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Birds are of great cultural importance to the Qaqet-Baining people of East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. In this paper, we investigate whether there are differences in people's ability to name common birds in the local environment, and focus primarily on the variables gender and location. We showed pictures of local birds to small groups of Qaqet speakers in two villages—one located in an area of significant deforestation—and asked them to name them. Overall, men were able to name more birds, as were people from the village associated with greater forest cover. Our results show that gender, environmental degradation and shift to the local lingua franca Tok Pisin may all be responsible for the variation in Qaqet people's ethno-ornithological lexicon. Ol pisin i bikpela samting long pasin bilong ol Qaqet Baining long East New Britain Province, Papua Niugini. Insait long dispela pepa bilong wok painim aut mitupela i ripotim hau peles yu stap long en i ken influensim hamas save yu gat long ol pisin. I gat differens tu long ol man na meri hamas ol i save long ol pisin. Mipela i soim piksa blong ol pisin long ol lain bilong tupela peles, wanpela i stap long maunten na narapela klostu long nambis we i gat planti plentesen na liklik bus tasol. Bihain, mipela i askim ol lain long kolim nem bilong wanwan pisin long ol piksa. Mipela i lukim planti man ol i kolim planti nem bilong ol pisin, na ol lain bilong bus stret ol i kolim planti nem bilong ol pisin na ol i winim ol meri na ol lain bilong nambis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a first description of verbal number in Idi, a language of the Pahoturi River family spoken in Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Idi shows an intricate system of marking verbal number, evident in verb stems and two sets of suffixes occurring in different positions on the verb, based on a distinction between nonplural (1 or 2) versus plural (more than 2). Verbs also agree in person and number with core arguments; this system of nominal number is distinguishing singular (1) from nonsingular (more than 1). Elements from the two systems are combined to arrive at composite number values for both events and participants. In addition, verbal number interrelates with a lexical aspectual distinction of punctual/telic versus durative/atelic, manifesting on verb stems and in inflectional patterns. The paper provides evidence for the thesis that verbal number in Idi is not merely lexically determined, but largely inflectional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper presents an overview of the tens-aspect system in the Sogeram languages of Papua New Guinea. Taking the Proto-Sogeram reconstruction in Daniels (2015, 2020) as a starting point, I outline the innovations that have taken place in daughter languages and discuss the patterns of change that emerge. The study confirms a variety of known cross-linguistic tendencies, such as the common occurrence of the analytic-to-synthetic and aspect-to-tense pathways of change. More notable trends include the diachronic stability of the present and most remote past tenses; the instability of the middle pasts and future; the stability of the relative semantic ordering of tenses; the absence of a pathway leading from relative-tense to absolute-tense marking; and the ability of innovative tenses to be inserted anywhere into the five-way tense system of Proto-Sogeram. The study also illustrates how featural systems can interact over time, at first by introducing a new feature value in one system which can combine with values from another (as with the Manat habitual), and then, if the featural distinction is lost, creating a pattern of distributed exponence (as in Mum). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Chini, a language of northeastern New Guinea, speakers rely on principles of semantic extension including metonymy, metaphor, and other types of association to create new terms using material from the vernacular. They do so in a special sociolinguistically marked register referred to here as 'secret language', a linguistic practice not unheard of in New Guinea. The same principles at work in secret language can also be seen in the creation of terms for new, modern concepts in the sociolinguistically unmarked register of the language. There is additionally some degree of overlap between the two registers, since what were originally secret language terms have entered into use in the unmarked register. This suggests that secret language has been a resource for resistance to borrowing and brings into focus the larger point that any understanding of borrowability should be rooted in the local sociolinguistic context, to the locally relevant ideologies at work and the particular creative principles of language use that speakers employ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical Glottometry is a method, recently proposed by Kalyan and François (François 2014; Kalyan & François 2018), for analyzing and representing the relationships among sister languages in a language family. We present a glottometric analysis of the Sogeram language family of Papua New Guinea and, in the process, provide an evaluation of the method. We focus on three topics that we regard as problematic: how to handle the higher incidence of cross-cutting isoglosses in the Sogeram data; how best to handle lexical innovations; and what to do when the data do not allow the analyst to be sure whether a given language underwent a given innovation or not. For each topic we compare different ways of coding and calculating the data and suggest the best way forward. We conclude by proposing changes to the way glottometric data are coded and calculated and the way glottometric results are visualized. We also discuss how to incorporate Historical Glottometry into an effective historical-linguistic research workflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most scholars agree that grammatical borrowing is a serious obstacle to syntactic reconstruction, but to date there have been few proposed solutions to this methodological conundrum. In this paper I propose a method, couched in a constructional view of language, for mitigating the problem of borrowing in syntactic reconstruction. The method begins with the reconstruction of partially schematic constructions, whose phonological material can be tested for cognacy. Fully schematic reconstructions are then achieved via generalizations made over sets of reconstructed constructions. I exemplify the effectiveness of this method by applying it to two pieces of grammar from the Sogeram languages of Papua New Guinea: clause chain nominalization and the desiderative construction. The method allows the reconstruction of the former, but identifies the latter as a likely grammatical borrowing and therefore not reconstructable to Proto-Sogeram. