Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1982. Bibliography: leaves 233-247.

Bih is a Chamic (Austronesian) language spoken by approximately 500 people in the Southern highlands of Vietnam. This dissertation is the first descriptive grammar of the language, based on extensive fieldwork and community-based language documentation in Vietnam and written from a functional/typological perspective. The analysis in this work is supported with illustrations drawn mainly from texts, with examples from elicitation when needed as well. In phonology, Bih is the only mainland Chamic language to have retained all four Proto-Chamic presyllablic vowels. As a result, Bih is the only Chamic language having only primary clusters inherited from Proto-Chamic and lacks the secondary clusters created by a reduction of an original disyllable form in Proto-Chamic, which occur in other languages of the family. In addition to the vowels, Bih retains only six out of thirteen Proto-Chamic presyllable consonants, but it retains all main syllable consonants from Proto-Chamic. In addition, all voiced "aspirated" consonants in Proto-Chamic become voiceless in Bih. This phonological change is common throughout coastal Chamic and it is also shared among Bih and other two highland Chamic languages, Chru and Northern Roglai, but not with Ede. In morphological terms, Bih is an isolating language. Words are mostly monosyllabic, although there are a number of disyllable or trisyllable words with the fossilized prefixes pa- or ma- or both. Without inflection on verbs, like other mainland Southeast Asian languages, Bih includes a set of particles functioning as grammatical markers. In fact, many Bih words function as either a full lexical verb or particle depending on their syntactic behaviors. The fundamental mechanisms of Bih syntax are clause-chaining and verb serialization. Most grammatical forms develop from serial verb source constructions. Another feature of great areal typological interest is the topic and focus distinction system of Bih, which, in combination with word order alternations, indicates the discourse status of a referent: whether it is new and/or important in the discourse, or the speaker's evaluation of whether or not a referent is accessible to the mind of the hearer, or whether it contradicts a presupposition or expectation on the part of the hearer or of people in general. Bih has a very interesting obviative-like system, which uses one third person pronoun form to refer to the character whose point of view is being represented and another for all other third persons.

In the present study, I describe the linguistic expression of space in Caac, an Oceanic language spoken in New Caledonia, from both a descriptive and theoretical perspective. Caac is a minority language whose transmission process is not ensured anymore; it is also an under-documented language. Part I provides a concise description of Caac grammar, presenting thereby a first formal portrait of this language to the reader. Part II describes the formal and semantic features of the linguistic resources available in Caac to encode spatial relationships. Part III presents the theoretical framework based on and exploring further the vector analysis developed by Bohnemeyer (2012) and Bohnemeyer & O’Meara (2012). In particular, I propose an additional sub-category of vectors (Head-unspecified Vectors) which account for the uses of centrifugal forms in Caac. The resulting theoretical framework enables me to provide a systematic account of expressions of orientation as well as location and motion, and to combine the Frames of Reference typology (Pederson et al. 1998; Levinson, 1996, 2003; Bohnemeyer & Levinson, not dated) with an analysis of deictic expressions within a single framework. It also allows us to give a detailed analysis of the uses and combinations of Caac absolute and deictic directionals, which are spatial terms of primary importance for spatial reference in Caac. Special attention, moreover, is given to the use of directionals in spatial constructions involving Fictive Motion. The analysis of Caac data leads us to introduce an additional category of Fictive Motion beyond those previously recognised in the literature, labelled here ‘Anticipated Paths’. In the conclusion, I propose a functional and cultural-specific explanation for the emergence of this construction. Anticipated Path expressions in turn shed new light on the nature of vectors and the relationship between location, motion and orientation.

This study discusses teaching Malagasy as a second language. Malagasy is the native language spoken on the island of Madagascar. Traditionally, Malagasy has been taught as a language that is similar to English in the way that it uses active and passive voice constructions. However, most native-English students struggle to produce native-like utterances using non-active voice constructions in Malagasy. Recent studies have suggested that Malagasy more closely relates to Germanic V2 languages than it does to English (Pearson 2005, Hyams et al. 2006). This might explain why students taught Malagasy as an English-like language struggle. This study compares the relative effectiveness of teaching Malgasy as a V2 language with topicalized triggers, as opposed to traditional approaches, where the trigger is seen as an English-like subject. The study is based on data gathered from two groups of beginning Malagasy students at the LDS Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. One group was taught according to traditional methods. The other was taught the topic/voicing theory set forth by Pearson (2005). There was a general trend of improvement from the traditionally taught group to the group taught topicalization.

Patient-voice clauses within the symmetric voice system of Balinese disallow any extraction from the external-argument position, while definite external arguments are blocked from occurring altogether. The former fact is traditionally taken as evidence for syntactic ergativity in Austronesian. The latter fact has recently been argued to provide evidence for postsyntactic case licensing via adjacency with the verb. In this article, we offer a simple alternative explanation for the in-situ properties of patient-voice agents in Balinese—one that does not make reference to case.We argue that patient-voice heads come with a feature that triggers removal of the external argument’s DP shell, resulting in the loss of a determiner and a category-D feature that would otherwise enable extraction.

