I have been working on Tanna (Vanuatu) since November 2007 and so far have spent approximately seven months in Yenamakel village just 15 minutes walk north of the active volcano Mt Yasur (Yehwei in Whitesands). My research there includes general linguistic and sociological documentation and description, as well as specific areas of investigation such as parts of speech, language contact and migration.

I am currently investigating information structure and its influence on the syntax of two Oceanic languages, Whitesands and Futuna-Aniwa. I am interested in how discourse organisation can impact such syntactic phenomena such as word order, reference (i.e. pronouns and lexical NPs) and grammatical relations.

My thesis is a comparison of the two languages that belong to different sub-families of Oceanic. Whitesands belongs to the Southern Vanuatu family and Futuna-Aniwa (found on a neighbouring atoll) belongs to an elusive grouping called 'Polynesian Outliers'. While they are typologically different, linguistic and social contact between the two communities for around 300-700 years has undoubtedly influenced both languages.

Check out the fieldsite pages for more information on the two languages:

• Whitesands

• Aniwa-Futuna