Oceanic Languages Research Articles

The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society ed by Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley, and Meredith Osmond (review)

Reviewed by: The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society ed by Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley, and Meredith Osmond Paul Geraghty Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley, and Meredith Osmond, eds. 2011. The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society. vol. 4: Animals. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics 621. xxvi + 576 pp. ISBN 978-085-883626-6. $Aust. 132.00 (Australia), $Aust. 120.00 (International), paper. This volume is the latest in the series resulting from the Australian National University’s monumental undertaking to reconstruct linguistically the society and world of the speakers of Proto-Oceanic (POc), undertaken by the Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Of the seven proposed volumes, the first, published in 1998, was on material culture, the second, published in 2003, on the physical environment, and the third, published in 2008, on plants. This volume, entitled Animals, should be understood to cover “animals” in the broadest sense of the term (might “fauna” have been less ambiguous?), including fish, aquatic invertebrates, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and other terrestrial invertebrates. In addition, there are two chapters by Andrew Pawley on special topics—“Stability and change in Oceanic fish names,” and “Were turtles fish in Proto Oceanic?: Semantic reconstruction and change in some terms for animal categories in Oceanic languages”—and finally two appendices (“Data sources and collation” and “Languages”), a list of references, and three indexes (“Index of reconstructions by proto-language,” “Alphabetical index of reconstructions,” and “Index of English and biological terms”). All chapters are authored by one or more of the editors, except for that on birds, which is by Ross Clark. As we have come to expect from Pacific Linguistics, this is a highly competent piece of work, and an impressive one, too, in many ways, not least in sheer volume—there are over 600 pages, 17 maps, 44 tables, 91 figures (mostly drawings of fish and other natural species), and nearly 500 Proto-Oceanic reconstructions (many more if variants and other levels are considered) based on data from nearly 600 languages (including “dialects”). The work will be useful not only to those interested in the prehistory of the Pacific, and to ichthyologists, zoologists, and ornithologists, but also to linguists looking for data on semantic change, sound change, subgrouping, and so on. Overall, the volume is easy to read and to use, and typographical and other errors are few. Some may quibble about the arrangement of topics, for instance, that whales and bats are included under mammals, when most (perhaps all?) Oceanic languages class them as “fish” and “birds,” respectively. But the authors explain that it is not certain that Oceanic taxonomies agree on these classifications, and, in any case, the typical reader would probably expect to find the “scientifically” based taxonomy being followed. Developments in the field since the earlier volumes have led to some changes. One is the inclusion of two new first-order “subgroups” of Oceanic: the Temotu subgroup (Reef Santa Cruz and Utupua and Vanikoro) and the Southern Oceanic linkage (Vanuatu and New Caledonia). Because of the now even more “rake”-like structure of the higher echelons of the Oceanic subgroup—that is, there being many first-order subgroups—the authors have felt the need to guard against a proliferation of reconstructions based on just two of these first-order subgroups. They have, therefore, proposed two [End Page 524] “phantom” subgroups, Remote Oceanic (Southern Oceanic, Micronesian, and Central Pacific) and Eastern Oceanic (Remote Oceanic plus Southeast Solomonic), for which they admit the evidence is very weak, but which are necessary as “convenient hypotheses that allow us to retain rigorous criteria for a POc reconstruction” (13). Hence the criterion for a reconstruction to be recognized as POc is that reflexes occur in at least two of the following: Admiralties (or Yapese or Mussau), Western Oceanic, Temotu, and “Eastern Oceanic,” and that borrowing is not a possible explanation for its distribution; and also, of course, if reflexes are found both in and beyond Oceania. The authors have not incorporated Blust’s (1998) proposal that Oceanic subgroups at the highest level into Admiralties and non-Admiralties (“Nuclear Oceanic”), but point out...

The Status of Subject and Object Markers in Pakin Lukunosh Mortlockese

Subject and object markers go by a variety of names in the literature on Oceanic languages. Few authors, however, clarify the morphophonological and morpho-syntactic status of such elements. This paper investigates the status of subject and object markers in the Pakin geolect of the Lukunosh dialect of Mortlockese, a minority language spoken in the Federated States of Micronesia. Through the application of morphophonological and morphosyntactic tests established in the literature, I conclude that (i) subject markers are proclitics that have ambiguous interpretation as either anaphoric agreement (arguments) or grammatical agreement, and (ii) object markers are suffixes that show a split: (a) the third person singular object suffix behaves like a general transitivity marker when there is an overt object, and (b) both the third person singular object suffix and the other nonthird person singular object suffixes behave like anaphoric agreement when there is no overt object.

