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Linguistic typology is an all-embracing discipline central for inductively-based cross-linguistic generalizations, supported by language facts. Firsthand investigation of previously undescribed languages from regions known for their linguistic diversity helps expand our knowledge about the nature of language and the parameters of cross-linguistic variation. We explore the options of marking commands in a non-main clause and the issue of associative non-singular number in Yalaku and in Manambu (from Papua New Guinea), before turning to nominal aspect and non-propositional evidentiality (exemplified with Tariana and Jarawara, from Brazilian Amazonia). Previously undescribed languages help typologists expand and test our analytic frameworks [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The area between the Wallace Line and Lydekker's Line in eastern Indonesia and East Timor has long been recognized as a transitional zone between the flora and fauna of Asia and Oceania. More recently, Linguistic Wallacea, shifted slightly eastward from Biological Wallacea, has been established as a transitional zone between the Southeast Asian and Melanesian linguistic types. This volume focuses on grammatical systems of possession in Linguistic Wallacea, discussing both Austronesian and Papuan languages of the region. Typical traits include Possessor–Possessum word order and alienability contrasts, among others. The cross-familial distribution of these features suggests longstanding language contact throughout the area with borrowing both from Papuan languages into Austronesian ones and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a typological survey of patterns of adnominal possession in 85 Austronesian and Papuan languages of Linguistic Wallacea, providing a more granular picture of possessive constructions in the region than previously available. The features treated are possessive word orders, locus of possessive marking, possessive classification systems, and multifunctionality of adnominal possessive markers. Unlike their relatives to the west, the Austronesian languages of Linguistic Wallacea tend to show Possessor-Possessum ordering and have an alienability distinction, often instantiated through contrastive direct and indirect constructions. In terms of broad typological features, contact with and shift from Papuan languages can be shown to have caused widespread remodeling of the adnominal possessive patterns in Austronesian languages of the area. However, their distribution and formal manifestations make clear that they are not the result of a single Papuan contact event in a single Austronesian common ancestor but must go back to multiple localized contact events across Linguistic Wallacea. Subregional patterns are often found clustered in smaller groups of languages and are the result of local processes of contact and change including morphologization and morphological loss. These become apparent when tracking changes in historically related form-function pairs in possessive constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 article addresses the verb morphology of Komnzo, a language of Southern New Guinea. It provides a description of verb indexing in Section 1, which is followed by a corpus analysis of a small class of verbs. Komnzo verb morphology encodes transitivity by distinct alignment patterns in the verb morphology, which I call ‘verb templates.’ Templates encode participant constellation, e.g. transitive or ditransitive, as well as event structure, e.g. dynamic versus stative. The system allows for some fluidity as to which lexemes can be used in which template. In addition to the description, the main contribution of the article lies in an in-depth examination of the interaction between lexical semantics and the morphological structure in Komnzo. This article takes an empirical approach, which draws on evidence from a text corpus of over 12 h of natural speech and comprises more than 12,000 inflected verb forms.

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]

This article considers NP complexity and discontinuity in the Papuan language Coastal Marind. First, I give an overview of NP structure in the language, which is characterized by extremely limited possibility of elaboration and modification. I connect this to the observation that Papuan languages are characterized by exceptionally simple NP structures. The lack of research makes it difficult to evaluate the significance of such observations, but I suggest that Coastal Marind is an example of a Papuan language that imposes very strict upper boundaries on NP complexity. Second, while an argument could be made that Coastal Marind NPs allow considerable discontinuity, more thorough consideration of the facts reveals a fundamental, tight-knit, left-branching NP structure, which contrasts with relatively rarely employed looser nominal configurations, including discontinuous nominal expressions. The discontinuous construals are restricted primarily by information structure. Although considered grammatical by speakers, they are extremely rare in corpus data. I propose that aboutness is an important factor constraining the choice of nominal construal types in Coastal Marind discourse.

This commentary on Kidd and Garcia takes a language documentation perspective on diversifying language acquisition research. Following a brief summary of relevant research in Papuan languages, it sketches out current developments to extend into child language documentation. It is argued that these developments constitute a unique opportunity to engage with on-going discussions on best practice in order to ensure that the resulting documentations are of use to both fields: language documentation and language acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new analysis of a class of words previously analyzed as postpositions in the Papuan language Fataluku. Closer examination reveals that these words exhibit verbal characteristics, such as taking verbal morphology and occupying the same grammatical slots as action verbs. Additionally, a number of words may express either events or sematically-related positional relationships, following established pathways of semantic bleaching. I argue that many verbs have acquired adposition-like meanings through their use in serial verb constructions, a common areal feature, and that their synchronic behavior is more consistent with a verbal analysis than an adpositional one.

