This volume presents a wide-ranging survey of the Papuan languages, spoken on the island of New Guinea and its surroundings. They make up around 12% of the world's languages, with a level of linguistic diversity comparable to the vast Eurasian zone concentrated into just 1% of the world's land area. This is true whether we count individual languages (around 890), families and isolates (around 95), or elements of structural diversity: many linguistic phenomena were first reported or are still only attested in this region.
Following a detailed introduction by the editors, The Oxford Guide to the Papuan Languages is divided into four parts. The first provides structural descriptions of 23 languages from across the region, many of which have never previously been described. Part II includes typological surveys of features that are of particular interest in Papuan languages, from tone to valency change, and from information structure to kinship terminology. Chapters in Part III explore language in its cultural context, with topics including multilingualism, sign languages, and language shift, while Part IV focuses on historical and contact studies. The volume will be a crucial reference not only for scholars of Papuan languages but also for anyone interested in the human history of this fascinating and little-known part of the world.
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Sprache
Verlagsort
Maße
Höhe: 276 mm
Breite: 219 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-19-884948-3 (9780198849483)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Nicholas Evans is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the Australian National University. He investigates linguistic diversity and what this tells us about the nature of language, culture, deep history, and human creativity. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Northern Australia (Kayardild, Bininj Kunwok, Dalabon, Iwaidja) and Papua New Guinea (Nen, Idi); his interests range from questions of grammar-writing, linguistic typology, and translation to historical linguistics. A member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Social Sciences Academy and the British Academy, he has been awarded an inaugural Anneliese Maier Forschungspreis, and a Ken Hale Award from the Linguistics Society of America.
Sebastian Fedden is Professor of Linguistics at the Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and is affiliated with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich and the University of Surrey. He is a typologist with a specialization in morphology and Papuan languages and linguistics. His interests span linguistic diversity, the relationship between language, mind and culture, and grammar writing. He has carried out fieldwork in Papua New Guinea (on Mian) and Indonesia (on languages of Alor and Pantar). His grammar of Mian, published in 2011, won the von der Gabelentz Award of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT) for the best published grammar from 2009 to 2012.
Herausgeber*in
Distinguished Professor of LinguisticsDistinguished Professor of Linguistics, Australian National University
Professor of LinguisticsProfessor of Linguistics, Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
