Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Austronesian language'

Western Austronesian languages are typically defined in contrast to Oceanic languages as possessing a system of 'symmetrical' voice alternations (Himmelmann 2005a). These are alternations in the mapping of predicate arguments to grammatical functions but, unlike passives and antipassives, do not involve syntactic detransitivisation. Instead, symmetrical voice systems appear to involve multiple transitive clause-types that are equally morphologically marked and equally syntactically transitive. This has prompted two major debates about Western Austronesian syntax, namely whether or not Western Austronesian languages have a grammatical subject, and the nature of alignment in the languages. Western-Austronesian languages are typically subdivided into Philippine-type languages and Indonesian-type languages on the basis of structural properties. Philippine-type languages are considered more conservative and Indonesian-type languages more innovative. The Apad Uat subgroup of Northern Sarawak, which includes Kelabit, is said to be split between Philippine-type and Indonesian-type languages. Consequently, it presents a unique opportunity to enter into the theoretical debates and also to question whether the existing typology can capture the full extent of variation within Western Austronesian. Using naturalistic and elicited materials gathered over six and a half months of linguistic fieldwork, this thesis presents an analysis of Kelabit grammar alongside three case studies of syntactic phenomena known to differ in Philippine-type and Indonesian-type languages: voice systems; pronominal systems and word order. In each instance, the patterns in Kelabit are neither proto-typically Philippine-type, nor proto-typically Indonesian-type and hence constitute a type of their own. Moreover, they provide support for theories of alignment shift and other syntactic changes that begin with the reanalysis of the actor voice construction. Thus, it becomes apparent that the existing two-way typology is insufficient to model syntactic variation in Western Austronesian and that a more fine-grained approach is needed in order to better understand the synchronic and diachronic landscape.

Ascertaining the genetic relationships between Austronesian populations is pivotal to understanding their dispersal throughout the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The Austronesian expansion dates to approximately 6,000 years ago and from the linguistic and archeological evidence, the origin of this dispersal appears to be Taiwan. In this study, six polymorphic point mutation loci were studied in Taiwanese aborigines and compared with 32 other populations. The genetic relationships were characterized by maximum likelihood analysis, principal component maps, centroid gene flow plots, expected heterozygosities, power of discrimination values and pair wise G-tests. Following these analyses, it was apparent that genetic similarities existed between the Atayal and the Chinese, whereas the Ami displayed similarities with the Native Americans. Thus, the Atayal have little or no affinity for the Ami and other Austronesian populations. The large genetic differences between the two groups most likely arise from genetic isolation, and/or small population sizes.

This thesis is a descriptive grammar of Ambel [wgo], an endangered Austronesian (South Halmahera-West New Guinea) language. Ambel is spoken by approximately 1600 people on Waigeo, the largest island in the Raja Ampat archipelago (West Papua province, Indonesia). This grammar is based on naturalistic and elicited data, collected by the author from native speakers of Ambel. Ambel is a head-marking language, with basic SV/AVO constituent order. There are 14 native consonant phonemes and five vowel phonemes. Ambel has a tone system, in which /H/ syllables contrast with toneless syllables. Neither stress nor vowel length are contrastive. In verbal clauses, the subject of the clause is marked on the verb. This system makes a four-way number distinction (singular, dual, paucal, and plural), an animacy distinction in the third person, and a clusivity distinction in the non-singular first person. The Ambel noun phrase is mainly head-initial. There are five distinct morphosyntactic possessive constructions, the choice of which is primarily determined by a lexical specification on the possessed noun. Some nouns (including most body parts and some kin terms) are possessed in one of three constructions in which the person, number, and animacy of the possessor is marked directly on the possessed noun, while most other nouns are possessed in one of two constructions in which the possessor is marked on a prenominal possessive classifier. Within the clause, all negation particles and most aspect and mode particles are clause-final. There is no passive construction. Ambel has a rich system of spatial deixis, in which six different classes of deictic words (such as demonstratives, deictic prepositions, and deictic nouns) are derived from one of four demonstrative roots or 28 directional stems. Verb serialisation is used to express, among other things, purposive motion and changes of state. This thesis is the first major description and documentation of the Ambel language. As such, it will be of considerable interest to typologists and historical linguists, as well as others interested in the languages, cultures, and history of New Guinea. All of the data on which this grammar is based have been archived with both the Endangered Languages Archive, and the Center for Endangered Languages Documentation at Universitas Papua in Manokwari. The data will thus be available to future generations, including the Ambel community themselves.