An Innovated Possessor Suffix and Category in Central Choiseul

Oceanic languages typically display possessor-indexing suffixes that distinguish the usual four Oceanic person categories, along with at least singular and plural. However, a group of languages of central Choiseul (Solomon Islands), including Ririo, Babatana, and Sisiqa, display only three possessor-indexing suffixes. Two reflect Proto-Oceanic forms and index 1 sg and 2 sg possessors. The third, an innovated form, indexes all other person number categories (that is, 3 sg and all nonsingular categories). This paper investigates the formal and structural characteristics of this innovated non-1/2 sg suffix. It examines the phenomenon in each of the three languages, including allomorphy of the suffix, and the manner in which person and number categories are expressed in the presence of the innovated suffix. In terms of the former, it finds each language displays different allomorphy patterns, with both - e and - a occurring, along with - i when following a high vowel. Various other factors are at play in one or more languages, including vowel harmony and presuffix vowel loss. In terms of the coding of non-1/2 sg person and number categories, the paper finds that the innovated suffix licenses a possessor NP that may contain a lexical noun or dependent pronoun. However, in the absence of an overt possessor NP, the suffix prompts a default 3 sg reading.

Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic typology ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon (review)

Reviewed by: Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic typology ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon Lars Johanson Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic typology. Ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. (Explorations in linguistic typology.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xxii, 319. ISBN 9780199660223. $125 (Hb). This collection of essays about possession and ownership aims at combining linguistic and anthropological concepts concerning the relation between language, culture, and modes of thinking, particularly the ways in which culture and cognition are manifested in grammar. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald’s opening essay, ‘Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic perspective’, is a lucid introduction that defines, explains, and exemplifies all conceivable aspects of the topic. Chs. 2–11 address the ways that linguistic structures reflect cultural patterns, attitudes toward possession, and effects of change. Isabelle Bril analyzes the complex system of ownership relations in the Oceanic language Nêlêmwa of New Caledonia. Gloria J. Gravelle investigates patterns of possession in Moskona, an East Bird’s Head language of West Papua, Indonesia. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald deals with possession and ownership in Manambu, a Ndu language of the Sepik area of Papua New Guinea. Alan Dench analyzes possession in Martuthunira, once spoken in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Lev Michael discusses Nanti, spoken in Peru, in the context of other Arawak languages. Mark W. Post deals with possession and association in the Tibeto-Burman Galo language and its culture. Yongxian Luo examines possessive constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Anne Storch studies possession in Hone, a Jukonoid language of Nigeria. Felix K. Ameka deals with possessive constructions in Likpe (Sɛkpɛlé), a Kwa language of Ghana. Zygmunt Frajzyngier discusses possession in Wandala, a Chadic language of Cameroon and Nigeria. The last two chapters focus on indigenous conceptualization of ownership and its changes in the modern world. Michael Wood discusses the Melanesian understanding of possession as observed in Kamula, spoken in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. Rosita Henry deals with ownership among speakers of Temboka in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. With a special focus on Australian languages, especially Dyirbal, R. M. W. Dixon discusses comitative and privative patterns of predicative possession, the problem of the head in appositional constructions of inalienable possession, and indigenous concepts of possession, ownership, and control. In her introduction, Aikhenvald presents the theoretical principles of analysis and sums up a number of insights on the basis of her own studies, investigation of numerous grammars, and the findings suggested in the succeeding chapters. In the following, the main tenets of this detailed crosslinguistic account of the wide range of possessive structures is briefly outlined. Possessive constructions vary depending on the nature of the possessor, the possessee, and the possessive relationship. They realize a set of recurrent core meanings: (i) ownership, (ii) whole-part relations, for example, between a body or a plant and its parts, and (iii) kinship, that is, consanguineal and affinal relations. Many languages use essentially the same constructions for the core meanings. All combinations of the types are, however, found across the world’s languages. The degree to which possession is conceived as ‘the same’ differs from one society to another and is reflected in linguistic structures. Possession can be expressed with possessive noun phrases. Some languages have dedicated phrase types that cover the core meanings (Moskona, Manambu, Martuthunira, Nanti, Hone). Others represent possessive meanings through more general associative noun phrases. The expression of possession may be viewed as a realization of a broader concept of association (Nêlêmwa, Galo, Mandarin, Likpe, Temboka, Wandala). Kinship possession and whole-part relationship reflect close links between possessor and possessee, the intimate relationship of ‘inalienable possession’. Culturally important objects may fall [End Page 277] into this class. Some languages treat consanguineal kinship and sacred or treasured objects as inalienable. The semantic content varies, and the composition of the classes may change over time, for example, when body-part terms are grammaticalized as spatial relators (Nêlêmwa, Nanti, Moskona, Manambu, Likpe, Wandala). Nouns designating inalienably possessed...

