| Description |
1 online resource (xv, 440 pages) : illustrations, maps |
| Contents |
Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Phonemes -- Chapter 3: Stems -- Chapter 4: Words -- Chapter 5: Phrases -- Chapter 6: Clauses -- Chapter 7: Complex sentences -- Chapter 8: Discourse phenomena -- Chapter 9: Texts -- Chapter 10: Conclusion and prospects -- Appendix A: Original spellings and translations of examples (1)-(1068) -- Appendix B: Comparative Akabea-Akarbale basic lexical items -- References -- Author index -- Language index -- Subject index |
| Summary |
This volume is the first extensive and reliable grammatical description of any traditional language of the Great Andamanese family. Akabea died out in the 1920s, but was extensively documented in the late nineteenth century by two British administrators, Edward Horace Man and Maurice Vidal Portman. Although neither was a trained linguist, their material nonetheless provides a sufficient basis for a reliable analysis of Akabea grammar, especially its morphology and its phrasal and clausal syntax, although there are inevitable limitations on our understanding of Akabea phonology, clause combining, and discourse structure. The grammar is accompanied by an online appendix that provides a diplomatic edition with commentary and analysis of the single most valuable resource for Akabea grammatical analysis, Portman's Dialogues. 0Raoul Zamponi and Bernard Comrie's 'Grammar of Akabea' offers a unique insight into the culture, history, and prehistory of the Andaman Islands, and also broadens our understanding of the human capacity for language. It highlights the typologically interesting and cross-linguistically rare traits of the language, such as a rich system of somatic (body-part) prefixes and the phenomenon of Verb Root Ellipsis, whereby under certain circumstances the root of a verb may be absent, leaving behind a grammatical word consisting solely of affixes. The project at last makes this valuable evidence accessible both to linguists and to interested scholars from other disciplines, such as anthropology, history, and genetics |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and indexes |
| Notes |
Text in English and Andamanese |
|
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed September 14, 2020) |
| Subject |
Andamanese language -- Grammar
|
|
Great Andamanese (Indic people) -- Languages
|
|
Andamanese language -- Grammar.
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| Author |
Comrie, Bernard, 1947- author.
|
| ISBN |
9780192597809 |
|
0192597809 |
|
