘ita-komakomani-uyo-i-miu, take care of yourselves again, is hardly to be thought of, say, in Mota, Fiji, or Samoa.