This thesis describes certain areas in the grammar of the little-known Kuot language, spoken by some 1,500 people in New Ireland Province in Papua New Guinea. Kuot is an isolate, and is the only non-Austronesian (Papuan) language of that province. The analyses presented here are based on original data from 18 months of linguistic fieldwork. The first chapter provides an overview of Kuot grammar, and gives details of earlier mentions of the language, and of data collection and the fieldwork situation. The second chapter presents information about the prehistory and history of the area, the social system, kinship system and culture of Kuot speakers, as well as dialectal variation and prognosis of survival of the language. Chapter three treats Kuot phonology, with particular emphasis on the factors that govern allophonic variation, and on the expression of word stress and the functions of intonation. Word classes and the criteria used to define them are presented in Chapter four, which also contains a discussion of types of morphemes in Kuot. The last chapter describes in some detail the class of nouns in Kuot, their declensions, non-singular formation, and the properties of grammatical gender. Appendices give the full set of person-marking forms in Kuot, a transcription of a recorded text with interlinear glossing and translation, the Swadesh 100-word list for Kuot, and diagrams of kin relations and terminology

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In the present study, I describe the linguistic expression of space in Caac, an Oceanic language spoken in New Caledonia, from both a descriptive and theoretical perspective. Caac is a minority language whose transmission process is not ensured anymore; it is also an under-documented language. Part I provides a concise description of Caac grammar, presenting thereby a first formal portrait of this language to the reader. Part II describes the formal and semantic features of the linguistic resources available in Caac to encode spatial relationships. Part III presents the theoretical framework based on and exploring further the vector analysis developed by Bohnemeyer (2012) and Bohnemeyer & O’Meara (2012). In particular, I propose an additional sub-category of vectors (Head-unspecified Vectors) which account for the uses of centrifugal forms in Caac. The resulting theoretical framework enables me to provide a systematic account of expressions of orientation as well as location and motion, and to combine the Frames of Reference typology (Pederson et al. 1998; Levinson, 1996, 2003; Bohnemeyer & Levinson, not dated) with an analysis of deictic expressions within a single framework. It also allows us to give a detailed analysis of the uses and combinations of Caac absolute and deictic directionals, which are spatial terms of primary importance for spatial reference in Caac. Special attention, moreover, is given to the use of directionals in spatial constructions involving Fictive Motion. The analysis of Caac data leads us to introduce an additional category of Fictive Motion beyond those previously recognised in the literature, labelled here ‘Anticipated Paths’. In the conclusion, I propose a functional and cultural-specific explanation for the emergence of this construction. Anticipated Path expressions in turn shed new light on the nature of vectors and the relationship between location, motion and orientation.

This thesis explores the structure of Blanga (iso 639-3 code blp), a previously undescribed and undocumented Austronesian language of the Solomon Islands. It opens with a sociolinguistic and ethnographic introduction to the language, their speakers and the linguistic ecology of the region, followed by a presentation of the main phonological features and an analysis of some major phonological processes, including strategies for hiatus avoidance, which constitute the base of several surface phenomena, and stress assignment, the theoretical importance of which is also revealed by surface processes. A detailed description of major morphological and morphosyntactic aspects is then made available, which continues with a discussion of Aktionsart, types of predicates and their subcategorisation frames, in an attempt to define thematic roles and identify macroroles, according to the RRG principles of lexical decomposition. Sentence-level coordination and subordination are subsequently looked at. The final chapters focus on the relations established between a predicate and its (direct) arguments and their implications for the general theory. Blanga does not use formal means of encoding semantic roles but the speakers are able to identify them based on their intuitions of verb semantics, on pragmatic and cultural knowledge, and on discourse context. There is also considerable variation in the language with respect to the order of constituents in a clause, which, in conjunction with morphosyntactic markers and prosody is used to encode topic and focus. Blanga, therefore, employs completely different means of encoding the two primary sets of predicate-argument relations. Because of the lack of a voice distinction and of other constructions in the language, evidence for the necessity of employing a third set, that of grammatical relations, is limited to verb agreement, Equi-NP coreference, coreference in chained clauses and, partially, causativisation, which comes to confirm their construction-specific character.

