This paper was presented at the 3rd LFG conference in 1998 in Brisbane, Australia. It is an early... more This paper was presented at the 3rd LFG conference in 1998 in Brisbane, Australia. It is an early version of a paper that appeared (in abbreviated form) in 2008 (Foley, William A. 2008. The place of Philippine languages in a typology of voice systems. In Austin, Peter K. & Musgrave, Simon (eds.), <em>Voice and grammatical relations in Austronesian languages</em>, 22–44. Stanford: CSLI Publications).
This article is published under a Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). ... more This article is published under a Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). The licence permits users to use, reproduce, disseminate or display the article provided that the author is attributed as the original creator and that the reuse is restricted to non-commercial purposes i.e. research or educational use. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ______________________________________________________
For the purposes of this chapter, the geographical region of New Guinea will be defined as that a... more For the purposes of this chapter, the geographical region of New Guinea will be defined as that area of the southwest Pacific, excluding Australia, in which languages not belonging to the Austronesian language family can be found, roughly from the easterly Indonesian islands of Halmahera, Timor, and Alor in the west (125 E) to the westerly island group of New Georgia in the Solomon Islands in the east (155 E), with a land area of approximately 850,000 square kilometers or approximately the size of the Australian state of New South ...
A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link the semantic... more A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link the semantic arguments defined by the lexical verb in a clause to their formal realizations in morphosyntax. This paper investigates this problem across a range of intransitive verb types, often grouped into unergative and unaccusative classes. It demonstrates that the criteria which determine this split vary across the Austronesian languages investigated, but that a strict hierarchy, putatively universal, of semantic parameters will predict exactly where the various splits can be drawn.
This language of the north coast of Papua New Guinea is typologically unusual in its structuring ... more This language of the north coast of Papua New Guinea is typologically unusual in its structuring of information. On the one hand, it belongs to a class of languages that has been termed" discourse configurational," in that the constituent structure of its clause may be determined largely by information structure considerations, rather than grammatical relations. Intertwined with this system, however, is a more syntacticized system signalled by the presence of a particular verbal prefix. This amalgam bears careful study in the ...
Abstract One mainstay of the Boasian tradition in anthropological linguistics is the notion that ... more Abstract One mainstay of the Boasian tradition in anthropological linguistics is the notion that adequate documentation of a language must consist of at least three volumes: a grammar, a dictionary, and a collection of texts. This convention grew out of Boas's dogged insistence on the collection of copious texts in the native languages as a way of documenting the cultures of Native North Americans, which he believed were breaking down and disappearing. Obviously, if one were actually to make use of such texts, a grammar and a dictionary ...
Page 1. The Yimas Lan of New Guinea WILLIAM A. FOLEY Page 2. ISBN 0-flQit7-15flS-3 Wu ithin the i... more Page 1. The Yimas Lan of New Guinea WILLIAM A. FOLEY Page 2. ISBN 0-flQit7-15flS-3 Wu ithin the island of New Guinea there are over 1,000 languages, with the vast majority either unrecorded or very poorly described. This ...
This paper looks at the processes involved in the genesis of three pidgins of New Guinea. I will ... more This paper looks at the processes involved in the genesis of three pidgins of New Guinea. I will argue that the main principle at work in the formation of the morphosyntax of pidgins is a general human capacity for language simplification, but that these processes of simplification are subject both to the effects of specific linguistic features in the local multilingual contact situation that gives rise to the pidgin and to constraints resulting from a universal linguistic endowment. By a comparative look across a range of morphosyntactic features at the processes of simplification that produced three unrelated pidgins of New Guinea, Yimas Pidgin, Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin, the article exemplifies some of the types of structures that can result in pidgins from this general human capacity for language simplification, sifted through both local conditions and universal constraints.
It is surprising given the long term tenure of the “Nominalist Hypothesis” in Austronesian (Tuuk ... more It is surprising given the long term tenure of the “Nominalist Hypothesis” in Austronesian (Tuuk 1864-7; Capell 1964; Starosta, Pawley and Reid 1982; Kaufman 2009), how little comparative work has been done on the syntax of nominalizations themselves (an exception within the Oceanic subgroup is Moyse-Faurie 2007). Of course, with such an enormous and diverse language family, this can only be a first and preliminary attempt, but in order to develop as rigorous and testable characterizations as possible, I will confine myself to ...
Abstract: A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link th... more Abstract: A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link the semantic arguments defined by the lexical verb in a clause to their formal realizations in morphosyntax. This paper investigates this problem across a range of intransitive verb types, often grouped into unergative and unaccusative classes. It demonstrates that the criteria which determine this split vary across the Austronesian languages investigated, but that a strict hierarchy, putatively universal, of semantic ...
This language of the north coast of Papua New Guinea is typologically unusual in its structuring ... more This language of the north coast of Papua New Guinea is typologically unusual in its structuring of information. On the one hand, it belongs to a class of languages that has been termed" discourse configurational," in that the constituent structure of its clause may be determined largely by information structure considerations, rather than grammatical relations. Intertwined with this system, however, is a more syntacticized system signalled by the presence of a particular verbal prefix. This amalgam bears careful study in the ...
This is the first comprehensive textbook in anthropological linguistics to be published for very ... more This is the first comprehensive textbook in anthropological linguistics to be published for very many years. It provides a remarkably complete and authoritative review of research questions which span the disciplines of linguinitics and anthropology, yet presents a coherent, unified, biologically based view of this cross disciplinary field.
