Marquesan: A Grammar of SpaceThis volume investigates the linguistic and semantic encodings and conceptions of space in the East-Polynesian language Marquesan by focusing on the great variety of language- and culture-specific ways of referring to space, thus documenting an essential part of human behaviour and everyday communication in a South Pacific island population. On the basis of a large corpus of both natural and elicited spoken language data the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of all relevant lexical and grammatical units and constructions used for spatial reference are analysed in detail. Remarkable for this language is the fact that a particular kind of spatial orientation system based on local landmarks of the environment - a so-called 'absolute system' - is used for spatial description even on a micro-level or so-called 'table-top' space. Marquesan - A Grammar of Space is the first comprehensive description and in-depth study of spatial language to be found in an Austronesian language. Apart from examining the complex sociolinguistic situation, the degree of language endangerment in the bilingual speech community and the resulting rapid linguistic change in spatial language use, the book also offers a detailed description of the theoretical background of 'language and space' research and the linguistic variability to be found across languages. Moreover, the volume contains an extensive grammatical sketch of Marquesan which complements the language description of the specific domain space in a useful way providing the reader with general insights into one of the not well documented Oceanic languages. The volume addresses linguists, psycholinguists, anthropologists, fieldworking linguists, and especially Oceanists and Austronesianists. Moreover, it provides important insights for researchers from other disciplines that are interested in the study of space. |
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Contents
Ethnographic and linguistic background | 15 |
The Marquesan languages | 37 |
Field work and methodology | 44 |
Copyright | |
19 other sections not shown
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Common terms and phrases
7-marked absolute systems ART side ART=POSS 3.sg attributive noun attributive noun phrases be.not body-part terms code-switching common full words construction type denote directional particles enana frame of reference front function grammaticalisation ha'e he'e heke hither Hiva Oa INTJ kaokao keke Klein l.sg landmark nouns large-scale reference Lav-H Lav-T/H Lav-U LD ART LD sea Levinson lexemes lexical head linguistic localised locative constructions ma-marked marked Marquesan language modifiers mu'i Mutu and Teikitutoua N-MQA nominalised nominals North Marquesan noun phrases Nuku Hiva object region occur pe'au Photo piha place names Polynesian languages POSS ART POSS ART=Dem PREP ART preposition puaka relatum seaward semantic small-scale reference space spatial reference STV-P t=o ia TAM-particles Teiki Teikitutoua 2002 tekao tion titahi toitoi tree tuku tumu akau Ua Huka Ua Pou usage uta inland vaho valley vaveka vehine verbal clauses verbal phrase Zewen
Bibliographic information
| Title | Marquesan: A Grammar of Space Volume 169 of Trends in linguistics / Studies and monographs: Studies and monographs Volume 169 of Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs, ISSN 1861-4302 |
| Author | Gabriele H. Cablitz |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Mouton de Gruyter, 2006 |
| Original from | the University of California |
| Digitized | Mar 21, 2008 |
| ISBN | 3110189496, 9783110189490 |
| Length | 682 pages |
| Subjects | › › Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |