The book systematically discusses the formal and functional properties as well as the rules of the manifold productive reduplication types of Bikol, an Austronesian language of the Philippines. Based on the author's own fieldwork, this case study demonstrates the highly complex and grammaticized status of reduplication. In addition, the formal and semantic properties of unproductive reduplicative forms of the language are also investigated.

This book explores a relatively little investigated area of creole languages, word-formation. It provides the most comprehensive account so far of the word-formation patterns of an English-based creole language, Sranan, as found in its earliest sources, and compares them with the patterns attested in the input languages. One of the few studies of creole morphology based on historical data, the book discusses the theoretical problems arising with the historical analysis of creole word-formation and provides an analysis along the lines of Booij’s (2005, 2007) Construction Morphology in which the assumed boundaries between affixation, compounding and syntactic constructions play a very minor role. It shows that Early Sranan word-formation is characterised by the absence of superstrate derivational affixes, the use of free morphemes as derivational markers and of compounding as the major word-formation strategy. The emergence of Early Sranan word-formation involved multiple sources (the input languages, universals, language-internal development) and different mechanisms (reanalysis of free morphemes as derivational markers, adaptation of superstrate complex words, transfer from the substrates and the creation of innovations). The findings render untenable theoretical accounts of creole genesis based on one explanatory factor, such as superstrate or substrate influence.

This volume presents the most wide-ranging treatment available today of the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia and their outliers, a group of more than 800 languages belonging to the wider Austronesian family. It brings together leading scholars and junior researchers to offer a comprehensive account of the historical relations, typological diversity, and varied sociolinguistic issues that characterize this group of languages, including current debates in their prehistories and descriptive priorities for future study. The book is divided into four parts. Part I deals with historical linguistics, including discussion of human genetics, archaeology, and cultural history. Chapters in Part II explore language contact between Malayo-Polynesian and unrelated languages, as well as sociolinguistic issues such as multilingualism, language policy, and language endangerment. Part III provides detailed overviews of the different groupings of Malayo-Polynesian languages, while Part IV offers in-depth studies of important typological features across the whole linguistic area. The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia will be an essential reference for students and researchers specializing in Austronesian languages and for typologists and comparative linguists more broadly.

This book promotes the development of linguistic databases by describing a number of successful database projects, focusing especially on cross-linguistic and typological research. It has become increasingly clear that ready access to knowledge about cross-linguistic variation is of great value to many types of linguistic research. Such a systematic body of data is essential in order to gain a proper understanding of what is truly universal in language and what is determined by specific cultural settings. Moreover, it is increasingly needed as a tool to systematically evaluate contrasting theoretical claims. The book includes a chapter on general problems of using databases to handle language data and chapters on a number of individual projects. Note: This title was originally announced as including a CD-Rom with databases. The CD-Rom, however, was replaced by a list of URLs within the book. More information as well as links to the databases can also be found here.

Contains eight papers that cover the areas of field-work, dialectology, and synchronic studies of segmental and tonal systems of the Chinese language family. These papers are related to the theoretical issues in: the SPE Model; Lexical Phonology and Morphology; Autosegmental Phonology; Metrical Phonology; and Optimality Theory.

Warlpiri is a Pama-Nyungan language (Ngarrka group) spo ken by over 3,000 people in Central Australia. Neighbour ing languages (all Pama-Nyungan) include its closest relatives, Warlmanpa and Ngardily, to the north-east and west respec tively, Warumungu (Warumungic) and the Arandic languages, Kaytetye and Alyawarr, to the east, the Western Desert lan guages, Pintupi and Kukatja, to the south and west respectively, the Ngumbin language Jaru to the north-west, the Arandic lan guage, Anmatyerre, to the south-east, and the Ngumbin lan guages, Gurindji and Mudburra, to the north. Warlpiri country encompasses a huge area of semi-desert stretching west of Tennant Creek to the Western Australian border. For the Warlpiri, this country is filled with meaning. Jukurrpa (often translated as 'Dreaming') beings travel across it, creating and changing the landscape in their passing. Songs, dances, painting, stories and journeys celebrate the jukurrpa and the country. The Warlpiri language is also from the jukurrpa; it is the language spoken by the jukurrpa beings on their travels through Warlpiri country.