This paper demonstrates the existence of the Greater West Bomberai family, bringing the Timor–Alor–Pantar language family of the Lesser Sunda islands into a genealogical unit with the Papuan languages of the western part of the Bomberai peninsula in New Guinea. Applying the comparative method to the increasingly available data from these languages, we demonstrate their relatedness on the basis of forty-seven lexical cognate sets with largely regular sound correspondences. Grammatical evidence in the form of pronouns is invoked to further demonstrate the relatedness of these languages. Loans from Austronesian languages have been identified and eliminated from our comparisons. Establishing the family has repercussions for our view of Island Southeast Asian prehistory, entailing the existence of maritime Papuan-language-speaking groups from an early time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on complex predicates in Qaqet, a Papuan (Baining) language of Papua New Guinea, spoken by 15,000 people and still being acquired monolingually in remote areas. A large part of the Qaqet verb lexicon is compositional, consisting of simple verb roots that combine with prepositions or particles/suffixes, jointly contributing to the overall meaning of the expression. While patterns can be discerned, the resulting meanings are only partly transparent, thus presenting challenges to the language learner. This article is a first study tracing the distribution of these complex expressions in Qaqet children's speech, drawing on a subset (31 hours) of a longitudinal corpus of children aged 2–6 (with a focus on the ages 2–4). The Qaqet complex verbs are reminiscent of West Germanic prefix and particle verbs (such as uncover and cover up), and this study therefore takes Heike Behrens' pioneering study as its point of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new analysis of a class of words previously analyzed as postpositions in the Papuan language Fataluku. Closer examination reveals that these words exhibit verbal characteristics, such as taking verbal morphology and occupying the same grammatical slots as action verbs. Additionally, a number of words may express either events or sematically-related positional relationships, following established pathways of semantic bleaching. I argue that many verbs have acquired adposition-like meanings through their use in serial verb constructions, a common areal feature, and that their synchronic behavior is more consistent with a verbal analysis than an adpositional one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Intrusive vowels in Sgi Bara are significantly shorter than phonemic vowels. • They are also more peripheral in the vowel space. • They don't differ in intensity. • The differences between intrusive and phonemic vowels help us solve certain phonological problems. We provide a phonetic examination of intrusive vowels in Sgi Bara [jil]. These vowels are inserted in predictable places, and their quality (either [i], [ɨ], or [u]) is also predictable, so they are not considered phonemic. We demonstrate that they differ from phonemic vowels in their duration, being shorter; and in their articulation, being more peripheral; but not in their intensity. We then demonstrate how this phonetic understanding of the difference between intrusive and phonemic vowels can be used to answer phonological questions about Sgi Bara. We offer two case studies: phonologically ambiguous sequences of high vowels, and frequent two-word combinations that may be univerbating. The results confirm the existence of a distinction between intrusive and phonemic vowels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speakers of Coastal Marind, a Papuan language of the Anim family, use a special inflectional form of the verb to signal that the state of affairs that the verb describes is outside the addressee’s current focus of attention. A central claim of the paper is that speakers use this verb form, which I call the Absconditive, to signal that the addressee should realign their attention to achieve shared access to the state of affairs. The paper describes the function of this attentional-epistemic grammatical category and provides examples of its use, mostly drawn from video recordings of face-to-face interaction. I also contrast the Absconditive with constructions with related functions, such as the use of morphology expressing information-structural notions (narrow focus), and a verb form that appears to express shared access to a referent.

Following Evans et al. (2018a, 2018b), I use “engagement” to refer to grammatical encoding of the relative accessibility of an entity or state of affairs to the speaker and addressee. I refer to what is thereby encoded as the “engagement function”. How neatly does that function map on to grammatical categories of particular languages? Here I address that question with respect to the Papuan language Ku Waru, focusing on spatial and epistemic demonstratives, and definiteness and indefinite marking. I show that forms within each of those word/morpheme classes do serve engagement functions, but in cross-cutting and partial ways. I show how the engagement function is also achieved through poetic parallelism, prosody, gaze direction and other aspects of bodily comportment. In the examples considered, the engagement function is realised through interaction between those extra-linguistic features and the grammatical ones. The main thing that is added by grammatical engagement marking is an explicit signalling of the intersubjective accord that has been achieved on other bases. I hypothesize that that is true of engagement overall, and conclude by suggesting some ways to test that hypothesis and to advance the understanding of engagement more generally.

