1st Edition

Tuvaluan A Polynesian Language of the Central Pacific.

By Niko Besnier Copyright 2000
    688 Pages
    by Routledge

    688 Pages
    by Routledge

    Tuvaluan is a Polynesian language spoken by the 9,000 inhabitants of the nine atolls of Tuvalu in the Central Pacific, as well as small and growing Tuvaluan communities in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. This grammar is the first detailed description of the structure of Tuvaluan, one of the least well-documented languages of Polynesia. Tuvaluan pays particular attention to discourse and sociolinguistics factors at play in the structural organization of the language.

    List of tables, maps, and figures, Acknowledgements, Abbreviations and grammaticality conventions, 0. INTRODUCTION, 1. SYNTAX, 2. MORPHOLOGY, 3. PHONOLOGY, 4. IDEOPHONES AND INTERJECTIONS, 5. LEXICON, References, Index

    Biography

    Niko Besnier

    'Tuvaluan is a tour de force, a work of consummate scholarship, most unlikely to be bettered in its essentials.' - H.G.A. Hughes, Languages and Literature