The Äiwoo verb phrase: Syntactic ergativity without pivots

Formal models of syntax typically accord the structural position external to the verb's domain a privileged status in the overall syntactic makeup of a language, either by assuming that external arguments are always S or A, or by linking external argument position to syntactic pivothood. This paper demonstrates that the Oceanic language Äiwoo has an ergative verb phrase – i.e. A as the VP-internal argument and S/O as external arguments – but no corresponding S/O pivot. That is, the ergative structure of the verb phrase in Äiwoo does not entail any syntactically privileged status of the VP-external arguments; rather, it is simply a by-product of various diachronic developments. This situation shows that what has traditionally been perceived as fundamental differences in grammatical organisation – the difference between an accusative and an ergative pattern of VP structure – need not in fact be associated with any broader differences in syntactic or pragmatic structure. More importantly, it goes against the assumption that it is possible to assign universal functions to syntactic configurations. Instead, it can be seen as providing support for the view argued for by Evans & Levinson (2009: 444) that ‘most linguistic diversity is the product of historical cultural evolution operating on relatively independent traits’.

The creation of learner-centred dictionaries for endangered languages: a Rotuman example

This article examines the creation of dictionaries for endangered languages (ELs). Though each dictionary is uniquely prepared for its users, all dictionaries should be based on sound principles of vocabulary learning, including the importance of lexical chunks, as emphasised by Michael Lewis in his Lexical Approach. Many of the decisions that a lexicographer needs to make when creating an EL dictionary are discussed here, with information about how each issue was handled in the creation of an online dictionary of Rotuman, which is an Oceanic language, the majority of whose members live in diasporic communities in English-speaking nations. This article argues for the necessity of training EL members in how to use their dictionary.

From Austronesian Voice to Oceanic Transitivity: Äiwoo as the “Missing Link”

This paper examines three properties of the Reefs-Santa Cruz language Äiwoo that are unusual for an Oceanic language—a distinction between prefixal marking of subjects for intransitive verbs and suffixal marking for transitive verbs, OVA word order in clauses that are morphologically and syntactically transitive, and an ergatively structured verb phrase in OVA clauses—and one that is frequent in Oceanic languages, namely the existence of clauses that appear to be morphologically intransitive but syntactically transitive (socalled “transitive discord” in the terminology of Margetts). I argue that all these properties are straightforwardly explained by the assumption that the Äiwoo system derives from a western Austronesian-style symmetrical voice system where two basic changes have taken place: the loss of the contrast between an actor voice and an undergoer voice, and the accretion of subject pronouns as bound person markers on verbs. Given that Äiwoo is an Oceanic language, this suggests that a voice system must have persisted later into the development of Oceanic than has previously been assumed.

Tamambo, a language of Malo, Vanuatu by Dorothy G. Jauncey (review)