Copyright of Asia-Pacific Language Variation (APLV) 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.)

This paper describes the contact features that Papuan Malay, an eastern Malay variety, situated in East Nusantara, the Austronesian-Papuan contact zone, displays under the influence of Papuan languages. This selection of features builds on previous studies that describe the different contact phenomena between Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages in East Nusantara. Four typical western Austronesian features that Papuan Malay is lacking or making only limited use of are examined in more detail: (1) the lack of a morphologically marked passive voice, (2) the lack of the clusivity distinction in personal pronouns, (3) the limited use of affixation, and (4) the limited use of the numeral-noun order. Also described in more detail are six typical Papuan features that have diffused to Papuan Malay: (1) the genitive-noun order rather than the noun-genitive order to express adnominal possession, (2) serial verb constructions, (3) clause chaining, and (4) tail-head linkage, as well as (5) the limited use of clause-final conjunctions, and (6) the optional use of the alienability distinction in nouns. This paper also briefly discusses whether the investigated features are also present in other eastern Malay varieties such as Ambon Malay, Maluku Malay and Manado Malay, and whether they are inherited from Proto-Austronesian, and more specifically from Proto-Malayic. By highlighting the unique features of Papuan Malay vis-à-vis the other East Nusantara Austronesian languages and placing the regional "adaptations" of Papuan Malay in a broader diachronic perspective, this paper also informs future research on Papuan Malay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abui is a Papuan language spoken in Alor Island, South-East Indonesia. Although there are rich studies on the Abui language and its structure, research on Abui toponymy, which aids the understanding of language, culture, and society, deserves greater attention. This paper analyzes features of Abui society through Abui toponyms collected using Field Linguistics and Language Documentation methods. It finds that, because place names communicate valuable information on peoples and territories, Abui toponyms reflect the agrarian lifestyle of Abui speakers and, more broadly, the close relationship that the people have with their landscape. Furthermore, Abui toponyms express positive traits in the Abui culture like kinship ties and bravery. Notwithstanding, like other pre-literate and indigenous societies, oral stories are commonly used to explain how places are named. This paper augments the existing Abui toponymic studies on the connection between names and the places they name and provides a deeper understanding of the Abui language, culture, and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do children learn to understand and use complex syntactic constructions? In English, Diessel (2004) shows that they do so in two different ways. Complex sentences with dependent clauses (e.g., “Peter promised that he would come”) develop out of simple sentences that are gradually expanded into multi-clause ones. Complex sentences with coordinate clauses (e.g., “He tried hard, but he failed”) develop by integrating two independent sentences into a single two-clause unit. Here we expand on that research by focusing on the acquisition of a kind of complex syntactic structure which involves both dependency and coordination—the clause chain—in Ku Waru, a Papuan language spoken in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Clause chains are constructions coordinating multiple clauses in sequence, where the non-final or “medial” clauses are in a dependent relationship with the final clause. One function of clause chains, which is often taken to be the prototypical one, is to refer to a series of events in sequence. Some Ku Waru clause chains do refer to sequential events. Other Ku Waru clause chains containing particular verbs refer to single events, sometimes with the particular verb providing aspectual or adverbial qualification (“keep doing,” “do quickly,” etc.). In this article, we track the acquisition of several different kinds of clause chains based on longitudinal recordings of four children acquiring Ku Waru as their first language between the ages of 1½ and 5. We show that, although there are differences among the children in the ages at which they acquire the various kinds of clause chain, all four of them follow the same series of steps in doing so. In conclusion, we compare our findings to Diessel's for English. We find that they are similar in some ways and different in others, which may be related to the differences between subordinate constructions, coordinate non-dependent constructions and coordinate-dependent constructions.

