Publications

Abstract

The papers in this volume focus on the impact of information structure on language acquisition, thereby taking different linguistic approaches into account. They start from an empirical point of view, and examine data from natural first and second language acquisition, which cover a wide range of varieties, from early learner language to native speaker production and from gesture to Creole prototypes. The central theme is the interplay between principles of information structure and linguistic structure and its impact on the functioning and development of the learner's system. The papers examine language-internal explanatory factors and in particular the communicative and structural forces that push and shape the acquisition process, and its outcome. On the theoretical level, the approach adopted appeals both to formal and communicative constraints on a learner’s language in use. Two empirical domains provide a 'testing ground' for the respective weight of grammatical versus functional determinants in the acquisition process: (1) the expression of finiteness and scope relations at the utterance level and (2) the expression of anaphoric relations at the discourse level.

Abstract

The Island Melanesia project was initiated to collect data on the little-known Papuan languages of Island Melanesia, and to explore the origins of and relationships between these languages. The project materials from the 2003 field season focus on language related to cultural domains (e.g., material culture) and on targeted grammatical description. Five tasks are included: Proto-Oceanic lexicon, Grammatical questionnaire and lexicon, Kinship questionnaire, Domains of likely pre-Austronesian terminology, and Botanical collection questionnaire.

Abstract

PdR Press publications in cognition ; 1

Abstract

This is a comprehensive description of a language spoken some 450 km offshore from the mainland of Papua New Guinea. The language is remarkable for its phonological, morphological and syntactic complexity. As the sole surviving member of its language family, and with little historical contact with surrounding languages, the language provides evidence of the kind of languages spoken in this part of the world before the Austronesian expansion.

The grammar provides detailed information on the phoneme inventory, morphology, syntax and select semantic fields. Remarkable features include a 90 phoneme inventory including unique sounds, a morphology with thousands of non-compositional portmanteau elements, complex rules for negation, and extensive ergative syntax. Unusual patterns are also found in the organization of semantic fields, for example in partonymies of the body, taxonomies of the natural world, verbal semantics and kinship terms. The combination of linguistic ‘rara’ suggest that linguistic evolution under low contact can yield baroque and unusual patterns. The volume should be of special interest to linguists, typologists, sociolinguists, anthropologists and researchers in Oceania and Melanesia.