Reviewed by: Tamambo, a language of Malo, Vanuatu by Dorothy G. Jauncey Daniel Kaufman Dorothy G. Jauncey. 2011. Tamambo, a language of Malo, Vanuatu. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics 622. 449 pp. ISBN 978-0-858-83633-4. $Aust. 110.00 (Australia), $Aust. 100.00 (elsewhere), paper. Tamambo is a conservative Oceanic language of the Northern Vanuatu subgroup (Lynch, Ross, and Crowley 2002) spoken on Malo, a small island just south of the country’s largest: Santo. Tamambo is currently the only language of the island, another dialect (Tamapo) being almost extinct. Use of Tamambo is still strong, particularly on the western side of the island where it originated, and it is also spoken by sizable “off-island” communities in Vanuatu’s main towns of Luganville and Port Vila. Jauncey estimates that there are currently approximately 3,600 speakers (a rising number). Like many Vanuatu languages, however, Tamambo is being impacted by widespread use of the country’s lingua franca and national language Bislama (an English lexifier-creole). Jauncey’s grammar marks the first substantial documentation of Tamambo. Previously, only a few short wordlists and brief grammatical sketches (for example, Macdonald 1891, Tryon 1976), as well as religious materials (for example, Landels 1897, Sykes 1955), were available. Jauncey’s grammar, as well as her online Tamambo dictionary, are the product of almost 20 years of research, multiple fieldtrips, and data-collection with a vast range of speakers in Malo as well as elsewhere in Vanuatu and abroad. Jauncey’s extensive knowledge of the language, the place, and the people give this grammar a unique value. She is not only able to provide a rich grammatical description but also to offer insight on change within the linguistic community over these years, differences across age groups and populations (on and off island), and Tamambo’s evolving relationship with Bislama. The grammar is well written, with clear descriptions of grammatical features. Even those who may take issue with some of her proposals will no doubt find a great deal of value. The book is organized into fourteen chapters and also includes several glossed texts in an appendix. Chapter 1 provides a thorough overview of the language and linguistic community, past and present, as well as discussion of previous scholarship on Tamambo, Malo Island, and other languages of the area. This is followed by the presentation of grammatical features in chapters 2–14. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the phonology.1 Jauncey posits a phonemic inventory of 16 consonants and five simple vowels. Providing correspondences between Proto-Oceanic (POc) and Tamambo, she illustrates a “strong correspondence” (24) between the two. Her proposed inventory of consonants is arguably too conservative and probably best represents the speech of only the oldest speakers. Based upon Riehl’s (2008) research as well as Jauncey’s discussion in the chapter, the bilabial fricatives /β, βʷ / are, for the [End Page 277] majority of speakers, [w, v] in all contexts; the palatal stop /ɟ/ is consistently an affricate with variable voicing [ⁿʤ] or [tʃ]. Tamambo, like a number of other Oceanic languages, has a contrast between plain and additionally labialized bilabials (mb vs. mbʷ, m vs. mʷ, β vs. βʷ). The latter sounds (also referred to as “labiovelar”) have clear lip rounding in Tamambo, whereas in other Oceanic languages the contrast may primarily manifest in quality of the following vowel without apparent rounding (see Lynch 2002 for discussion). This contrast is, however, being lost for speakers below the age of 40 (as it is in other Vanuatu languages, such as those of southwest Malakula). The segment /x/ is notable for considerable variation in its phonetic realization [ɣ, h, g, kʰ], both due to phonological conditioning and sociophonetic factors. Regarding vowels, the five simple segments /i, u, e, o, a/ can occur in sequences of up to four. Jauncey provides a nice description of vowel phenomena, including restrictions on sequences, contexts for vowel deletion, and phonetic realization in the context of stress. With clear explanations and plentiful examples, there is a great deal of useful data. In addition to the segmental descriptions, discussions of consonant cooccurrence, syllable structure ([C]V[N]), and stress, Jauncey includes sections on the structure of grammatical and phonological words and intonation...

The Encoding of Manner Predications and Resultatives in Oceanic: A Typological and Historical Overview

This paper is concerned with the encoding of resultatives and manner predications in Oceanic languages. Our point of departure is a typological overview of the encoding strategies and their geographical distribution, and we investigate their historical traits by the use of phylogenetic comparative methods. A full theory of the historical pathways is not always accessible for all the attested encoding strategies, given the data available for this study. However, tentative theories about the development and origin of the attested strategies are given. One of the most frequent strategy types used to encode both manner predications and resultatives has been given special emphasis. This is a construction in which a reflex form of the Proto-Oceanic causative *pa-/*paka- modifies the second verb in serial verb constructions.

Development of Reason and Cause Markers in Oceanic

Proto-Oceanic had a transitive verb *suRi ‘follow, be in motion behind somebody/something’, ‘accompany’. This verb underwent several grammaticalization processes. It developed into a preposition with the sense ‘(motion) in the direction of X’, a preposition whose meaning can be broadly characterized as ‘concerning’, including the marking of locutional topics, and into a reason/cause preposition and clause marker. After discussion of the semantic aspects of *suRi and its reflexes in various Oceanic languages, the paper focuses on the development of the reason/cause marking functions. It is argued that the factor that motivated the development was the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: because state of affairs B temporally follows state of affairs A, it may be seen as being caused by it. There is also evidence of independent developments from the meaning ‘follow’ to a cause and/or reason marking function in other languages with different etyma involved.