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]

We present a new phenomenon in inflectional morphology, 'repartitioning', based on data from Soq (Trans New Guinea). In repartitioning, the semantic boundary between two sets of morphological forms is redrawn in a single domain; one feature value takes over part, BUT NOT ALL, of the meaning of the other. In Soq the boundary is redrawn between the yesterday past tense and the hodiernal; the domain is the lexeme s- 'stay'. For this one verb, the yesterday past takes over most of the range of the hodiernal, while the morphological forms remain regular. In clause chains the repartitioned verb surprisingly shows no syntactic effects. We demonstrate key differences from known phenomena, notably syncretism and overdifferentiation. Repartitioning is indeed new. It can be modeled in a theory based on default inheritance, but poses problems for other approaches. Finally, we present a typology of featural mismatches that situates Soq relative to known phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is divided into two parts. In the first, I explore what is known about the precontact history of Collingwood Bay based on archaeological, linguistic, and oral evidence. While much must be left to speculation, the evidence strongly suggests that the Bay has long been a meeting point between Austronesian and Papuan peoples. The second and longer part of the paper attends to the political system found in most Collingwood Bay communities. I focus here primarily on the Maisin-speaking people residing in the southern part of the Bay with whom I've worked since 1981. More specifically, I describe how this system incorporates both hierarchical and egalitarian aspects and has proven remarkably adaptable to social changes from the time of European first contact in the 1890s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gender system of Coastal Marind (a Papuan language of the Anim family of South New Guinea; Usher & Suter 2015) is treated in relative detail in Drabbe's (1955) masterful grammar. The division of nouns into four genders (basically masculine, feminine and two inanimate genders) is familiar from various languages around the globe, but the morphology of exponence (gender agreement marked to a large extent by stem-internal changes on targets) is somewhat more exotic and is occasionally cited in the literature. In this paper I provide an overview of the system, combined with discussion of two issues: the origins of stem-internal gender agreement, and the wide-ranging syncretism between animate plurals and the 4th gender (the 2nd inanimate gender). I show that this 'syncretism' makes the status of the 4th gender ambiguous, since the members of this gender also could be analysed as an unusually large class of pluralia tantum. While I argue that the synchronic 4-gender analysis must be maintained for Coastal Marind, I speculate that an erstwhile grouping of pluralia tantum provided the diachronic source of the 4th gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The northwestern part of the island of New Guinea has been the site of intense contact between a hugely diverse set of languages. Languages from at least nine non-Austronesian families (plus several isolates) are spoken alongside Austronesian languages from the South Halmahera-West New Guinea branch, which arrived in the region roughly 3500 years ago. This paper looks at lexical items in the semantic areas of flora, fauna, and color terms and catalogues apparent loans between 52 of these languages, some relatively widespread ('crocodile', 'chicken', 'dog') and some much more limited in their scope. So far as the direction of borrowing can be established, the patterns of shared forms indicate ongoing lexical transfer across the region with a strong preference for Austronesian-to-Papuan borrowing, suggesting a historical pattern of Austronesian cultural influence in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the historical borrowing of an enclitic across unrelated Papuan languages spoken along the lower Sogeram River in the Middle Ramu region of present-day Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. The enclitic *=a, which attached to the right edge of a prosodic unit, was borrowed from the Ramu family into the ancestor of three modern Sogeram languages. Both morphological and prosodic substance were borrowed, as was the dual functionality of the enclitic – as a pragmatic marker in independent utterances and a linking device on dependent domains. We discuss the clitic's formal and functional properties as evidence for its contact-induced origin and subsequent historical development in western Sogeram, as well as the implications of these developments for our understanding of morphological and pragmatic borrowing. The complexities of this borrowing event highlight the potential for theories of language contact to benefit from collaborative research on previously unstudied contact areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulwa, a Papuan language spoken in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, has nominative-accusative morphosyntactic alignment. In addition to a typologically unusual passive construction, Ulwa exhibits two other valency-reducing phenomena, both of which resemble antipassivization. One of these constructions involves a special verbal prefix, but differs from canonical antipassive constructions in that it disallows the overt expression of a demoted object. In the other construction, however, which exhibits no special verbal morphology, the logical direct object is expressed with obligatory oblique marking. Although antipassives are often explained as syntactic operations that are motivated by pragmatic considerations, the situation in Ulwa appears to be different. Rather, antipassive constructions in Ulwa are generally motivated by syntactic constraints. These constraints have nothing to do with the requirements of some ergative languages to enable an actor to serve as a pivot, but rather depend on surface word order. This paper examines the relationship between syntax and pragmatics in valency-reducing strategies. It also suggests how the facts of Ulwa pose challenges for case-absorption analyses of antipassives. [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]

