A Grammar of Mian / / Sebastian Fedden.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Fedden, Sebastian,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Mouton Grammar Library [MGL] , 55
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (604 p.)

Mian is a non-Austronesian ('Papuan') language of the Ok family spoken in the Highlands fringe in western Papua New Guinea. Mian has approximately 1,400 speakers and is highly endangered. This grammar is the first comprehensive description of the language. It is based on primary field data consisting of a text corpus that covers different genres of the oral tradition, namely myths and ancestor stories, historical accounts, accounts of the initiation ritual, conversations, and procedural texts. The corpus was recorded by the author during a total of eleven months of field work from 2004 to 2008. The book provides a thorough description of all areas of Mian grammar and gives an in-depth analysis of many points of typological interest, such as the complex system of lexical tone, the interaction between a gender system and a system of classificatory prefixes on verbs of object movement, manipulation or handling, which allows the highlighting of certain characteristics of a referent in a given situation, the complex verbal morphology which allows fine-grained tense-aspect-mood distinctions, and a switch-reference system in which switch-reference suffixes on medial verbs are homophonous with and derived from suffixes functioning as tense and aspect markers in final verbs. The book is rounded off by a collection of traditional and contemporary texts (fully glossed and translated) and a word list comprising some 1,600 items, giving lexical tone, word class and meaning.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Table of contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1. The language and its speakers -- Chapter 2. Phonology -- Chapter 3. Word classes and grammatical relations -- Chapter 4. Gender -- Chapter 5. Classificatory verb prefixes -- Chapter 6. The noun phrase -- Chapter 7. The postpositional phrase -- Chapter 8. Verb morphology -- Chapter 9. Argument structure and the syntax of the clause -- Chapter 10. Question formation -- Chapter 11. Chaining constructions -- Chapter 12. Operator scope in clause chaining constructions -- Chapter 13. Embedding -- Appendix I. Texts -- Appendix II. Mian-English wordlist -- Notes -- References -- Index