Directionals in Paluai: Semantics, Use, and Grammaticalization Paths

A phenomenon commonly encountered in Oceanic languages consists of verb-like forms that indicate the direction of motion verbs, which go by different names depending on the analysis. This article discusses the directional paradigm of Paluai (Eastern Admiralties), spoken on Baluan Island (Manus Province, Papua New Guinea). This language has an exceptionally large paradigm of ten directionals, which are obligatorily used in serial verb constructions (SVCs) to express the direction of the action represented by the main verb. The Paluai paradigm is interesting because it utilizes an absolute frame of reference in which many of the terms are additionally specified for deixis. Which directional is used in what context depends on two variables: first, where the motion is directed with regard to a land–sea axis (absolute or cardinal direction); and second, whether the motion is directed away from or toward a deictic center, or in neither direction. Although the directionals are used predominantly in SVCs, they are all attested as main verbs, heading a predicate. They have, however, undergone some degree of grammaticalization; this appears to be especially the case with la ‘motion away from the deictic center’.

Topics in Oceanic morphosyntax (review)

Reviewed by: Topics in Oceanic morphosyntax William A. Foley Topics in Oceanic morphosyntax. Ed. by Claire Moyse-Faurie and Joachim Sabel. (Trends in linguistics, studies and monographs 239.) Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011. Pp. 344. ISBN 9783110259896. $140 (Hb). This volume contains a collection of papers mostly drawn from those presented at the seventh Conference on Oceanic Linguistics, which took place in Noumea, New Caledonia, in July 2007. The conferences on Oceanic linguistics began in the late 1980s, after researchers in Oceanic languages [End Page 910] decided to organize their own specialist conferences separately from the mother Austronesian conferences that began in the early 1970s. The Oceanic languages number some 450, more than the great majority of the world’s language families, and spread over a vast territory from New Guinea in the west to Hawai’i in the east and from Micronesia in the north to New Zealand in the south, but surprisingly are actually a relatively compact, well-defined, and low-level subgroup in the Austronesian language family, as this abbreviated diagram of subgrouping in Austronesian shows (Blust 2009). 1. In spite of constituting a relatively low-level subgroup of Austronesian, Oceanic languages exhibit a wide range of typological diversity in their morphosyntax, as this volume demonstrates. However, if we exclude those languages spoken in coastal New Guinea, whose typology has in many cases been radically altered due to millennial-long contact with the structurally quite different languages of various Papuan language families, it is possible to delimit a canonical Oceanic morphosyntactic type. This idealized Oceanic language has a left-headed branching structure, that is, VO, with typically SVO or VOS clause-level constituent order (often both in the same language, as in Tolai) or less commonly VSO. Oceanic languages exhibit anaphoric pronominal agreement (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987) for both subject and object, the former by a proclitic or prefix and the latter by an enclitic or suffix. The alignment of these pronominal agreement markers is nominative-accusative, although elsewhere in their syntax Oceanic languages typically provide little evidence for an accusative alignment for grammatical relations (Ross 2004). Tense, aspect, and mood markers are also proclitics to the verb, but may occur before or after the subject pronominals, depending on the individual language, and in some cases fuse with the latter. Verbs take a range of derivational morphemes, the most important of which signal the transitivity of a verb. There are typically two transitivizing suffixes, one with the form *-i, which indicates that the object bears a more ‘direct’ semantic role to its governing verb, that is, a patient or theme, and the other, -aki(ni), which signals a more ‘accessory’ role like location, goal, or instrument. Object NPs can also undergo noun incorporation, in which case the verb may undergo a formal process of intransitivization, such as reduplication. Nouns typically do not take any inflection, the only exception being inalienable nouns that require a pronominal possessor suffix. Alienable nouns are possessed by attaching the pronominal possessive suffixes to a possessive classifier, never directly to a noun. There can be many of these, as in Micronesian languages (Benton 1968), but the minimal contrast usually made is a binary one, such as between a dominant, controlling possessive relationship versus a subordinate, controlled one, as in Tolai: ka-na pal (dom-3sg.poss house) ‘his house’ versus ra-na kankan (sub-3sg.poss anger) ‘his anger’. In keeping with their left-headed typology, head nouns in Oceanic languages are typically phrase-initial, but commonly NPs are complements of DPs, which in turn are headed by a phrase-initial D. The category D distinguishes between common and proper NP complements. Oceanic languages normally have little in the way of nonfinite clauses beyond nominalizations, which are pervasive. Though serial verb constructions are rife, subordinate and coordinate clauses are of the same form as independent main clauses. wh-words may remain in situ, perhaps unusually for such robustly left-headed languages, or they may move to a clause-initial position. [End Page 911] Beyond their fixed VO order, Oceanic languages exhibit some flexibility in their clausal constituency order. The first chapter in the volume, by Joachim Sabel, ‘Deriving linear order in...

