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23 - A Grammatical Sketch of Yimas (Lower Sepik, Papua New Guinea)

from Part Five - Grammatical Sketches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2023

By
William A. Foley
Edited by
Delia Bentley ,
Ricardo Mairal Usón ,
Wataru Nakamura  and
Robert D. Van Valin, Jr
Delia Bentley
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Ricardo Mairal Usón
Affiliation:
Universidad National de Educación a Distancia, Madrid
Wataru Nakamura
Affiliation:
Tohoku University, Japan
Robert D. Van Valin, Jr
Affiliation:
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
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Summary

This chapter provides a grammatical sketch of Yimas, a morphologically highly complex polysynthetic language spoken in the Sepik basin region of the northern swampy lowlands of Papua New Guinea. The chapter discusses the extensively elaborated word structure of Yimas and the non-configurational property of its clauses, which lack the familiar syntactic category of phrases. Particular emphasis is placed on the system of agreement on the two principal word classes of the language, nouns and verbs, transitivity and macrorole assignment, alignment, clause linkage and nominalizations.

Keywords

Yimaspolysynthesisnon-configurationalityagreementmacrorole assignmentsplit alignmentclause linkagenominalization
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Role and Reference Grammar , pp. 861 - 888
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

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