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Languages that lack grammatical gender often still index the sex of humans and higher animates through lexical means (Braun 2001). In the Papuan language Nungon, natural sex is indicated lexically, with gendered person and kin terms. Certain person terms may also function as nominal modifiers. Indexation of sex in these person and kin terms is partially dependent on age. The older the speaker or focal person for the kin relationship, the more likely that his/her sex will determine the term chosen to refer to the addressee or secondary person in the kin relationship. Most kin and person terms for small children disregard the sex of the child; such terms instead employ the sex of the focal person to describe the relationship with the child. Unlike with children, there are no completely genderneutral terms for adults, although the dedicated male person terms amna, "man" and ketket, "boy" function in certain contexts with generic reference, meaning "human" and "youth." Generic application of amna, "man" relates to syntax: amna as object argument of deverbal participle expressions has generic reference, as does amna under negation. Thus, indexation of sex is seen to be partially dependent (per Aikhenvald & Dixon 1998) on negation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many languages of the world have genders, that is, grammatical agreement classes, based on such core semantic properties as animacy, sex and humanness, and also shape. In Manambu, a language of New Guinea, nouns are assigned genders according to the sex of a human referent, and to shape and size of any other referent. Men are assigned to the masculine, and women to the feminine gender. A long tube and a large house are masculine, and a round plate and a small house are feminine. Switching gender for humans has pejorative overtones: an unusually boisterous or bossy woman can be treated as masculine, and a squat fattish man who does not display fully masculine behaviour as feminine. Classifying humans by their shape and size implies downgrading them to the level of inanimates. Gender switch also reflects social stereotypes. Feminine gender is functionally unmarked for non-humans, but not for humans. The noun du, "man" can be used as a generic term for "human being." Linguistic Gender of humans in Manambu unequivocally reflects Social Gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clause chaining in Papuan languages is a keystone of the literature on switch-reference (Haiman & Munro 1983, Stirling 1993). Canonically, a clause chain is considered to comprise one or more 'medial' clauses, followed by a single 'final' clause. In Nungon and other Papuan languages, canonical clause chains coexist with non-canonical clause chains, which either feature medial clauses postposed after the final clause, or lack a final clause altogether. I examine the functions of noncanonical medial clauses in Nungon and other Papuan languages in a first attempt at a typology of these uses, given scanty data. Non-canonical medial clauses are argued to represent canny use of the features of clause chains and switch-reference systems to convey meaning efficiently. The exposition also solves an outstanding puzzle of the Amele switch-reference system (Roberts 1988, Stirling 1993). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many languages, terms denoting the human body and its parts constitute a closed subclass of nouns with special grammatical properties. Many if not all parts of the human body may acquire dimensions of meanings with ethnographic importance. I focus on a tri-partite division of visible and invisible parts of a human and their attributes in Manambu, a Ndu language spoken in the East Sepik province of Papua New Guinea. The trichotomy of 'body' (s∂p), 'mind' (mawul) and 'spirit' (kayik) in Manambu reflects a culturally embedded conceptualization of what a human is. Each of the three taxonomic units has specific grammatical properties. The physical and mental profile of a human being in Manambu (as in many other languages) cannot be appreciated without understanding the grammar. Conversely, a structural analysis of a language is incomplete unless it makes reference to the system of belief and concepts encoded in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the words and constructions that Koromu speakers (PNG) use to talk about tare 'hurt/pain' and other painful sensations. It also reflects on links to cultural and environmental influences in daily life and key life events, environmental knowledge and traditional health care. Terms such as warike 'be/feel bad', tare 'hurt/pain', perere 'hurt: sting, cut, burn', and kaho 'ache: burn, pierce' are used in different constructions with varying emphases. These constructions are among the most typologically interesting in Koromu grammar. They are related to, but also distinct from, constructions found in other Papuan languages. They include experiencer object constructions, serial verb constructions with the grammaticized valency-increasing verb here/he put, and nominal constructions with, or without, prominent noun-phrase marking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Thurston (1982, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1994) analyzes the history of the languages of the northwest area of New Britain. This history has included much contact among the area's languages, all of which are Oceanic Austronesian with the exception of the Papuan language Anêm. Thurston, however, took the position that all linguistic speciation is brought about by language contact, especially by language shift. In this paper, the comparative method is applied to Thurston's (and others') data to reconstruct a partial history of the languages of the area, exemplifying how the comparative method may be applied in contact situations. Reanalysis of his data shows that a number of his conclusions about the histories of the area's Austronesian languages are wrong, but validates his claim that language shift is manifested in copied specialist vocabulary, a conclusion that is important for historical contact linguistics, as such cases may provide few or no other clues that shift has occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the absence of comparative method reconstruction, high