This paper was presented at the 3rd LFG conference in 1998 in Brisbane, Australia. It is an early... more This paper was presented at the 3rd LFG conference in 1998 in Brisbane, Australia. It is an early version of a paper that appeared (in abbreviated form) in 2008 (Foley, William A. 2008. The place of Philippine languages in a typology of voice systems. In Austin, Peter K. & Musgrave, Simon (eds.), <em>Voice and grammatical relations in Austronesian languages</em>, 22–44. Stanford: CSLI Publications).
This article is published under a Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). ... more This article is published under a Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). The licence permits users to use, reproduce, disseminate or display the article provided that the author is attributed as the original creator and that the reuse is restricted to non-commercial purposes i.e. research or educational use. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ______________________________________________________
For the purposes of this chapter, the geographical region of New Guinea will be defined as that a... more For the purposes of this chapter, the geographical region of New Guinea will be defined as that area of the southwest Pacific, excluding Australia, in which languages not belonging to the Austronesian language family can be found, roughly from the easterly Indonesian islands of Halmahera, Timor, and Alor in the west (125 E) to the westerly island group of New Georgia in the Solomon Islands in the east (155 E), with a land area of approximately 850,000 square kilometers or approximately the size of the Australian state of New South ...
A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link the semantic... more A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link the semantic arguments defined by the lexical verb in a clause to their formal realizations in morphosyntax. This paper investigates this problem across a range of intransitive verb types, often grouped into unergative and unaccusative classes. It demonstrates that the criteria which determine this split vary across the Austronesian languages investigated, but that a strict hierarchy, putatively universal, of semantic parameters will predict exactly where the various splits can be drawn.
This language of the north coast of Papua New Guinea is typologically unusual in its structuring ... more This language of the north coast of Papua New Guinea is typologically unusual in its structuring of information. On the one hand, it belongs to a class of languages that has been termed" discourse configurational," in that the constituent structure of its clause may be determined largely by information structure considerations, rather than grammatical relations. Intertwined with this system, however, is a more syntacticized system signalled by the presence of a particular verbal prefix. This amalgam bears careful study in the ...
Abstract One mainstay of the Boasian tradition in anthropological linguistics is the notion that ... more Abstract One mainstay of the Boasian tradition in anthropological linguistics is the notion that adequate documentation of a language must consist of at least three volumes: a grammar, a dictionary, and a collection of texts. This convention grew out of Boas's dogged insistence on the collection of copious texts in the native languages as a way of documenting the cultures of Native North Americans, which he believed were breaking down and disappearing. Obviously, if one were actually to make use of such texts, a grammar and a dictionary ...
Page 1. The Yimas Lan of New Guinea WILLIAM A. FOLEY Page 2. ISBN 0-flQit7-15flS-3 Wu ithin the i... more Page 1. The Yimas Lan of New Guinea WILLIAM A. FOLEY Page 2. ISBN 0-flQit7-15flS-3 Wu ithin the island of New Guinea there are over 1,000 languages, with the vast majority either unrecorded or very poorly described. This ...
This paper looks at the processes involved in the genesis of three pidgins of New Guinea. I will ... more This paper looks at the processes involved in the genesis of three pidgins of New Guinea. I will argue that the main principle at work in the formation of the morphosyntax of pidgins is a general human capacity for language simplification, but that these processes of simplification are subject both to the effects of specific linguistic features in the local multilingual contact situation that gives rise to the pidgin and to constraints resulting from a universal linguistic endowment. By a comparative look across a range of morphosyntactic features at the processes of simplification that produced three unrelated pidgins of New Guinea, Yimas Pidgin, Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin, the article exemplifies some of the types of structures that can result in pidgins from this general human capacity for language simplification, sifted through both local conditions and universal constraints.
It is surprising given the long term tenure of the “Nominalist Hypothesis” in Austronesian (Tuuk ... more It is surprising given the long term tenure of the “Nominalist Hypothesis” in Austronesian (Tuuk 1864-7; Capell 1964; Starosta, Pawley and Reid 1982; Kaufman 2009), how little comparative work has been done on the syntax of nominalizations themselves (an exception within the Oceanic subgroup is Moyse-Faurie 2007). Of course, with such an enormous and diverse language family, this can only be a first and preliminary attempt, but in order to develop as rigorous and testable characterizations as possible, I will confine myself to ...
Abstract: A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link th... more Abstract: A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link the semantic arguments defined by the lexical verb in a clause to their formal realizations in morphosyntax. This paper investigates this problem across a range of intransitive verb types, often grouped into unergative and unaccusative classes. It demonstrates that the criteria which determine this split vary across the Austronesian languages investigated, but that a strict hierarchy, putatively universal, of semantic ...
This language of the north coast of Papua New Guinea is typologically unusual in its structuring ... more This language of the north coast of Papua New Guinea is typologically unusual in its structuring of information. On the one hand, it belongs to a class of languages that has been termed" discourse configurational," in that the constituent structure of its clause may be determined largely by information structure considerations, rather than grammatical relations. Intertwined with this system, however, is a more syntacticized system signalled by the presence of a particular verbal prefix. This amalgam bears careful study in the ...
This is the first comprehensive textbook in anthropological linguistics to be published for very ... more This is the first comprehensive textbook in anthropological linguistics to be published for very many years. It provides a remarkably complete and authoritative review of research questions which span the disciplines of linguinitics and anthropology, yet presents a coherent, unified, biologically based view of this cross disciplinary field.
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