Topics in Oceanic morphosyntax (review)

Reviewed by: Topics in Oceanic morphosyntax Robert Early Claire Moyse-Faurie and Joachim Sabel, eds. 2011. Topics in Oceanic morphosyntax. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 239, vi + 344 pp. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 978-3-11-025989-6 (hardbound), e-ISBN 978-3-22-025991-9 (e-book), $140.00 or €99.95 each; or $210.00 or €149.95 for both hardbound and e-book. This volume contains an introduction and nine papers, providing 340 pages of useful advances in the description and analysis of Oceanic languages, prepared by established Oceanic scholars. Each paper has its own bibliography, and the volume as a whole has two pages of subject index and two pages of language index (113 languages or language subgroups are mentioned). Some papers have their own list of abbreviations, others do not. The editors arrange the papers into three topic-based sections: sentential syntax and sentence types; nominal morphosyntax; and historical developments. Some papers cover issues in Oceanic (three papers) and Polynesian (two papers), and others deal with specific Polynesian languages (two papers: Niuean and Tahitian) or other non-Polynesian Oceanic languages (two papers: Unua of Vanuatu [Remote Oceanic, North-Central Vanuatu] and Saliba of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea [Western Oceanic, Papuan Tip]). The interaction of language with topic is shown in table 1, which includes the author names and titles of all papers. This might appear to be a somewhat sporadic, or at least eclectic, collection, but the papers have come together because they mostly represent the research topics that their authors chose to present at COOL7 (Seventh Conference on Oceanic Linguistics) in Nouméa, New Caledonia in July, 2007, and the title of the collection is probably the best that could be found to provide some kind of overarching unity or schema for the compilation. However, since the publication of formal volumes of conference proceedings seems to have fallen from favor with the organizers of the COOL series, or with publishers, or with university authorities who rank the publication outputs of their academic staff, the editors of this volume are to be thanked for providing an opportunity for these authors to present their papers to a wider audience. The editors are similarly to be congratulated for the comprehensive introduction provided to the volume. All papers are placed in the context of earlier typological overviews and studies of Oceanic languages, and general theoretical frameworks. For each paper, one or two pages of discussion first provides this theoretical and typological orientation, and [End Page 602] then the paper's major claims and findings are summarized. The introduction concludes with a single paragraph summary of each paper ordered by the authors' surnames. Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Interaction of Language with Topic There is a slight drawback to the comprehensiveness of the introduction, however, as it results in a certain level of repetitiveness. Each paper's key conclusions are detailed at least four times: first, in the context of the introductory theoretical discussion; second, in the paper summaries given at the end of the introduction; and then again in the introductions and conclusions of the papers themselves. The second of these, the summaries, are probably the authors' own paper abstracts, as suggested by the use of a "we" (15) that escaped being edited out. This organization also results in some apparent contradictions between the editors and the papers they are introducing. For example, Margetts's abstract (15) states that the variation in order of stems (V-N and N-V) found in Saliba noun incorporations is unusual, and "has not been described for other languages of the Papuan Tip cluster or the wider Oceanic language group." However, the editors have already posited a counter to this, by indicating (9) that this possibility "is also attested in Polynesian languages such as Samoan and East Futunan." There are also divergent claims that are reiterated by the editors in the context of discussing different papers, but are not resolved. For example, in the discussion of his own paper, Sabel claims that "Kiribati and Fijian are configurational free word order languages" (5), but on the next page, in discussing another paper, the view that...

Mood and Transitivity in South Efate

South Efate, an Oceanic language of central Vanuatu, allows the expression of temporal relations in several ways using markers of aspect and mood. Pronominal expression of arguments is obligatory and, as subject proclitics occur in one of three forms (realis, irrealis, and perfect), expression of aspect or mood is required in every sentence. South Efate is one of a group of Vanuatu languages that displays stem-initial mutation, whereby the initial consonant of a very small group of verbs changes to reflect mood. This paper presents evidence that fortis (realis) and lenis (irrealis) stem mutation also correlates with features of transitivity, not a surprising finding following the work of Hopper and Thompson. All else being equal, the fortis form of the verb occurs in clauses that have an overt expression of an object, while the lenis form occurs when there is no object in the clause. A further curiosity is that stem-initial mutation has been maintained for just a small class of verbs, so its correlation with transitivity in just this small class is all the more interesting. This paper explores the relationship between the morphological expression of mood and transitivity in South Efate, and suggests frequency of use as an explanation for the retention of this marginal system that affects only 7 percent of verb stems in the lexicon.