This book is a grammar of Kalamang, a Papuan language of western New Guinea in the east of Indonesia. It is spoken by around 130 people in the villages Mas and Antalisa on the biggest of the Karas Islands, which lie just off the coast of Bomberai Peninsula. This work is the first comprehensive grammar of a Papuan language in the Bomberai area. It is based on eleven months of fieldwork. The primary source of data is a corpus of more than 15 hours of spoken Kalamang recorded and transcribed between 2015 and 2019. This grammar covers a wide range of topics beyond a phonological and morphosyntactic description, including prosody, narrative styles, and information structure. More than 1000 examples illustrate the analyses, and are where possible taken from naturalistic spoken Kalamang. The descriptive approach in this grammar is informed by current linguistic theory, but is not driven by any specific school of thought. Comparison to other West Bomberai or eastern Indonesian languages is taken into account whenever it is deemed helpful. Kalamang has several typologically interesting features, such as unpredictable stress, minimalistic give-constructions consisting of just two pronouns, aspectual markers that follow the subject, and the NP and predicate – rather than the noun and verb – as important domains of attachment. This grammar is accompanied by an openly accessible archive of linguistic and cultural material and a dictionary with 2700 lemmas. It serves as a document of one of the world's many endangered languages.

Warlpiri songs hold together the ceremonies that structure and bind social relationships, and encode detailed information about Warlpiri country, cosmology and kinship. Today, only a small group of the oldest generations has full knowledge of ceremonial songs and their associated meanings, and there is widespread concern about the transmission of these songs to future generations. While musical and cultural change is normal, threats to attrition driven by large-scale external forces including sedentarisation and modernisation put strain on the systems of social relationships that have sustained Warlpiri cultures for millennia. Despite these concerns, songs remain key to Warlpiri identity and cultural heritage. Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs draws together insights from senior Warlpiri singers and custodians of these song traditions, profiling a number of senior singers and their views of the changes that they have witnessed over their lifetimes. The chapters in this book are written by Warlpiri custodians in collaboration with researchers who have worked in Warlpiri communities over the last five decades. Spanning interdisciplinary perspectives including musicology, linguistics, anthropology, cultural studies, dance ethnography and gender studies, chapters range from documentation of well-known and large-scale Warlpiri ceremonies, to detailed analysis of smaller-scale public rituals and the motivations behind newer innovative forms of ceremonial expression. Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs ultimately uncovers the complexity entailed in maintaining the vital components of classical Warlpiri singing practices and the deep desires that Warlpiri people have to maintain this important element of their cultural identity into the future.

This handbook comprises an in-depth presentation of the state of the art in word-formation. The five volumes contain 207 articles written by leading international scholars. The XVI chapters of the handbook provide the reader, in both general articles and individual studies, with a wide variety of perspectives: word-formation as a linguistic discipline (history of science, theoretical concepts), units and processes in word-formation, rules and restrictions, semantics and pragmatics, foreign word-formation, language planning and purism, historical word-formation, word-formation in language acquisition and aphasia, word-formation and language use, tools in word-formation research. The final chapter comprises 74 portraits of word-formation in the individual languages of Europe and offers an innovative perspective. These portraits afford the first overview of this kind and will prove useful for future typological research. This handbook will provide an essential reference for both advanced students and researchers in word-formation and related fields within linguistics.

This book is the first complete descriptive grammar of Lillooet, an Indigenous Canadian language spoken in British Columbia, now threatened with extinction. The author discusses three major aspects of the language sound system, word structure, and syntax in great detail. The classical structuralism method of analysis, as developed in North America by Leonard Bloomfield and his followers, is used to look at every aspect of Lillooet in terms of its function and position within the whole structure of the language. Van Eijk explains terms and procedures in order to make the book accessible not only to the advanced linguist, but also to the undergraduate student with basic linguistic training. Written with great clarity and well organized, the book is illustrated with copious examples drawn from many years of fieldwork in St't'imc territory.