Ku Waru
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Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands
The genres of sung tales that are the subject of this volume are one of the most striking aspects of the cultural scene in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Composed and performed by specialist bards, they are a highly valued art form. From a comparative viewpoint they are remarkable both for their scale and complexity, and for the range of variation that is found among regional genres and individual styles. Though their existence has previously been noted by researchers working in the Highlands, and some recordings made of them, most of these genres have not been studied in detail until quite recently, mainly because of the challenging range of disciplinary expertise that is required--in anthropology, linguistics, and ethnomusicology. This volume presents a set of interrelated studies by researchers in all of those fields, and by a Papua New Guinea Highlander who has assisted with the research based on his lifelong familiarity with one of the regional genres. The studies presented here (all of them previously unpublished and written especially for this volume) are of groundbreaking significance not only for specialists in Melanesia or the Pacific, but also for readers with a more general interest in comparative poetics, mythology, musicology, or verbal art.
The Acquisition of Ergativity
Author: Edith L. Bavin
language: en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date: 2013-11-15
Ergativity is one of the main challenges both for linguistic and acquisition theories. This book is unique, taking a cross-linguistic approach to the acquisition of ergativity in a large variety of typologically distinct languages. The chapters cover languages from different families and from different geographic areas with different expressions of ergativity. Each chapter includes a description of ergativity in the language(s), the nature of the input, the social context of acquisition and developmental patterns. Comparisons of the acquisition process across closely related languages are made, change in progress of the ergative systems is discussed and, for one language, acquisition by bilingual and monolingual children is compared. The volume will be of particular interest to language acquisition researchers, linguists, psycholinguists and cognitive scientists.
Nominal Classification in Aboriginal Australia
Author: Mark Harvey
language: en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date: 1997-01-01
This volume aims to extend both the range of analyses and the database on nominal classification systems. Previous analyses of nominal classification systems have focussed on two areas: the semantics of the classification system and the role of the system in discourse. In many nominal classification systems, there appear to be a significant percentage of nominals with an arbitrary classification. There is a considerable body of literature aimed at elucidating the semantic bases of clasification in such systems, thereby reducing the degree of apparent arbitrariness. Contributors to this volume continue this line of enquiry, but also propose that arbitrariness in itself has a role from a wider socio-cultural perspective. Previous analyses of the discourse role of classification systems posit that they play a significant role in referential tracking. For the languages surveyed in this volume, contributors propose that reference instantiation is an equally significant function, and indeed that reference instantiation and tracking cannot be properly divided from one another. This volume provides detailed information on classification in a number of northern Australian languages, whose systems are otherwise poorly known.