<p>Music is greatly underappreciated in the scope of cross-cultural analysis. This is due in part to methodological problems plaguing recent comparative approaches, and modern ethnomusicology’s stance against cross-cultural analysis. Language, on the other hand, has a long history of cross-cultural study and recent advances in quantitative techniques, borrowed mostly from biology, have put language at the forefront of studying population prehistory from a cultural perspective. Chapter 2 of this thesis presents a novel quantitative approach to studying cross-cultural musical diversity based on the AMOVA methodology borrowed from population genetics. This method allows researchers to quantify the amount of variability found between as well as within populations, and gives us a measure of population-level divergence that accounts for intra-population variability. Our major finding is that the vast majority of musical variability (~98%) is found within populations rather than between. This approach solves many of the quantitative issues with the original Cantometrics approach, and is widely applicable to the analysis of many domains of culture. Aside from methodological issues a major open question is whether music has the requisite time-depth to answer questions about recent human pre-history. Chapter 3 focuses on addressing this question generally, and more specifically investigating which musical features trace population history most effectively. Using a corpus of songs from 9 Taiwanese aboriginal tribes and quantitative methods from chapter 2, we show that features related to song structure are correlated with mitochondrial DNA data from the same populations, while features of singing style are not. Both the quantitative methods and provisional support for music’s time depth presented here will hopefully usher in a new era of comparative musicology and provide scholars of pre-history with an additional tool to answer unresolved questions.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

This dissertation is a description of the grammar of Belep [yly], an Austronesian language variety spoken by about 1600 people in and around the Belep Isles in New Caledonia. The grammar begins with a summary of the cultural and linguistic background of Belep speakers, followed by chapters on Belep phonology and phonetics, morphology and word formation, nouns and the noun phrase, verbs and the verb group, basic clause structure, and clause combining. The phonemic inventory of Belep consists of 18 consonants and 10 vowels and is considerably smaller than that of the surrounding languages. This is due to the fact that Belep consonants do not contrast in aspiration and Belep vowels do not contrast in length, unlike in Belep’s closest relative Balade Nyelâyu. However, like-vowel hiatuses—sequences of heterosyllabic like vowels—are common in Belep, where the stress correlates of vowel length, intensity, and pitch do not generally coincide. Belep morphology is exclusively suffixing and fairly synthetic; it is characterized by a large disconnect between the phonological and the grammatical word and the existence of a number of proclitics and enclitics. Belep nouns fall into four noun classes, which are defined by their compatibility with the two available (alienable and inalienable) possessive constructions. Belep transitive verbs are divided into bound and free roots, while intransitive verbs are divided between those which require a nominative argument and those which require an absolutive argument. While the surrounding languages have a split-ergative argument structure, Belep has an unusual split-intransitive nominative-absolutive system, with the further complication that transitive subjects may be marked as genitive depending on the specificity of the absolutive argument. Belep case marking is accomplished through the use of cross-linguistically unusual ditropic clitics; clitics marking the function of a Belep noun phrase are phonologically bound to whatever element precedes the noun phrase. In general, Belep lacks true complementation, instead making use of coordinate structures with unique linkers as a complementation strategy.

Cette thèse a trois principaux objets : la description morphologique des mots rédupliqués pour en déduire les différents types de réduplication en malgache, la détermination des différentes fonctions de la réduplication et l'étude des valeurs sémantiques dénotées par la réduplication. Les données puisées dans plusieurs dictionnaires et lexiques malgaches disponibles affirment la productivité et la profusion de ce processus. Ce travail de recherche se propose donc de montrer la place de réduplication dans le lexique malgache, en se basant sur l'analyse morphologique et sémantique. Il met en œuvre deux bases théoriques, à savoir la réduplication typologique (Blust 1998, 2001 et Zeitoun : 1998, 2006) et la réduplication fonctionnant comme affixes (Marantz :1982) et McCarthy et Prince (1999). L'étude est basée sur des relations, des fonctions et des associations, d'où le recours à la morphologie structurale, fonctionnelle et associative en adoptant le rapport d'opposition selon Rajaona (1977, 2004) et le cercle linguistique de Prague et aussi la morphologie associative de Danielle Corbin (1988, 1991, 2004). Les éléments du corpus sont extraits des ouvrages écrits, mais également de documents sonores existants ou que nous avons nous-mêmes collectés. La thèse est divisée en trois parties organisées en sept chapitres. Comme résultats, l'étude du corpusa permis d'identifier au moins neufs types de réduplication, cinq fonctions et vingt-cinq valeurs de la réduplication dans la langue malgache. Dans la conclusion, nous avons aussi évoqué les limites, les applications et les perspectives. / This thesis has three main objects: the morphological description of reduplicated words with a view to deducing the various types of reduplication in Malagasy, determination of the different functions of reduplication and the study of the semantic values provided by the reduplication. The data collected from a number of Malagasy dictionaries and lexicons that are availables how case the productivity and profusion of the process. This research work thus aims to show reduplication’s place in the Malagasy lexicon, based on morphological and semantic analysis. This work is based on two theoretical views: typological reduplication (Blust: 1998, 2001 and Zeitoun: 1998, 2006) and on the other hand partial reduplication which functions as affix (Marantz: 1982) and McCarthy and Prince (1999). This study is based on relations, functions and associations, thus appealing to structural, functional and associative morphology by adopting opposition relationship (according to Rajaona: 1977, 2004 and the linguistic circle of Prague) and Danielle Corbin’s associative morphology (1987, 1991, 2004). Items of the data have been extracted from written work ssuch as dictionaries as well as existing sound materials or materials we have collected ourselves. This thesis is divided into three parts which comprise seven chapters. As results, the morphological and semantic study of the data identified at least nine types of reduplication, five functions and twenty-five values of reduplication in the Malagasy language. In the conclusion, we also discussed limits, applications and perspectives.