Abawiri (Indonesia: Lakes Plain) is a previously undescribed Papuan language. Two level tones (/L/ and /H/) combine into eight tone melodies on nouns (/L/, /H/, /LH/, /HL/, /LH/, /LHL/, /ØHL/, and Ø) and five on verbs (/L/, /H/, /LH/, /LH/, and Ø). The default pitch of tonelessness is L. Several phonological processes involve tone. /H/ is lowered to M tone after a floating /L/. A polar (H) is linked to the final syllable of a non-/H/ word previous to an /L/-toned word. Utterance-final boundary tone L% is linked to all utterance-final syllables. /H/ spreads to the end of nouns but does not spread on verbs. A final section discusses typological characterization of the Abawiri tone system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of 116 languages, this article investigates the typology of comparative constructions and their distribution in Melanesia, one of the world's least-understood linguistic areas. We present a rigorous definition of a comparative construction as a "comparative concept", thereby excluding many constructions which have been considered functionally comparatives in Melanesia. Conjoined comparatives are shown to dominate at the core of the area on the island of New Guinea, while (monoclausal) exceed comparatives are found in the maritime regions around New Guinea. Outside of Melanesia adpositional and other comparative constructions including particle comparatives are most frequent in Austronesian languages. The unity of the conjoined comparative type in the core Melanesian area illustrates that, while morpho-syntactic profiles of Melanesian languages are heterogenous, significant convergence in the "ways of saying things" can be found across the region. Additionally, we find no cases of clause chaining constructions being used for encoding comparatives, even in canonical clause chaining languages of central New Guinea. Our findings thus offer no support for Stassen's claim of a correlation between temporal chaining type and comparative construction type. Instead we suggest that an areal preference for mini-clauses may explain the dominance of the conjoined comparative in Melanesia. [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.)

This paper presents a descriptive and typological study of rhetorical questions. The first part describes the form and functions of rhetorical questions in Papuan Malay. There are no formal characteristics that mark Papuan Malay rhetorical questions. Instead, the context indicates whether a question has rhetorical functions. Typically, Papuan Malay rhetorical questions have social functions as pseudo questions, while their discourse-stimulating uses as stimulus questions are marginal. Pseudo questions are used to convey assertions, expressions of incertitude and negative evaluations. The speakers' underlying emotions tend to be negative. The second part of this paper investigates typological aspects of rhetorical questions in Malayic languages, as well as other Austronesian and Papuan languages in West Papua. Three patterns emerge which are submitted as testable hypotheses for further studies on rhetorical questions: (1) rhetorical questions tend to have social functions; (2) speakers do not use them to convey positive evaluations; and (3) rhetorical questions tend to carry underlying negative emotions. For Papuan Malay, at least, all three patterns apply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grammars of some languages include two or more number subsystems that function in different morphosyntactic contexts. These subsystems may vary in the number of distinct number values distinguished, or in other ways such as obligatoriness. Such “mixed” systems ( Dixon, 2012 :52) have been little-investigated. Corbett (2000:89–94, 120–121) analyzes them solely in terms of the nominal Animacy Hierarchy ( Smith-Stark, 1974; Silverstein, 1976; Comrie, 1989 :128; Corbett, 2000 :56), asserting that in such languages, the number subsystem with the most number values should always function at the top of the Animacy Hierarchy (2000:92) . A further assumption of the Animacy Hierarchy is that splits between number subsystems should fall between adjacent entries on the Animacy Hierarchy. This detailed case study of splits between number subsystems in the Papuan language Nungon shows that the Animacy Hierarchy fails to account for the distribution of number subsystems there in three ways. First, the assumption that the subsystem with the most values must function at the top of the Animacy Hierarchy falters. Second, Nungon number subsystems are split both within a single paradigm and between multiple paradigms belonging to the same Animacy Hierarchy category. Third, splits between these subsystems also occur in a category, tense marking, that is apparently unrelated to the Animacy Hierarchy. Representation of number system splits as they relate or do not relate to the Animacy Hierarchy requires a three-dimensional schema rather than the linear Animacy Hierarchy. Finally, Nungon presents a previously unattested dependency between number and other grammatical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]