Niue Language Dictionary


Book Description

Tohi Vagahau Niue is a significant new dictionary detailing the Polynesian language of Niue, and will benefit Niuean studies for years to come. While its main aim is to be a repository for native speakers, it will also serve a wider linguistic audience, including comparativists and theorists in lexicography. Detailed user notes introduce the reader to the basic challenges in Niuean lexicography and grammar. With some 10,000 Niuean word entries, the present dictionary is a significant expansion on an earlier work. The Niuean contributors took great care to present their language as a living entity while preserving its valuable past, but they are also aware of its uncertain future. Language revival is essential to preserve a linguistic Pacific jewel, and as such the new dictionary will lend status to Niuean language studies as well as be an invaluable help in using Niuean confidently in everyday life.




Learning Niuean


Book Description

One of the few print resources on learning the Niuean language. Follows on from A First Book for Learning Niuean - designed for adult or secondary school learners. Those of intermediate school level may also be able to use it. Contains units 11-14 of the combined edition. It also has a summary of the grammar of the first book. The vocabulary lists cover both books.




Historical Dictionary of Polynesia


Book Description

The term Polynesia refers to a cultural and geographical area in the Pacific Ocean, bound by what is commonly referred to as the Polynesian Triangle, which consists of Hawai'i in the north, New Zealand in the southwest, and Easter Island in the southeast. Thousands of islands are scattered throughout this area, most of which are currently included in one of the modern island states of American Samoa, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Hawai'i, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Tokelau, Tuvalu, and Wallis and Futuna. The third edition of the Historical Dictionary of Polynesia greatly expands on the previous editions through a chronology, an introductory essay, an expansive bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, events, places, organizations, and other aspects of Polynesian history from the earliest times to the present. Appendixes of the major islands and atolls within Polynesia, the rulers and administrators of the 13 major island states, and basic demographic information of those states are also included.




Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics


Book Description

The first edition of ELL (1993, Ron Asher, Editor) was hailed as "the field's standard reference work for a generation". Now the all-new second edition matches ELL's comprehensiveness and high quality, expanded for a new generation, while being the first encyclopedia to really exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics. * The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field * An entirely new work, with new editors, new authors, new topics and newly commissioned articles with a handful of classic articles * The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics through the online edition * Ground-breaking and International in scope and approach * Alphabetically arranged with extensive cross-referencing * Available in print and online, priced separately. The online version will include updates as subjects develop ELL2 includes: * c. 7,500,000 words * c. 11,000 pages * c. 3,000 articles * c. 1,500 figures: 130 halftones and 150 colour * Supplementary audio, video and text files online * c. 3,500 glossary definitions * c. 39,000 references * Extensive list of commonly used abbreviations * List of languages of the world (including information on no. of speakers, language family, etc.) * Approximately 700 biographical entries (now includes contemporary linguists) * 200 language maps in print and online Also available online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedirect.com. The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics Ground-breaking in scope - wider than any predecessor An invaluable resource for researchers, academics, students and professionals in the fields of: linguistics, anthropology, education, psychology, language acquisition, language pathology, cognitive science, sociology, the law, the media, medicine & computer science. The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field




The Niuean Language


Book Description




Niuean


Book Description

This volume explores the grammar of Niuean, an endangered Polynesian language spoken on the island of Niue and in New Zealand, with a focus on the issue of predication. Since Aristotle, it has been claimed that a sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. Niuean constitutes the perfect testing ground for this claim: it displays verb-subject-object word order, in which the subject interrupts the predicate, and has an ergative case system, in which subjects are not clearly distinguished from objects in their marking for grammatical case. Diane Massam uses the framework of generative grammar to carry out a detailed analysis of the internal structure of Niuean predicates and arguments, as well as the relations between them, touching on many other topics including the nature of displacement, word formation, determiners, and thematic roles. The proposal is that Niuean complex predicates are formed via successive inversion, prior to the merge of all arguments (high argument merge), and that the predicate undergoes fronting to initial position across the arguments, with the same structure found also in nominal clauses. The conclusion is that Niuean does not have a subject in the usual sense, and this is related to the fact that the language has isolating morphology, lacking all tense and agreement inflection and nominative case. Instead, the language exhibits low absolutive predication, applicative ergative agents, and predicate fronting in lieu of subject extraction. The book extends our understanding of cross-linguistic sentence structure and grammatical case, and will be of interest to scholars in the fields of Austronesian linguistics, typology, and theoretical linguistics.




Imperatives and Directive Strategies


Book Description

Imperatives and directive strategies have intrigued both formalists and functionalists. They continue to search for the answers to questions like “what are the semantics of the imperative?”, “how is it used (in the world’s languages)?” and “which factors determine the choice between imperatives and other directive strategies?”. This volume takes a broadly functional-typological perspective and contributes to the literature in several respects. It presents new data from a variety of languages, some of which have not been studied in depth before. It exemplifies the benefits of traditional methodologies as well as the potential of more innovative ones. In addition, the volume sheds new light on the imperative as a typological notion, its meaning and uses and its interaction with other grammatical categories. It also offers new insights into the relation between different directive strategies within and across languages and into the (dis)similarities between equivalent directive strategies in a language family.




Niue dictionary


Book Description




The Oceanic Languages


Book Description

The volume contains five background chapters: The Oceanic Languages, Sociolinguistic Background, Typological Overview, Proto-Oceanic and Internal Subgrouping. Part of 2 vol set. Author Ross from ANU.




Language Description, History and Development


Book Description

This volume in memory of Terry Crowley covers a wide range of languages: Australian, Oceanic, Pidgins and Creoles, and varieties of English. Part I, Linguistic Description and Typology, includes chapters on topics such as complex predicates and verb serialization, noun incorporation, possessive classifiers, diphthongs, accent patterns, modals in Australian English and directional terms in atoll-based languages. Part II, Historical Linguistics and Linguistic History, ranges from the reconstruction of Australian languages, to reflexes of Proto-Oceanic, to the lexicon of early Melanesian Pidgin. Part III, Language Development and Linguistic Applications, comprises studies of lexicography, language in education, and language endangerment and language revival, spanning the Pacific from South Australia and New Zealand to Melanesia and on to Colombia. The volume will whet the appetite of anyone interested in the latest linguistic research in this richly multilingual part of the globe.