Nuclear complex predicates in Niuean

This paper presents the rich array of nuclear complex predicates in Niuean, an Oceanic (Polynesian) language of the Tongic subgroup. Niuean exhibits closed class secondary elements such as pre-verbs and light verbs and post-verbal directionals and completion verbs. In addition, there is a wide range of open class secondary elements denoting resultative, depictive, and modificational meanings, as well as many ‘duplicates’ where both predicates have essentially the same meaning, and exocentric noun-adjective compound predicates. After the various types of complex predicates are presented, they are grouped into four categories, according to their argument-sharing properties: external argument shared, internal argument shared, no arguments shared, and all arguments shared. Based on these properties, and on word order, a structural analysis is developed. It is argued that the secondary predicates are merged in one of four different positions in the structure, taking an IP, vP, VP, or V complement. Due to two types of VP movement independently posited for Niuean (rollup VP movement and predicate fronting), each of these merge positions results in a surface V+V juxtaposition structure, but each merge position correlates with different semantic, word order, and argument-sharing properties for the resulting complex predicate.

The Concept 'Return' as a Source of Different Developments in Oceanic Languages

Based on earlier work by Frank Lichtenberk and Bernhard Wälchli, where different paths of grammaticalization are identified in a small sample of Oceanic languages (Lichtenberk) and a general sample of 100 languages (Wälchli), taking the verb 'return' as a starting point and leading to targets like reditive directionals ('back'), repetition markers ('again'), prohibitive markers, additive markers ('also', 'too', 'as well'), and reflexive markers, this article aims to make some further contributions to this topic. Looking at a larger set of Oceanic languages, I found several other paths of grammaticalization for 'return'/ 'again'; that is, paths leading to nominal determiners ('another'), to contrastive or emphatic particles ('indeed', 'exactly'), to inclusive adverbial intensifiers ('-self'), to reciprocal markers, to prepositions ('until') or conjunctions ('then'), to exclamative markers, and even to tense-aspect markers. I first give various examples illustrating these developments, and then propose a diagram— as a first step toward developing a semantic map—summarizing and motivating these connections. Finally, I examine the distribution of the relevant uses in Oceanic languages, as well as possible and impossible coexistence of specific meanings in these languages.

Cutting and breaking in Äiwoo: Event integration and the complexity of lexical expressions

AbstractThis paper examines the lexical encoding of events of “cutting and breaking” in the Oceanic language Äiwoo. It shows that this language differs from previously described languages in this domain in several ways: in having complex “cut and break” forms consisting of two bound elements referring to distinct aspects of the cut and break event; in integrating these forms into a cline of lexicalisation vs. serialisation, arguably reflecting a conceptual-semantic continuum of event integration; and in violating previously suggested generalisations concerning the behaviour of verbs of cutting and breaking in inchoative alternations. It shows that lexicalisation may clearly be a matter of degree, and that the degree to which an event is construed as being constituted by independent subevents vs. subevents which cannot occur independently may be directly reflected in the type of formal expression a language provides to describe it. Furthermore, it suggests that the distinction between “cut” and “break” expressions, assumed in some of the literature to be a fairly straightforward bipartition, may in fact be more of a cline. The paper thus demonstrates the complexity of the cognitive domain of cutting and breaking events and the range of strategies that may be employed by a language in describing them.

Austronesian and theoretical linguistics (review)