Cette thèse a trois principaux objets : la description morphologique des mots rédupliqués pour en déduire les différents types de réduplication en malgache, la détermination des différentes fonctions de la réduplication et l'étude des valeurs sémantiques dénotées par la réduplication. Les données puisées dans plusieurs dictionnaires et lexiques malgaches disponibles affirment la productivité et la profusion de ce processus. Ce travail de recherche se propose donc de montrer la place de réduplication dans le lexique malgache, en se basant sur l'analyse morphologique et sémantique. Il met en œuvre deux bases théoriques, à savoir la réduplication typologique (Blust 1998, 2001 et Zeitoun : 1998, 2006) et la réduplication fonctionnant comme affixes (Marantz :1982) et McCarthy et Prince (1999). L'étude est basée sur des relations, des fonctions et des associations, d'où le recours à la morphologie structurale, fonctionnelle et associative en adoptant le rapport d'opposition selon Rajaona (1977, 2004) et le cercle linguistique de Prague et aussi la morphologie associative de Danielle Corbin (1988, 1991, 2004). Les éléments du corpus sont extraits des ouvrages écrits, mais également de documents sonores existants ou que nous avons nous-mêmes collectés. La thèse est divisée en trois parties organisées en sept chapitres. Comme résultats, l'étude du corpusa permis d'identifier au moins neufs types de réduplication, cinq fonctions et vingt-cinq valeurs de la réduplication dans la langue malgache. Dans la conclusion, nous avons aussi évoqué les limites, les applications et les perspectives
This thesis has three main objects: the morphological description of reduplicated words with a view to deducing the various types of reduplication in Malagasy, determination of the different functions of reduplication and the study of the semantic values provided by the reduplication. The data collected from a number of Malagasy dictionaries and lexicons that are availables how case the productivity and profusion of the process. This research work thus aims to show reduplication’s place in the Malagasy lexicon, based on morphological and semantic analysis. This work is based on two theoretical views: typological reduplication (Blust: 1998, 2001 and Zeitoun: 1998, 2006) and on the other hand partial reduplication which functions as affix (Marantz: 1982) and McCarthy and Prince (1999). This study is based on relations, functions and associations, thus appealing to structural, functional and associative morphology by adopting opposition relationship (according to Rajaona: 1977, 2004 and the linguistic circle of Prague) and Danielle Corbin’s associative morphology (1987, 1991, 2004). Items of the data have been extracted from written work ssuch as dictionaries as well as existing sound materials or materials we have collected ourselves. This thesis is divided into three parts which comprise seven chapters. As results, the morphological and semantic study of the data identified at least nine types of reduplication, five functions and twenty-five values of reduplication in the Malagasy language. In the conclusion, we also discussed limits, applications and perspectives

