A Conceptual Analysis of Tongan Spatial Nouns

From Grammar to Mind Giovanni Bennardo
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In Churchward (1953) a set of Tongan nouns are labeled 'local', that is "construed as if it were the proper name of a place" (p. 88). Some of these nouns reappear under another label, that is, 'preposed' nouns (p. 214-16) and they are defined as nouns that can be "placed immediately before another noun instead of being connected with it by means of a preposition" (p.214). This peculiarity was exploited by Broschart (1993) to argue for a subset of these nouns to be considered as classifiers. In this work the author tries to clarify the border of this fuzzy subset of Tongan nouns differently addressed by Churchward and Broschard.

The analysis of this newly defined subset of Tongan nouns, 'spatial' nouns, is conceptual, that is, based on a set of primitive (and possibly universal) spatial concepts suggested by Lehman & Bennardo (1992) and Bennardo (1993, 1996). The conceptual apparatus is the result of extensive analyses conducted on both English and Tongan spatial prepositions. Further analyses regarded representations of spatial relationships in other languages like Burmese, Thai and Italian.

Following Lucy's suggestion, grammatical features of the Tongan language represent the path along which the conceptual analysis moves. In fact, five structural contexts in which the 'spatial' nouns appear represent the starting point of the analysis. The analysis will weave through the grammatical and conceptual levels and will end up in sorting the nouns into three separate groups according to a combination of their conceptual content and grammatical possibilities. Finally, the results of this analysis call for an interesting modification of the conceptual apparatus.

ISBN 9783895869174. Languages of the World 12. 56pp. 2000.

The Lord's Prayer in Erromangan

Literacy and Translation in a Vanuatu Language Terry Crowley
University of Waikato

Erromangan, an Oceanic language of southern Vanuatu, has a written literature that until recently was restricted exclusively to materials relating to recently introduced Christianity. This literature is entirely translated, with the materials written by European missionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In many respects, these translations are structurally deviant to the point where intelligibility is sometimes impaired.

Massive population loss and major language shift on the island in the second half of the nineteenth century should has predisposed this language to massive simplification and homogenisation in the direction of English according to some scenarios, especially were literacy and Christianisation are involved. However, the remaining Erromangan language has remained vital, structurally complex and largely intact, demonstrating that the linguistic disruption posed by missionary-inspired literacy is nothing like as powerful as some have suggested.

ISBN 9783895869730. Languages of the World 13. 32 pp. 2000.

Ket Prosodic Phonology

Edward J. Vajda
Western Washington University

The present study proposes a complete inventory of the segmental and suprasegmental phonemic units for the southern dialect of Ket, a language isolate spoken in Central Siberia. It argues that Ket contains a constrastive system of tones operating within the domain of the phonological word rather than the syllable. This word tone system consists of four tonemes, two of which have disyllabic and monosyllabic allotones.

Tone in Ket serves to delimit one word from another by marking the leftmost two syllables of each phonological word with one of four contrastive combinations of melodic (height and contour) and non-melodic features (vowel length and glottalization). In addition, the four tonemes distinguish meaning by forming numerous minimal pairs. The article describes Ket segmental phonology as containing only 12 consonant and 7 vowel phonemes. Many constrasts which previous researchers treated as phonemic (such as the difference between tense vs. lax mid vowels and plosives vs. fricatives in word final position) turn out to be allophonic when prosodic data are considered.

ISBN 9783895869150. Languages of the World 15. 28pp. 2000.

The Maltese Language of Australia - Maltraljan

Roderick Bovingdon


This is a comprehensive linguistic study of the Maltese language of Australia known as Maltraljan (Ausmaltese) as it has evolved over the last seventy years of Maltese migration to Australia.

The first two chapters outline the historical, sociological, political and linguistic framework in which this continuing phenomenon has developed. A select glossary of some nine hundred headwords with several derivations and variations added thereto, comprises chapter three - the core of the entire work. This lexical presentation includes, for the first time ever in the lexical study of Maltese, phonemic transcriptions for every entry. No Maltese dictionary or glossary to date has ever gone into such linguistic depth. In addition to this, the glossary presents an in-depth, though general analysis, of the main features of Maitraljan (viz. phonological, semantic, morphological, syntactic, as well as examples for each entry of conversational usage for each term and the respective provenance when this is known.) .

A considerable bibliography is added, providing the researcher and student with ample cross-reference for both cross-checking as well as for further research.

ISBN 9783895863318. Languages of the World 16. 130pp. 2001.

Reduplication in Tiriyó (Cariban)

Sergio Meira
Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik

This study presents original data illustrating previously undescribed reduplicative patterns found in Tiriyó, a Cariban language spoken in Northern Brazil; this is the first time that reduplication in a Cariban language is described in detail. One of the patterns is simpler, and its synchronic cases of variation suggest a certain path of historical evolution. For the other pattern, the complexity of the several subcases appear to indicate antiquity and make formal accounts significantly more difficult.

