Bislama Reference Grammar

Bislama Reference Grammar PDF Author: Terry Crowley
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824828806
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bislama is the national language of Vanuatu, the world's most linguistically diverse nation with at least 80 actively spoken Oceanic languages used by about 200,000 people. Bislama began as a plantation pidgin based on English in the nineteenth century, but it has since developed into a unique language with a grammar and vocabulary very different from English. It is one of very few national languages for which there is no readily available reference grammar. This book aims to fill this gap by providing an extensive account of the grammar of Bislama as it is used by ordinary Ni-Vanuatu. It does not, therefore, aim to describe any kind of artificial written norm but sets out to capture a range of different kinds of ways that Ni-Vanuatu will say things in various contexts, both written and spoken, formal and informal. The thrust of this volume is to show that Bislama has a grammar—an unfamiliar concept for those educated in Vanuatu. It also shows that Bislama is a language of considerable complexity, which will come as a surprise to many of its users, who have been taught to view their language as somehow "simple" and even "deficient."

Bislama Reference Grammar

Bislama Reference Grammar PDF Author: Terry Crowley
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824828806
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bislama is the national language of Vanuatu, the world's most linguistically diverse nation with at least 80 actively spoken Oceanic languages used by about 200,000 people. Bislama began as a plantation pidgin based on English in the nineteenth century, but it has since developed into a unique language with a grammar and vocabulary very different from English. It is one of very few national languages for which there is no readily available reference grammar. This book aims to fill this gap by providing an extensive account of the grammar of Bislama as it is used by ordinary Ni-Vanuatu. It does not, therefore, aim to describe any kind of artificial written norm but sets out to capture a range of different kinds of ways that Ni-Vanuatu will say things in various contexts, both written and spoken, formal and informal. The thrust of this volume is to show that Bislama has a grammar—an unfamiliar concept for those educated in Vanuatu. It also shows that Bislama is a language of considerable complexity, which will come as a surprise to many of its users, who have been taught to view their language as somehow "simple" and even "deficient."

A Grammar of Unua

A Grammar of Unua PDF Author: Elizabeth Pearce
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1614516596
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 616

Get Book Here

Book Description
The book presents a description of Unua, one of two dialects of Unua-Pangkumu, an Oceanic language of Malakula Island, Vanuatu. Unua has about 700 speakers who are bilinguals using Unua in local interactions and using the national language, Bislama, non-locally, as well as in local public and religious settings. The description is based on material collected in the field from speakers of different age-groups in the five Unua villages. The data corpus includes a substantial body of material: contemporary translations of the New Testament gospels; audio-recorded transcribed and glossed texts; and elicited material collected with a range of speakers. The analysis includes comparisons with other Malakula languages and is both of typological and historical-comparative interest. The data documentation is substantial and detailed.

A Grammar of Neverver

A Grammar of Neverver PDF Author: Julie Barbour
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311028961X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Get Book Here

Book Description
Neverver is an Oceanic language spoken by just over 500 people on the high island of Malekula in Vanuatu. Drawing on an extensive corpus of field recordings collected between 2004 and 2008, the analysis reveals a very interesting phonological system with six prenasalized segments, rich systems of possession, tense/aspect/mood marking, valence change, and verb serialization. The grammar is of interest to specialists in Oceanic and Austronesian linguistics, as well as to general linguists, especially those interested in linguistic typology.

A Grammar of Nese

A Grammar of Nese PDF Author: Lana Grelyn Takau
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760465569
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nese is a dying Oceanic language spoken on the island of Malekula, in northern Vanuatu. This book, based on first-hand fieldwork data, and without adhering to any particular syntactic framework, presents a synchronic grammatical description of Nese’s phonology and syntax. Despite being on the verge of extinction, with fewer than 20 living speakers, the language displays intriguing properties—including but not exclusive to the cross-linguistically rare apicolabial phonemes, interesting vowel-raising patterns in some word classes, and a discontinuous negation relationship that is obligatorily expressed with the irrealis mood marker. This book will probably be the last work published on Nese.

Kokota Grammar

Kokota Grammar PDF Author: Bill Palmer
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824832515
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work describes the grammar of Kokota, a highly endangered Oceanic language of the Solomon Islands, spoken by about nine hundred people on the island of Santa Isabel. After several long periods among the Kokota, Dr. Palmer has written an unusually detailed and comprehensive description of the language. Kokota has never before been described, so this work makes an important contribution to our knowledge of the Oceanic languages of island Melanesia. Kokota Grammar examines the phonology of the language and includes a lengthy section on stress assignment. It continues with chapters on nouns and noun phrases, minor participant types, possession, argument structure, the verb complex, clause structure, imperative and interrogative constructions, and subordination and coordination (including verb serialization). The typological interest of Kokota, along with its degree of endangerment and the paucity of information on Northwest Solomonic languages in general, combined with the level of detail given in the volume, make this a work of considerable interest to Austronesian linguists, typologists, syntacticians, phonologists, and all who are involved in describing and documenting endangered languages.

Toward a Reference Grammar of Tok Pisin

Toward a Reference Grammar of Tok Pisin PDF Author: John W. M. Verhaar
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824816728
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Get Book Here

Book Description


A Grammar of Mavea

A Grammar of Mavea PDF Author: Valérie Guérin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824836391
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book Here

Book Description
Spoken on Mavea Island by approximately 32 people, Mavea is an endangered Oceanic language of Vanuatu. This work provides grammatical descriptions of this hitherto undescribed language. Fourteen chapters, containing more than 1,400 examples, cover topics in the phonology and morphosyntax of Mavea, with an emphasis on the latter. Of particular interest are examples of individual speaker variation presented throughout the grammar; the presence of three linguo-labials (still used today by a single speaker) that were unexpectedly found before the rounded vowel /o/; and a chapter on numerals and the counting system, which have long been replaced by Bislama’s but are remembered by a handful of speakers. Most of the grammatical descriptions derive from a corpus of texts of various genres (conversations, traditional stories, personal histories, etc.) gathered during the author’s fieldwork, conducted for eleven months between 2005 and 2007.

A New Bislama Dictionary

A New Bislama Dictionary PDF Author: Terry Crowley
Publisher: [email protected]
ISBN: 9789820203624
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 460

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A new Bislama dictionary is a substantially updated version of the first edition, which reflects the ever-changing vocabulary of Bislama, the national language of Vanuatu."--Back cover.

A Grammar of Daakaka

A Grammar of Daakaka PDF Author: Kilu von Prince
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110766310
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 478

Get Book Here

Book Description
This reference grammar is the first description of the endangered Oceanic language Daakaka. This language is spoken by about 1000 speakers on the island of Ambrym, Vanuatu. The data on which the analysis is based were collected by the author during a documentation project between 2009 and 2012. All structural levels of the language are discussed, including discussions of reduplication patterns and orthography design, nominal and verbal subclasses, clause types and information structure and the different types of subordinate clauses. Particular emphasis is given to the intricate system of nominal possession, the system of TAM- and polarity markers and serial verb constructions. Literary genres of the region and related art forms such as songs and the symbolic sand drawings are discussed in the final chapter. The grammar will be especially relevant to readers with an interest in Oceanic languages, general typology and theoretical linguistics as well as those with a broader interest in the region.

A Grammar of Vurës, Vanuatu

A Grammar of Vurës, Vanuatu PDF Author: Catriona Malau
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501503642
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 806

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is a comprehensive grammatical description of the Vurës language, spoken on the island of Vanua Lava, in the Banks group of islands, northern Vanuatu. Vurës is a previously undescribed language, with very few minor published works referring to the language.