The present study investigates selected topics in the phonology and morpho-syntax of Laboya, a largely undescribed Austronesian language of Sumba island in eastern Indonesia. The study was carried out during nine weeks of field work. The language data is comprised by collected questionnaires and free narratives. The results of the study show that Laboya is a head-marking language, in which grammatical relations are encoded by clitics hosted by the verb. There are two sets of pronominal clitics indexing the subject and object arguments of verbs, as well as the possessors of noun phrases. Definiteness is important for the choice of clitics indexing the verb arguments. In addition, there are several highly frequent clitical elements with various functions. The patterns of their co-occurrence and interaction are accounted for. Negation demonstrates different patterns for main, subordinate and imperative clauses.Relative clauses are post-nominal and introduced by two distinct proclitics for subjective and objective relative clauses respectively. Noun phrases of all argument types are accessible for relativization.The phonology of Laboya is rather typical for Sumbanese languages, having a five vowel system and a contrastive vowel length. There are around twenty consonants, three of which are implosives. The phonology of Laboya differs somewhat from neighbouring languages by the de-prenasalization of formerly pre-nasalized voiced plosives, and by the frequent deletion of word-final vowels /i/ and /u/.
Denna studie presenterar utvalda ämnen inom Labojas ljudlära och morfosyntax. Laboja är ett hittills obeskrivet austronesiskt språk som talas på ön Sumba i östra Indonesien. Studien utfördes under ett nio veckor långt fältarbete genom insamling av frågeformulär och fria narrativ. Resultaten av studien visar att Laboja är ett huvudmarkerande språk där grammatiska relationer uttrycks med klitikor som fogas till verbet. Det finns två uppsättningar av frekventa pronominella klitikor som markerar verbets subjekt, objekt och nominalfrasens ägarskap. Substantivets bestämdhet är en viktig faktor för valet av klitikor som refererar till verbets argument. Därutöver finns det flera högfrekventa klitiska element med varierande funktioner. En redogörelse för mönstren av dessa klitikors samspel och samförekomst ges. Negation i Laboja följer skiftande mönster i huvudsatser, bisatser och imperativa satser. Relativa satser inleds med hjälp av två olika proklitikor beroende på om relativsatsens semantiska subjekt finns att finna i själva relativsatsen eller dess huvudsats. Nominalfraser av samtliga argumenttyper är tillgängliga för relativisering. Labojas ljudlära är tämligen typisk för sumbanesiska språk med femvokalsystem samt kontrastiv längdskillnad. Det finns runt tjugo konsonanter, av vilka tre är implosiva. Ljudläran skiljer sig dock från grannspråken genom att de pre-nasaliserade konsonantljuden har övergått till att vara tonande klusiler, samt genom ett ofta förekommande bortfall av slutvokalerna /i/ och /u/.
Penelitian sekarang menyelidiki bahasan tertentu dalam fonologi dan morfosintaksis di dalam Bahasa Laboya, sebuah bahasa Austronesia yang dituturkan di Pulau Sumba, Indonesia timur, yang jarang diteliti. Penelitian ini dilakukan dalam jangka waktu sembilan minggu yang dilaksanakan langsung di tempatnya. Data yang diperoleh terdiri atas angket dan cerita. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa Laboya merupakan bahasa yang cenderung menggunakan penandaan di kepala (awal) kata, di mana hubungan dalam tata bahasa ditunjukkan dengan klitik yang dimiliki oleh kata kerja. Ada dua jenis dari klitik pronomia yang menunjukkan subyek dan argumen obyek sebuah kata kerja, dan juga pemilik dari frasa kata benda. Kepastian obyek sangat penting ketika memilih klitik yang menunjukkan argumen kata kerja. Ada juga beberapa klitik yang paling sering muncul dengan fungsi yang beragam. Pola dari interaksi mereka telah diperhitungkan. Klausa relatif diletakkan setelah kata benda dan dimulai dengan dua proklitik yang khas untuk klausa relatif subyektif dan obyektif. Frasa kata benda dari semua tipe argumen dapat direlativisasi. Fonologi Bahasa Laboya termasuk lazim ketika dibandingkan dengan bahasa-bahasa lain yang ada di Sumba. Bahasa Laboya memiliki lima huruf vokal, di mana panjang pendeknya suatu huruf vokal berpengaruh pada artinya. Terdapat pula dua puluh konsonan, tiga diantaranya merupakan konsonan implosif. Fonologi Bahasa Laboya dapat dibedakan dengan bahasa yang ada di sekitarnya dengan ada de-prenasalisasi dari konsonan letup yang bersuara, dan dengan penghilangan huruf vokal /i/ dan /u/ pada akhir kata.

Die Promotionsschrift ist eine deskriptive Grammatik der ozeanischen Sprache Daakaka. Die Sprache wird von etwa eintausend Sprechern auf der vulkanischen Insel Ambrym im Pazifikstaat Vanuatu gesprochen. Die Arbeit entstand im Rahmen eines Dokumentationsprojekts, vor dessen Beginn im Jahr 2009 die Sprache weder beschrieben noch nennenswert verschriftet war. Empirische Grundlage der Beschreibung ist die umfangreiche Datensammlung der Autorin. Unter den vielen bemerkenswerten Eigenschaften der Sprache finden sich ein sehr komplexes System nominaler Possession, semitransitive und pluraktionale Verben und eine außergewöhnlich große Bandbreite von Serialverbkonstruktionen.
The dissertation is a descriptive Grammar of the Oceanic language Daakaka. The language is spoken by about one thousand speakers on the volcanic island of Ambrym in the pacific nation of Vanuatu. The grammar was written in the course of a documentation project which started in 2009, and before which the language had neither been described nor written down. Among the many remarkable properties of the language are a very system of nominal possession, semitransitive and pluractional verbs and an exceptional range of serial verb constructions.