Reviewed by: Austronesian and theoretical linguistics Paul Kroeger Austronesian and theoretical linguistics. Ed. by Raphael Mercado, Eric Potsdam, and Lisa de Mena Travis. (Linguistics today 167.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Pp. vii, 379. ISBN 9789027255501. $158 (Hb). Theoretical phonologists have always used a considerable amount of Austronesian data, particularly in connection with work on nasality and reduplication. During the first several decades of the generative era, however, the formal syntax community paid far less attention to Austronesian than the size, typological variety, and geographical extent of the family would seem to warrant. Two significant events helped to amend this situation. One was the publication of Guilfoyle, Hung, & Travis 1992, the first credible attempt within the principles-and-parameters framework to deal with nondemoting, Philippine-type voice systems. The other was the formation, in 1994, of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA). The papers in this volume represent a selection of those presented at the 14th annual AFLA conference, held in May of 2007 at McGill University. From among the thirty papers and eleven posters presented at the conference, the editors chose five phonology and twelve syntax papers for publication. These papers offer a representative sample of the issues of current interest within Austronesian formal linguistics. The sample of languages is fairly well balanced among Oceanic, Formosan, and Western Malayo-Polynesian; Malagasy and Tagalog are represented, but do not dominate the line-up as they have in some previous AFLA conferences. This is a handsome and well-edited volume, and the papers are generally well written and full of interesting data. But in my mind, what makes these papers so valuable is that they are written by formalists who are also language experts. The discussions of theoretical issues are based on detailed knowledge of the languages being discussed. One recurring topic of discussion in recent years has been how to reconcile the surface word-order properties of various Austronesian languages with the universal underlying structure posited by Kayne’s (1994) antisymmetry hypothesis, and with Cinque’s (1999, 2005) proposals concerning the universal ordering of adverbial elements and adjectives. The challenge is particularly acute with regard to certain verb-initial members of the family.1 Diane Massam, in ‘Deriving inverse order: The issue of arguments’ (271–96), addresses both the order of arguments (relative to the verb and to each other) and the order of adverbial elements in Niuean. She summarizes her earlier analysis of VSO order as resulting from remnant VP-movement. She then considers the ordering of adverbial particles, which is (approximately) the reverse of the underlying order posited by Cinque. It has been claimed that inverse ordering of adverbials correlates with verb-initial order, and that this correlation can be accounted for by assuming that adverbs arrive in their surface position by ‘roll-up movement’. Massam supports this view, but points out that in Niuean, this analysis runs into technical difficulties under normal assumptions about the underlying (merged) positions of internal arguments. She argues that in Niuean, all arguments must merge outside the VP, as specifiers of functional heads. [End Page 206] Similar issues are addressed by Elizabeth Pearce, in ‘Possession syntax in Unua DPs’ (141–62). The inventory of possessive constructions in Unua is not as complex as in some other Oceanic languages, but there is a syntactically significant contrast between direct and indirect possession, correlating roughly with alienable versus inalienable possession but not fully predictable on semantic grounds. Pearce argues for the very plausible claim that direct possessor nouns subcategorize for a possessor DP, which is a complement of N, whereas possessors of indirect possessor nouns are adjuncts and occupy a higher syntactic position. She also argues for iterative phrasal movement (‘roll-up’) as a way of accounting for the mirror-image ordering of adjectives and other elements within the DP, relative to Cinque’s model. But for Unua, this analysis works best under the assumption that all complements actually merge in specifier positions. Mara Frascarelli, in ‘Intonation, information structure and the derivation of inverse VO languages’ (81–102), analyzes the prosodic and information structures of recorded sentences in Tagalog and Malagasy, and argues that the results obtained support the vP...

Ditransitive Alignment and Referential Hierarchies in Araki

Since Bossong (1985), referential hierarchies have proven useful in accounting for patterns of differential object marking (DOM) in mono‑transitive clauses. More recent studies (Siewierska 1998; Haspelmath 2005; Bickel 2008; papers in this volume) have also shown the relevance of such hierarchies in explaining the alignment patterns of ditransitive verbs – that is, how languages treat formally the Theme and the recipient or Goal. Araki, a highly endangered Oceanic language of Vanuatu, not only shows DOM with its transitive verbs, but is also sensitive to referential properties of arguments in its handling of ditransitive alignment. On a hierarchy defined by the features [±local] (i.e. speech-act participant) and [±human], the higher-ranking participant receives the status of object, while the other one is demoted to a peripheral role. The result is a pattern of regular alternation between indirective and secundative alignment, depending on the relative properties of the Theme and the Goal. The present article will describe these patterns, and discuss cases of variation. Ultimately, rules of ditransitive alignment in Araki can be explained functionally as a competition between non-agent participants on a scale of affectedness.

Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage

This study describes and explains the paradox of related languages in contact that show signs of both linguistic divergence and convergence. Seventeen distinct languages are spoken in the northernmost islands of Vanuatu. These closely related Oceanic languages have evolved from an earlier dialect network, by progressive diversification. Innovations affecting word forms — mostly sound change and lexical replacement — have usually spread only short distances across the network; their accumulation over time has resulted in linguistic fragmentation, as each spatially-anchored community developed its own distinctive vocabulary. However, while languages follow a strong tendency to diverge in the form of their words, they also exhibit a high degree of isomorphism in their linguistic structures, and in the organization of their grammars and lexicons. This structural homogeneity, typically manifested by the perfect translatability of constructions across languages, reflects the traditions of mutual contact and multilingualism which these small communities have followed throughout their history. While word forms are perceived as emblematic of place and diffuse to smaller social circles, linguistic structures are left free to diffuse across much broader networks. Ultimately, the effects of divergence and convergence are the end result, over time, of these two distinct forms of horizontal diffusion.