Cette thèse consiste en une description du sun̄wadia, langue mélanésienne parlée dans l'île de Maewo, située dans la partie centre-nord du Vanuatu (Pacifique Sud). La description est basée sur deux séjours de terrain de trois mois chacun. La langue présente, à des stades plus ou moins poussés, les traits caractéristiques de la famille austronésienne: l'existence d'un article personnel, une tendance à l'omniprédicativité, la modification de la structure argumentale du verbe par quelques morphèmes hérités du système à applicatif des langues situées plus haut dans la généalogie de la famille. Elle présente également le système de marques personnelles très reconnaissable des langues austronésiennes.Il s'agit d'une langue relativement conservatrice sur le plan phonologique, mais dont la morphologie dérivationnelle apparaît assez érodée (il n'existe ni conjugaison verbale, ni déclinaison casuelle, ni marquage morphologique du nombre sur les noms). La thèse s'organise en six parties. La première étudie la phonologie, la morphophonologie, et la structure morphologique du mot sun̄wadia, ainsi que les phénomènes de sandhi. La seconde partie s'intéresse aux parties du discours et pose quelques bases syntaxiques sur lesquelles s'appuiera le reste de l'étude. Les quatre parties suivantes étudient successivement le fonctionnement du syntagme substantival, celui de la prédication (structurée par le recours fondamental aux constructions à verbes sériels), le système de repérage et de référence temporels, spatiaux et circonstanciels, et enfin l'organisation de l'énoncé. La thèse est accompagnée d'un extrait de corpus glosé d'une douzaine de pages. / This PHD thesis consists in a description of Sun̄wadia, a melanesian language spoken in Maewo Island, Central-NorthVanuatu (South-Pacific). It is based on two fieldworks of three months each.This language exhibits, in a variable extension, some of the typical characters of the austronesian languages: it has a personal article, tends towards omnipredicativity; the argumental structure of the verb undergoes modifications via a few morphemes related to the applicative systems of languages that are situated higher in the genetic tree of the family. The language also has the typical pronominal system of austronesian languages.Sun̄wadia is a relatively conservative language, on the phonemic level at least, but its morphology appears to be quite eroded (there aren't any verbal conjugation, nor any nominal declension, nor any morphological marking of number on the noun). This thesis is organised in six parts. The first one studies phonemics, morphophonemics, and the morphological structure of the Sun̄wadia word, as well as sandhi phenomenon. The second part concerns the parts of speech and lays down some syntaxic grounds that will be useful to the rest of the study. The last four parts review the substantival syntagm, the functioning of predication (which is mostly built around serial verbs constructions); the temporal, spatial, and circumstantial reference, and, lastly, the global organisation of the clause. The thesis comes with a short excerpt of our oral corpus (a dozen of pages).

Despite an abundance of archaeological material recovered from sites in Island Southeast Asia, the timing and route by which cultigens first arrived in Wallacea remains unclear. Many of the staple crops now grown on these islands were domesticated in mainland Asia, and were deliberately introduced by humans at an unknown point during the Holocene, through several possible routes. In this study, the δ 13C, δ15N and δ18O values of subfossil bones and teeth attributed to Sus celebensis and Sus scrofa are analyzed. These materials, which span the last 5160 years at Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia are used to determine if and when there was a shift towards agricultural intensification, and whether this intensification included the integration of domesticated C4 crops. The δ13C and δ15N values of the bone and dentin collagen samples indicate an abrupt shift towards enrichment in 13C and depletion in 15N at some time between 5160 and 2750 yBP. This hints at changes in human subsistence patterns that may have included the clearing of forests, and the integration of nonendemic C4 cultigens such as foxtail millet (Setaria italica) onto the island. No statistically significant variation in the δ 18O values of the enamel carbonate samples over time is observed, suggesting that once they appeared on Flores, semidomesticated pigs became an important part of the island ecosystem, and were bred and raised on Flores instead of being continuously imported from elsewhere.