This study investigates combined clause constructions for ten distinct semantic relations in a cross-section of Austronesian languages. The relations are of a temporal or co-varying nature, the former commonly expressed in English by such markers as when, then, until, etc. and the latter by if, so, because, etc. The research falls into three main sections. First, the study provides an overview of the semantic domain covered by the relevant relations in the Austronesian languages. Several subdistinctions are found to be made within the relations investigated. The study also explores polysemic relation markers, and a number of patterns are identified. The most common pattern is the overlap between open conditional and non-past co-occurrence relations, for which many Austronesian languages employ the same relation marker. Second, the study develops a morpho-syntactic typology of Austronesian clause combining based on three parameters related to features common to clause combining constructions. The typology divides the constructions into five different types that are ranked with regard to structural tightness. Some additional constructions, cutting across several types, are also discussed; in particular, asymmetric coordination, which involves the use of a coordinator to connect a fronted topicalized adverbial clause to the rest of the sentence. Finally, the study explores the distributional patterns of the morpho-syntactic types across the semantic relations, as well as across three geographical areas in the Austronesian region. In the former case, a clear correlation is found between posteriority and result relations on the one hand and looser structural types on the other. The distribution of types across the Austronesian region reveals few differences between the areas, although two tendencies could be detected: the Oceanic languages tend to employ slightly looser morpho-syntax, while the Formosan and Philippine languages employ slightly tighter morpho-syntax.

Bih is a Chamic (Austronesian) language spoken by approximately 500 people in the Southern highlands of Vietnam. This dissertation is the first descriptive grammar of the language, based on extensive fieldwork and community-based language documentation in Vietnam and written from a functional/typological perspective. The analysis in this work is supported with illustrations drawn mainly from texts, with examples from elicitation when needed as well. In phonology, Bih is the only mainland Chamic language to have retained all four Proto-Chamic presyllablic vowels. As a result, Bih is the only Chamic language having only primary clusters inherited from Proto-Chamic and lacks the secondary clusters created by a reduction of an original disyllable form in Proto-Chamic, which occur in other languages of the family. In addition to the vowels, Bih retains only six out of thirteen Proto-Chamic presyllable consonants, but it retains all main syllable consonants from Proto-Chamic. In addition, all voiced "aspirated" consonants in Proto-Chamic become voiceless in Bih. This phonological change is common throughout coastal Chamic and it is also shared among Bih and other two highland Chamic languages, Chru and Northern Roglai, but not with Ede. In morphological terms, Bih is an isolating language. Words are mostly monosyllabic, although there are a number of disyllable or trisyllable words with the fossilized prefixes pa- or ma- or both. Without inflection on verbs, like other mainland Southeast Asian languages, Bih includes a set of particles functioning as grammatical markers. In fact, many Bih words function as either a full lexical verb or particle depending on their syntactic behaviors. The fundamental mechanisms of Bih syntax are clause-chaining and verb serialization. Most grammatical forms develop from serial verb source constructions. Another feature of great areal typological interest is the topic and focus distinction system of Bih, which, in combination with word order alternations, indicates the discourse status of a referent: whether it is new and/or important in the discourse, or the speaker's evaluation of whether or not a referent is accessible to the mind of the hearer, or whether it contradicts a presupposition or expectation on the part of the hearer or of people in general. Bih has a very interesting obviative-like system, which uses one third person pronoun form to refer to the character whose point of view is being represented and another for all other third persons.