ISBN 9783895869143. Languages of the World 17. 26pp. 2000.

Basic Word Order and Sentence Types in Kari'ña

Andrés Romero-Figeroa
Universidad de Oriente, Cumaná, Venezuela

The purpose of this research is to study the basic syntactic order in Kari'ña through the analysis of an integrated corpus encopassing simple sentences taken from conversations and texts ellicited from natives. The fieldwork sessions for this work were carried out between January and September of 1996 in Cachama, a village located in the heart of the Kari'ña homeland in northeastern Venezuela.

This study covers the primary syntactic elements, i.e. Subject, Verb and Object. As well, some consideration is given to other sentential elements of this language – specially obliques and adverbials. Finally, a survey of some sentence types in Kari'ña is included. In general, the study pursues to determine the prevailing syntactic order in Kari'ña, and to account for the most common arrangements for quotative, intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, copulative, imperative, interrogative and negative sentences.

ISBN 9783895866869. Languages of the World 18. 40pp. 2000.

The Loss of German in Upper Silesia after 1945

Volkmar Engerer
Statsbiblioteket Aarhus

In the first part of the study, an overview over Upper Silesia and the numerous historical language shifts in this area is given. With at least five language shifts and three phases of complete language loss, Upper Silesia constitutes quite an illustrative case for loss and maintenance in a region. In part two, a conceptualisation of language shift is presented. Two approaches to language shift are then developed, the processual and the correlative. The latter emphasises the competence dimension, divided into an analysis of one language only, German, and an analysis of languages as components of multilingual profiles. Part three presents examples of analyses of isolated German, using the correlative approach.

The results in both domains show that German is tied to an urban milieu and has a dominant function as a professional language with high prestige. Part 4 demonstrates the use of multilingual profiles, now from a processual perspective. The analyses show a clear consolidation of Polish with an as yet undecided competition between Upper Silesian and German as second languages. The tendency in the direction of the trilingual profile German/Polish/Upper Silesian seems to have a future if the domains of use stabilise.

ISBN 9783895866630. Languages of the World 20. 32pp. 2000.

The properties of certain classes of indirect verbs and passives of state in modern Georgian

Marcello Cherchi
The University of Chicago

Indirect constructions in Georgian have been discussed with respect to several types of verbs in the literature. When a particular construction is identified as “indirect“ (or “inverse“), the investigator generally invokes a line of argumentation which relies upon comparison with a putatively similar predicate or predicate type in an Indo-European language. Our personal feeling is that for the purposes of linguistic analysis it is more productive to view the so-called “indirect“ verbs as basic – rather than as derived – structural types within Georgian grammar. However, in the present paper we would like to avoid becoming enmeshed in that dispute by starting from a different analytical perspective. Specifically, we will attempt to delimit a class of verbs based on a formal definition and examine the characteristics of the members of that class. It will turn out that the majority of the verbs involved have been clssified as “indirect“ by one investigator or another, but we would prefer to view that as a secondary, though certainly interesting result. The more important result is the significance of this sort of analysis for classification within the Georgian verbal system. In particular, it supports posting a class that includes two types of verbs which other investigators have generally partitioned into two distinct classes.

ISBN 9783895869198. 24pp. Languages of the World 21. 2000.

Toward a Typology of Causative Constructions

Jae Jung Song


This study provides cross-linguistc data to substantiate the typology of causative contructions on the basis of which a diachronic model of causative affixes has been proposed in Song [Lingua 82:151-200(1990)].

Three types of causative contructions are identified and exemplified: the compact type, the AND type and the PURP type. The study closes with a diachronic question whether the semantic neutralization of the purpose markers occurs initially in causatives.

[reprinted from Languages of the World n°5/1992].

ISBN9783895869105. Languages of the World 23. 44pp. 2001.

A Priori Artificial Languages

Alan Libert
University of Newcastle

The best known artificial language is Esperanto. However, hundreds of other artificial languages have been proposed, although some have not progressed beyond the stage of sketches and few have seen much actual use. Those which are not consciously based on natural languages are called a priori languages. Such languages have been less successful than artificial languages built with elements of natural languages, such as Esperanto and Interlingua.

However, a priori languages are of considerable theoretical interest, in particular from the point of view of language universals: if a universal property holds even of languages created "from scratch", then it can indeed be seen as a property of any (usable) human language. Therefore, in the description of the grammars of several a priori languages, particular attention will be given to whether their features are in accord with proposed universals, of both the Greenbergian and Chomskyan types.

After an introduction one chapter each will be devoted to phonetics/phonology, writing systems, lexicon, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The languages described include aUI, Babm, Fitusa, Loglan/Lojban, and Suma. Most of these languages have received very little attention, even from scholars studying artificial languages.

ISBN 9783895866678. Languages of the World 24. 160pp. 2000.