A Grammar of Nese

Nese is a dying Oceanic language spoken on the island of Malekula, in northern Vanuatu. This book, based on first-hand fieldwork data, and without adhering to any particular syntactic framework, presents a synchronic grammatical description of Nese's phonology and syntax. Despite being on the verge of extinction, with fewer than 20 living speakers, the language displays intriguing properties-including but not exclusive to the cross-linguistically rare apicolabial phonemes, interesting vowel-raising patterns in some word classes, and a discontinuous negation relationship that is obligatorily expressed with the irrealis mood marker. This book will probably be the last work published on Nese.

ISBN-13: 9781760465551

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Anu Press

Publication Date: 08-15-2023

Pages: 352

Product Dimensions: 9.21h x 6.02w x 0.96d

Series: Asia-Pacific Linguistics