With so much detail given to the grammatical layout of Oceanic languages, I tried my best to summarize what was written in the text by focusing on sentence structure and parts of speech:
Person
Virtually all of the Oceanic languages are able to make the distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person. However, some languages, such as those in the West Sepik province of Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, and some Fijian are an exemption, as they seemed to have lost these personal pronouns in their speech.
Additionally, many Oceanic languages, except Maringe, lack gender pronouns.
Number
Oceanic languages throughout Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia generally contain singular, dual, and plural numbers, however some languages in Melanesia have trial numbers, while others have a paucal number, which refers to a "few".
Nouns and Noun Phrases
Most Oceanic languages do not make a distinction from nouns and other parts of speech, as seen in English. The example in the book shows the Fijian word "tagane" could translate to "man", "to be male", and "male" as an adjective.
Noun and Phrase Structure
Articles always precede the noun in a noun phrase and adjectives and demonstratives generally follow the noun.
Adjectives
Adjectives in Oceania usually occur within a noun phrase, immediately after the modifying noun. They also function as stative verbs, functioning as an intransitive verb.
Numerals and Quantifiers
Numbers (exact numbers) usually exist as decimal and quinary systems, while quantifiers, which mark grammatical numbers, function as stative verbs or adjectives in other Oceanic languages.
Possessive Constructions
Two different forms of possession exist in Oceanic languages: direct and indirect. Direct possession implies that the possessive pronoun is directly linked to the possessive noun. Indirect possession implies just the opposite, that the possessive noun is not attached to the noun, but instead a possessive morphine.
Loss of Direct Constructions
The distinction between direct and indirect constructions has been lost in some languages in New Guinea, Rotuman, and virtually all Polynesian languages. Within these languages, only indirect constructions are used.
Subject
Most Oceanic languages indicate the person and the number of the subject in the verb complex either as a prefix of the verb or before the verb as a preverbal particle.
Sentences
Unlike English, Oceanic languages can have no verbs, which are referred to as nominal sentences. These sentences do contain both a subject and predicate, but the predicate usually is a noun phrase that specifies a certain place, thing, person, or idea.
Basic Structure of the Verbal Sentence
The subject comes before the verb in most Oceanic languages, while the object comes after the verb in transitive sentences in most Micronesian and Melanesian sentences.
Flexibility and Phrase Order
Oceanic languages allow for some leeway in sentence structure, for example, attention can be given to a noun phrase simply by moving it to the beginning of the sentence.
Comments:
I thought this chapter was extremely detailed, which was great, but also overwhelming. It was amazing to see Oceanic languages broken down that way with all the different examples from various languages. All in all, although Oceania is a sea filled with many languages, they are all still tied together by their many similarities. The quote in the beginning of my entry is a great way to describe these languages.
Still interested in Oceanic languages?
MacDonald, D. The Oceanic Languages: Grammatical Structure Vocabulary and Origin. India: Asian Educational Services, 1997.
"Oceanic Linguistics". Project MUSE. 47. University of Hawai'i Press.
Works Cited:
Lynch, John. Pacific Languages: an Introduction. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998.
2 comments:
Trying to discover or even learn a language can be very repetitive. I grew up learning English in school spoke broken english at home (pidgin) because Hawaiian language was secondary. Now Iʻm learning ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) At times I find understanding a foreign language exciting but always challenging. I figured that this chapter may be quite confusing with all its grammatical details of Oceania languages. Great job on your summary, very concise text and nicely laid out.
I may have to agree with you that maybe many of these languages lack pronouns because they were lost but mainly it was understood that it was everyones responsibility. That means everyone had a certain role to fulfill. Many of these places had villages that were controlled by an Oceanic tribe. Those tribes had assigned leaders who were considered the dominant one. It was that leader who gave the orders to the rest of the villagers. If America had a President that lacked in Leadership skills than we as Americans would lose out tremendously. So could Leadership have played a role in many of these Oceania languages lacking structure?
This weeks reading seem a bit long and very technical. It doesn’t help that I began reading it today! I am not very good at reading the pronunciations, so the word structure portions were a little easier to read. There are some great blogs this time to help us remember some of the important points of these readings.
Sometimes it’s obvious that certain languages were derived from a parent language. It’s hard to keep track of the similarities, but when I see something obvious you can tell their relation.
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