A grammar of Komnzo
Christian Döhler
Copyright Year:
ISBN 13: 9783961101252
Publisher: Language Science Press
Language: English
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CC BY
Reviews
The text covers all areas and ideas of the subject related to the Yam culture as well as subcultural groups noting that there are various languages within the Yam family. There is evidence at the end of the book that provides an explicit view of... read more
The text covers all areas and ideas of the subject related to the Yam culture as well as subcultural groups noting that there are various languages within the Yam family. There is evidence at the end of the book that provides an explicit view of the language, subject, and name indexes; however, there is no evidence of a glossary with definitions of terms. Various definitions were defined and explained throughout the chapters.
Content appears accurate and error-free, and unbiased. There are a substantial number of credible references and personal interviews throughout the chapters.
The text is written and arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement.
The text is written in lucid, accessible prose, and provides adequate context for any jargon/technical terminology used.
The text is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework
The text is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections
The topics in the text are presented in a logical, clear fashion
The text is free of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.
I did not see any grammatical errors.
It should make use of examples that are inclusive of a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Preliminaries
- Chapter 2: Phonology
- Chapter 3: Word classes
- Chapter 4: Nominal morphology
- Chapter 5: Verb morphology
- Chapter 6: Tense, aspect and mood
- Chapter 7: Syntax of the noun phrase
- Chapter 8: Clausal syntax
- Chapter 9: Complex syntax
- Chapter 10: Information structure
- Chapter 11: Aspects of the lexicon
Ancillary Material
Submit ancillary resourceAbout the Book
Komnzo is a Papuan language of Southern New Guinea spoken by around 250 people in the village of Rouku. Komnzo belongs to the Tonda subgroup of the Yam language family, which is also known as the Morehead Upper-Maro group. This grammar provides the first comprehensive description of a Yam language. It is based on 16 months of fieldwork. The primary source of data is a text corpus of around 12 hours recorded and transcribed between 2010 and 2015. Komnzo provides many fields of future research, but the most interesting aspect of its structure lies in the verb morphology, to which the two largest chapters of the grammar are dedicated. Komnzo verbs may index up to two arguments showing agreement in person, number and gender. Verbs encode 18 TAM categories, valency, directionality and deictic status. Morphological complexity lies not only in the amount of categories that verbs may express, but also in the way these are encoded. Komnzo verbs exhibit what may be called ‘distributed exponence’, i.e. single morphemes are underspecified for a particular grammatical category. Therefore, morphological material from different sites has to be integrated first, and only after this integration can one arrive at a particular grammatical category. The descriptive approach in this grammar is theory-informed rather than theory-driven. Comparison to other Yam languages and diachronic developments are taken into account whenever it seems helpful.
About the Contributors
Author
Christian Döhler completed his M.A. in Political Science at the Chemnitz University of Technology and obtained an Honours Degree in Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. Between 2010 and 2016 he has worked on the DOBES project „Nen and Komnzo - Two languages of Southern New Guinea" funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. He completed his Ph.D. degree in 2016 at the Australian National University, Canberra. Currently he works as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cologne on the ELDP project "A comprehensive documentation of Bine - a language of Southern New Guinea".