rate of lexical cognate candidates is often used as evidence for relationships between languages. This paper uses the Oswalt Monte Carlo Shift test (a variant of Oswalt 1970) to explore the statistical basis of the claim that the four Papuan languages of the Solomon Islands have greater than chance levels of lexical similarity. The results of this test initially appear to show that the lexical similarities between the Central Solomons Papuan languages are statistically significant, but the effect disappears when known Oceanic loanwords are removed. The Oswalt Monte Carlo test is a useful technique to test a claim of greater than chance similarity between any two word lists — with the proviso that undetected loanwords strongly increase the chance of spurious identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of demonstratives in non-embedded clausal nominalisations. We present data and analysis from three Papuan languages of the Timor-Alor-Pantar family in south-east Indonesia. In these languages, demonstratives can apply to the clausal as well as to the nominal domain, contributing contrastive semantic content in assertive stance-taking and attention-directing utterances. In the Timor-Alor-Pantar constructions, meanings that are to do with spatial and discourse locations at the participant level apply to spatial, temporal and mental locations at the state or event level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dumut languages Mandobo, South Wambon and North Wambon are a subgroup of the Awyu-Dumut family. They form a dialect chain that represents stages of the development from clause conjoining with independent verb forms to clause chaining with dependent verb forms that express switch-reference. South Wambon represents the first stage in which there is coordination reduction of tense and subject person-number suffixes in thematic continuity conditions. This process created three verb types: fully finite verbs; semi-finite verbs and non-finite verbs. Coordination reduction leaves the coordinating conjunctions intact and this explains the presence of coordinators with all verb types, including dependent verbs. Coordination reduction creates verb forms that signal subject continuity but it does not create subject discontinuity forms and there is no switch-reference in South Wambon. However, the introduction of dependent subject continuity forms gives South Wambon speakers a choice in subject continuity conditions between dependent forms and independent verb forms. Since speakers prefer dependent forms under these conditions, a frequency pattern emerges that associates independent forms with subject discontinuity conditions and that sets the stage for the development of medial verb forms and switch-reference. North Wambon and Mandobo represent the second stage in which subject discontinuity forms develop. North Wambon transforms conjoined semi-finite independent verbs into two types of special medial verb forms that express switch-reference. In Mandobo any medially occurring independent verb form is reinterpreted as a Different Subject form. The two-stage hypothesis revives the coordination reduction theory of Haiman (1983a) as an explanation for the origin of (certain) switch-reference systems by viewing coordination reduction as an explanation of SS forms only. In this way, the two-stage theory overcomes the problems of limited applicability that Roberts (1997: 190) noted for the original theory of Haiman (1983a). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each language has its own limited inventory of constructions from which speakers have to choose when they want to communicate their conceptualizations. This paper discusses a highly productive complex figure construction (Croft 2001:326) in the Papuan language Moi, which requires a number of different translations in English. In both SVO and SOV Papuan languages perceived events are normally expressed in coordinating complex figure constructions, but can appear in figure-ground constructions when pragmatically marked. To capture the genius of a language, interlinear and free translations in descriptive grammars should signal the language-specific links between form and meaning. The conclusion discusses to what extent and under what conditions cross-linguistic comparison of emic constructions is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the linguistic diversity of Makalero language in East Timor which preponderantly exhibits the SOV word order characteristic of most Papuan languages. Accordingly, it has many roots in which the initial k-prefix comes with high frequency in speech, alternates with Ø, and morphemes which are generally verbal or verb-like. It also states that k-prefix in Makalero applies to a group of vowel-initial morphemes which is dominant in speech. Moreover, the k-prefix puts onto simple verbs, with all kinds of objects should be cross-referenced on the verbal complex with the k-prefix.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article a typological overview of tail–head linkage (THL) in Papuan languages is presented. There are two types of THL, chained THL and thematized THL. The chained type is the default type and its morphosyntactic form follows from the basic clause linkage type in a given Papuan language, for example when switch reference constructions are the basic type of clause linkage, then the default type of THL takes the form of switch reference constructions. Chained THL carries referential coherence mechanisms (e.g. gender agreements, switch reference) and event sequencing mechanisms (e.g. sequence-simultaneity morphology) across chain boundaries. The second, marked, type of THL is with nominalized clauses that discontinue the event and participant lines. The head clause in this type of THL is a thematic NP that is syntactically separate from the chain and this reflects thematic discontinuity: the thematic head clause is off-sequence. In languages like Wambon and Usan the two types of THL select different verb types: medial verbs that express switch reference (same versus different subject) and/or sequence-simultaneity distinctions occur in the chained type and independent verbs that cannot express these distinctions occur in the second, thematic type. THL has four functions, referential coherence, processing ease, thematic continuity (chained type) and thematic discontinuity (thematized type). The phonological form of THL (slowly pronounced, rising intonation, pause phenomena) reflects its processing function to give speakers and addressees a break between two chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]