Cette thèse consiste en une description du sun̄wadia, langue mélanésienne parlée dans l'île de Maewo, située dans la partie centre-nord du Vanuatu (Pacifique Sud). La description est basée sur deux séjours de terrain de trois mois chacun. La langue présente, à des stades plus ou moins poussés, les traits caractéristiques de la famille austronésienne: l'existence d'un article personnel, une tendance à l'omniprédicativité, la modification de la structure argumentale du verbe par quelques morphèmes hérités du système à applicatif des langues situées plus haut dans la généalogie de la famille. Elle présente également le système de marques personnelles très reconnaissable des langues austronésiennes.Il s'agit d'une langue relativement conservatrice sur le plan phonologique, mais dont la morphologie dérivationnelle apparaît assez érodée (il n'existe ni conjugaison verbale, ni déclinaison casuelle, ni marquage morphologique du nombre sur les noms). La thèse s'organise en six parties. La première étudie la phonologie, la morphophonologie, et la structure morphologique du mot sun̄wadia, ainsi que les phénomènes de sandhi. La seconde partie s'intéresse aux parties du discours et pose quelques bases syntaxiques sur lesquelles s'appuiera le reste de l'étude. Les quatre parties suivantes étudient successivement le fonctionnement du syntagme substantival, celui de la prédication (structurée par le recours fondamental aux constructions à verbes sériels), le système de repérage et de référence temporels, spatiaux et circonstanciels, et enfin l'organisation de l'énoncé. La thèse est accompagnée d'un extrait de corpus glosé d'une douzaine de pages
This PHD thesis consists in a description of Sun̄wadia, a melanesian language spoken in Maewo Island, Central-NorthVanuatu (South-Pacific). It is based on two fieldworks of three months each.This language exhibits, in a variable extension, some of the typical characters of the austronesian languages: it has a personal article, tends towards omnipredicativity; the argumental structure of the verb undergoes modifications via a few morphemes related to the applicative systems of languages that are situated higher in the genetic tree of the family. The language also has the typical pronominal system of austronesian languages.Sun̄wadia is a relatively conservative language, on the phonemic level at least, but its morphology appears to be quite eroded (there aren't any verbal conjugation, nor any nominal declension, nor any morphological marking of number on the noun). This thesis is organised in six parts. The first one studies phonemics, morphophonemics, and the morphological structure of the Sun̄wadia word, as well as sandhi phenomenon. The second part concerns the parts of speech and lays down some syntaxic grounds that will be useful to the rest of the study. The last four parts review the substantival syntagm, the functioning of predication (which is mostly built around serial verbs constructions); the temporal, spatial, and circumstantial reference, and, lastly, the global organisation of the clause. The thesis comes with a short excerpt of our oral corpus (a dozen of pages)

This dissertation investigates the relationship between verbs and reflexive markers within reflexive constructions, setting forth the hypothesis that the verb plays a determining role in anaphoric binding. The work builds upon Dalrymple’s (1993) argument that binding constraints are lexically specified by anaphoric elements and demonstrates that reflexive requirements can be lexically specified for distinct groups of verbs, an approach which offers another level of descriptive clarity to theories of anaphoric binding and introduces a means of predicting reflexive selection in domains where syntactic constraints do not readily apply. This is shown to be particularly pertinent in languages with more than one reflexive type that have overlapping syntactic binding domains. The hypothesis is substantiated by data from five typologically distinct languages: English, Dutch, French, Russian, and Fijian. Contributing to this data set, new empirical evidence in favour of previously unrecognized reflexive forms in the Fijian language is introduced in this work. Following Sells et al. (1987), it is demonstrated that reflexive constructions are definable over four different components of linguistic representation and a quadripartite linguistic analysis is, therefore, adopted that incorporates c-structure, f-structure, lexical structure, and semantic structure within a Lexical Functional Grammar theoretical framework. The level of semantic structure is found to be particularly interesting since the realization of a reflexive construction is shown to be influenced by differing semantic requirements between verbs and reflexives. On the basis of several semantic tests, verbs in reflexive constructions are shown to have two different predicate structure types, ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’, and reflexive markers are shown to have three different internal semantic structures, ‘strict’ (x,x), ‘close’ (x,f(x)), and ‘near’ (x,y). The syntactic, semantic, and lexical characteristics of the reflexives and verbs analyzed over the data set presented in this work result in the identification of eight different reflexive/verb types and the establishment of two implicational relationships:

1. Reflexive markers in lexically intransitive reflexive constructions have no semantic content.
2. Verbs that take a reflexive argument with a strict (x,x) or close (x,f(x)) internal structure must be intransitive at the semantic component of linguistic structure.

These results contribute to our understanding of anaphoric binding theory, directed verb categories, the syntax-semantics interface, and the licensing of multiple reflexive types within a given language.

This study presents the grammar of the Lewotobi dialect of Lamaholot, an Austronesian language spoken in the eastern part of Flores Island and neighboring islands of Indonesia. Lamaholot belongs to the Central Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of Austronesian, within which it is in a subgroup with the languages of Timor and Roti. The number of speakers of the Lewotobi dialect is approximately 6,000. Despite its importance in the history and typology of Austronesian languages, this dialect of Lamaholot has not been fully described yet. This study is the first thorough grammar of this dialect. In the absence of available description of the language, the data presented here have been collected through fieldwork conducted at the Nurri village of Kabupaten Flores Timur for a total of eight months. The purpose of this sturdy is two-fold. The first goal is to provide an empirically-based description and analysis of the entire range of the Lamaholot grammar from phonology through morphology to syntax and semantics. It begins with the discussion of phonetics and phonology, proceeds to examine morphological processes and parts of speech and then turns to the form and function of each part of speech: nouns, pronouns, numerals, measure words, verbs, adjectival nouns, adjectival verbs, demonstratives, directionals, the locative, TAM markers and other minor parts of speech. Building upon these foundations, subsequent chapters offer a detailed analysis and discussion of the following syntactic phenomena: (i) agreement, (ii) clause structure, (iii) voice and grammatical relations, (iv) verb serialization, and (v) spatial language. A mini dictionary and texts are provided as appendices to a grammatical description. The second and equally important purpose of this study is to shed new light on issues surrounding the history and typology of Austronesian languages from a perspective of Lamaholot data. Attention is drawn particularly to two grammatical phenomena: (i) the position of Lamaholot in a typology of voice and grammatical relations in western Austronesian languages and (ii) spatial language and frames of reference. It is hoped that this study will help advance both research in Austronesian linguistics and our knowledge of human language in general.

