Reexamining the phonological history of Oceanic’s Temotu subgroup (Article)
Title: Reexamining the phonological history of Oceanic’s Temotu subgroup
Author: Brenda H. Boerger
Author: William James Lackey
Abstract: In recent years, much more lexical data have become available for the Temotu languages, a purported subgroup of Oceanic. This paper reexamines some significant changes to Oceanic consonants in light of this larger dataset. While the bulk of previous analyses is retained, several changes hypothesized in earlier literature are shown to require revision. The syncope and truncation sound changes proposed by Ross and Næss are reinterpreted as emergent from prosodic effects, and as a result of closer study of other sound changes, we find that the hypothesized Utupua–Vanikoro branch is not phonologically well founded. A second merger of sounds in Proto-Oceanic, in addition to the one presented in Ross and Næss, is uncovered for all of Temotu languages, giving support for its acceptance as a subgroup of Oceanic. In a synthesis near the end, we show that evidence from recent archaeological work on the Temotu region that aligns with the linguistic history proposed here.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/836178/pdf
Primary URL Description: Link to journal article.
Secondary URL: https://
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Oceanic Linguistics 60.2:367-411
Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press

Marked use of personal directionals in Natügu narrative texts (Article)
Title: Marked use of personal directionals in Natügu narrative texts
Author: Brenda H. Boerger
Abstract: In Natügu (Natqgu) [ntu] personal directionals can be used in narrative discourse to shift from a narrator perspective to a main character perspective. The latter is marked in relation to the narrator perspective. This paper shows how the sustained use of the main character perspective occurs at the peak of a narrative, George Meya is shot with an arrow. These findings illustrate one aspect of the range of practice in good Natqgu story-telling and show that accurate description of directionals in a language must examine their functions at the discourse level, and not just in isolated, individual sentences. This also demonstrates the importance of collecting multiple genres during fieldwork.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.sil.org/resources/publications/entry/82335
Primary URL Description: Link to the full journal, not the specific article.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Selected Proceedings from the Tenth Conference On Oceanic Linguistics (COOL10). SIL Language and Culture Documentation and Description 45:1-23.
Publisher: SIL International

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