Description
This book is the first comprehensive description of the Manambu language of Papua New Guinea and is based entirely on the author's immersion fieldwork. Manambu belongs to the Ndu language family, and is spoken by about 2,500 people in five villages: Avatip, Yawabak, Malu, Apa:n, and Yambon (Yuanab) in East Sepik Province, Ambunti district. Manambu can be considered an endangered language. The Manambu language has many unusual properties. Every noun is considered masculine or feminine. Feminine gender - which is unmarked - is associated with small size and round shape, and masculine gender with elongated shape, large size, and importance. The Manambu culture is centered on ownership of personal names, and is similar to that of the Iatmul, described by Gregory Bateson. After an introductory account of the language and its speakers, Professor Aikhenvald devotes chapters to phonology, grammatical relations, word classes, gender, semantics, number, case, possession, derivation and compounding, pronouns, morphohology, verbs, mood and modality, negation, clause structure, pragmatics, discourse, semantics, the lexicon, current directions of change, and genetic relationship to other languages. The description is presented in a clear style in a framework that will be comprehensible to all linguists and linguistically oriented anthropologists.
About the Author
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor and Research Leader (People and Societies of the Tropics) in the Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Australia. She has worked on descriptive and historical aspects of Berber languages and has published, in Russian, a grammar of Modern Hebrew (1990; second edition 2009). She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995, based on work with the last speaker who has since died) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (Cambridge University Press, 2003), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages. Other books include Classifiers: a Typology of Noun Categorization Devices (2000, paperback 2003), Language Contact in Amazonia (2002) and Evidentiality (2004, paperback 2006), all published by OUP. She is co-editor with R. M. W. Dixon of the OUP series Explorations in Linguistic Typology, the fifth volume of which, The Semantics of Clause Linking, appeared in 2009.
Reviews
to call it merely a "grammar" does not do justice to the extraordinary accomplishment and intellectual richness represented by this book. In so many ways, Aikhenvald's book qualifies as a model of what linguists with modern sensitivities should be aiming for when setting out to write a grammar of an indigenous language based on fieldwork ... In summary, Aikhenvald's grammar of Manambu is a sheer tour de force, not just on account of the thoroughness of the grammatical description and analysis, but equally on account of the depth of the engagement of the researcher with the speakers and the community as reflected throughout the book. * John Newman, Anthropological Linguistics *
Book Information
ISBN 9780199588237
Author Alexandra Aikhenvald
Format Paperback
Page Count 732
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1274g
Dimensions(mm) 247mm * 170mm * 41mm
About the Author
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor and Research Leader (People and Societies of the Tropics) in the Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Australia. She has worked on descriptive and historical aspects of Berber languages and has published, in Russian, a grammar of Modern Hebrew (1990; second edition 2009). She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995, based on work with the last speaker who has since died) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (Cambridge University Press, 2003), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages. Other books include Classifiers: a Typology of Noun Categorization Devices (2000, paperback 2003), Language Contact in Amazonia (2002) and Evidentiality (2004, paperback 2006), all published by OUP. She is co-editor with R. M. W. Dixon of the OUP series Explorations in Linguistic Typology, the fifth volume of which, The Semantics of Clause Linking, appeared in 2009.
Reviews
to call it merely a "grammar" does not do justice to the extraordinary accomplishment and intellectual richness represented by this book. In so many ways, Aikhenvald's book qualifies as a model of what linguists with modern sensitivities should be aiming for when setting out to write a grammar of an indigenous language based on fieldwork ... In summary, Aikhenvald's grammar of Manambu is a sheer tour de force, not just on account of the thoroughness of the grammatical description and analysis, but equally on account of the depth of the engagement of the researcher with the speakers and the community as reflected throughout the book. * John Newman, Anthropological Linguistics *
Book Information
ISBN 9780199588237
Author Alexandra Aikhenvald
Format Paperback
Page Count 732
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1274g
Dimensions(mm) 247mm * 170mm * 41mm