This dissertation is a description of the grammar of Belep [yly], an Austronesian language variety spoken by about 1600 people in and around the Belep Isles in New Caledonia. The grammar begins with a summary of the cultural and linguistic background of Belep speakers, followed by chapters on Belep phonology and phonetics, morphology and word formation, nouns and the noun phrase, verbs and the verb group, basic clause structure, and clause combining. The phonemic inventory of Belep consists of 18 consonants and 10 vowels and is considerably smaller than that of the surrounding languages. This is due to the fact that Belep consonants do not contrast in aspiration and Belep vowels do not contrast in length, unlike in Belep’s closest relative Balade Nyelâyu. However, like-vowel hiatuses—sequences of heterosyllabic like vowels—are common in Belep, where the stress correlates of vowel length, intensity, and pitch do not generally coincide. Belep morphology is exclusively suffixing and fairly synthetic; it is characterized by a large disconnect between the phonological and the grammatical word and the existence of a number of proclitics and enclitics. Belep nouns fall into four noun classes, which are defined by their compatibility with the two available (alienable and inalienable) possessive constructions. Belep transitive verbs are divided into bound and free roots, while intransitive verbs are divided between those which require a nominative argument and those which require an absolutive argument. While the surrounding languages have a split-ergative argument structure, Belep has an unusual split-intransitive nominative-absolutive system, with the further complication that transitive subjects may be marked as genitive depending on the specificity of the absolutive argument. Belep case marking is accomplished through the use of cross-linguistically unusual ditropic clitics; clitics marking the function of a Belep noun phrase are phonologically bound to whatever element precedes the noun phrase. In general, Belep lacks true complementation, instead making use of coordinate structures with unique linkers as a complementation strategy.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
英語學系
99
This research aims at providing a typological survey of negative constructions in Formosan languages in order to reconstruct the proto-forms of negative morphemes in Proto-Austronesian. I adopt the comparative method to compare negative morphemes in Formosan languages and reconstruct Proto-Austronesian negators based on different subgrouping assumptions. A typology of negation in nearly all extant Formosan languages is provided, including Mayrinax (C’uli’) Atayal, Truku Seediq, Tfuya Tsou, Mantauran Rukai, Isbukun Bunun, Northern Paiwan, Nanwang Puyuma, Thao, Saisiyat, Kavalan, and Central and Sakizaya Amis. Negative verbal (both imperative and declarative), nominal, and existential/existential/possessive constructions are discussed. It is found that Formosan languages can be divided into two groups based on whether they distinguish verbal clauses from nominal clauses in terms of negation (Mayrinax Atayal, Truku Seediq, Nanwang Puyuma, Saisiyat, and Kavalan) or not (Tfuya Tsou, Mantauran Rukai, Isbukun Bunun, Northern Paiwan, Thao, and Central and Sakizaya Amis). Nanwang Puyuma is unique in that it is the only Formosan language that employs the same negator in imperative and verbal declarative clauses. The reconstruction of *ai (verbal negator), *ini (nominal negator), *uka (existential negator), and *ka (imperative negator) is discussed. There is no conclusive evidence for their level(s) of reconstruction in Austronesian languages so far. Although the reconstruction of the four proto-negators is supported, the reconstruction of *ini and *uka gains more evidence from a wider range of reflexes in Formosan languages. Based on the evidence we have so far, it is probable that Proto-Austronesian did not distinguish between imperative and verbal declarative clauses in terms of negation, and it employed *ai in verbal clauses, *ini in nominal clauses, and *uka in existential constructions.