Composite Tone in Mian Noun-Noun Compounds

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Single Versus Concurrent Systems: Nominal Classification in Mian

The Papuan language Mian allows us to refine the typology of nominal classification. Mian has two candidate classification systems, differing completely in their formal realization but overlapping considerably in their semantics. To determine whether to analyse Mian as a single system or concurrent systems we adopt a canonical approach. Our criteria – orthogonality of the systems (we give a precise measure), semantic compositionality, morphosyntactic alignment, distribution across parts of speech, exponence, and interaction with other features – point mainly to an analysis as concurrent systems. We thus improve our analysis of Mian and make progress with the typology of nominal classification

Testing semantic dominance in Mian gender : Three machine learning models

The Trans New Guinea language Mian has a four-valued gender system that has been analyzed in detail as semantic. This means that the principles of gender assignment are based on the meaning of the noun. Languages with purely semantic systems are at one end of a spectrum of possible assignment types, while others are assumed to have both semantic and formal (i.e. phonology- or morphology-based) assignment. Given the possibility of gender assignment by both semantic and formal principles, it is worthwhile testing the empirical validity of the categorization of the Mian system as predominantly semantic. Here we apply three machine- learning models to determine independently what role semantics and phonology play in predicting Mian gender. Information about the formal and semantic features of nouns is extracted automatically from a dictionary. Different types of computational classifiers are trained to predict the grammatical gender of nouns, and the performance of the computational classifiers is used to assess the relevance of form and semantics in relation to gender prediction. The results show that semantics is dominant in predicting the gender of nouns in Mian. While it validates the original analysis of the Mian system, it also provides confirmation that form- based and semantic features do not contribute equally in all languages with gender. More generally our work also demonstrates the value of computational methods to validate analyses of gender systems

Grammatical Typology and Frequency Analysis: Number Availability and Number Use

The Smith-Stark hierarchy, a version of the Animacy Hierarchy, offers a typology of the cross-linguistic availability of number. The hierarchy predicts that the availability of number is not arbitrary. For any language, if the expression of plural is available to a noun, it is available to any noun of a semantic category further to the left of the hierarchy. In this article we move one step further by showing that the structure of the hierarchy can be observed in a statistical model of number use in Russian. We also investigate three co-variates: plural preference, pluralia tantum and irregularity effects; these account for an item’s behaviour being different than that solely expected from its animacy position

The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology. Second edition.

The Alor-Pantar family constitutes the westernmost outlier group of Papuan (Non-Austronesian) languages. Its twenty or so languages are spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, located just north of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Together with the Papuan languages of Timor, they make up the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. The languages average 5,000 speakers and areunder pressure from the local Malay variety as well as the national language, Indonesian. This volume studies the internal and external linguistic history of thisinteresting group, and showcases some of its unique typological features, such as the preference to index the transitive patient-like argument on the verb but not the agent-like one; the extreme variety in morphological alignment patterns; the use of plural number words; the existence of quinary numeral systems; the elaborate spatial deictic systems involving an elevation component; and the great variation exhibited in their kinship systems. Unlike many other Papuan languages, Alor-Pantar languages do not exhibit clause-chaining, do not have switch reference systems, never suffix subject indexes to verbs, do not mark gender, but do encode clusivity in their pronominal systems. Indeed, apart from a broadly similar head-final syntactic profile, there is little else that the Alor-Pantar languages share with Papuan languages spoken in other regions. While all of them show some traces of contact with Austronesian languages, in general, borrowing from Austronesian has not been intense, and contact with Malay and Indonesian is a relatively recent phenomenon in most of the Alor-Pantar region.   This is the second edition of the volume that was originally published in 2014, as one of the first open access publications of Language Science Press. In less than three years, the first edition had more than 10,000 downloads, many of which in Indonesia, and downloads are still increasing. To us this demonstrates how important it is to use use free open access to enable both scientists and speakers of local languages in Indonesia to read this work. In this second edition, typographical errors have been corrected, some small textual improvements have been implemented, broken URL links repaired or removed, and maps and references updated. The overall content of the chapters has not been changed

The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology. Second edition.

The Alor-Pantar family constitutes the westernmost outlier group of Papuan (Non-Austronesian) languages. Its twenty or so languages are spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, located just north of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Together with the Papuan languages of Timor, they make up the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. The languages average 5,000 speakers and areunder pressure from the local Malay variety as well as the national language, Indonesian. This volume studies the internal and external linguistic history of thisinteresting group, and showcases some of its unique typological features, such as the preference to index the transitive patient-like argument on the verb but not the agent-like one; the extreme variety in morphological alignment patterns; the use of plural number words; the existence of quinary numeral systems; the elaborate spatial deictic systems involving an elevation component; and the great variation exhibited in their kinship systems. Unlike many other Papuan languages, Alor-Pantar languages do not exhibit clause-chaining, do not have switch reference systems, never suffix subject indexes to verbs, do not mark gender, but do encode clusivity in their pronominal systems. Indeed, apart from a broadly similar head-final syntactic profile, there is little else that the Alor-Pantar languages share with Papuan languages spoken in other regions. While all of them show some traces of contact with Austronesian languages, in general, borrowing from Austronesian has not been intense, and contact with Malay and Indonesian is a relatively recent phenomenon in most of the Alor-Pantar region.   This is the second edition of the volume that was originally published in 2014, as one of the first open access publications of Language Science Press. In less than three years, the first edition had more than 10,000 downloads, many of which in Indonesia, and downloads are still increasing. To us this demonstrates how important it is to use use free open access to enable both scientists and speakers of local languages in Indonesia to read this work. In this second edition, typographical errors have been corrected, some small textual improvements have been implemented, broken URL links repaired or removed, and maps and references updated. The overall content of the chapters has not been changed

The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology. Second edition.

The Alor-Pantar family constitutes the westernmost outlier group of Papuan (Non-Austronesian) languages. Its twenty or so languages are spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, located just north of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Together with the Papuan languages of Timor, they make up the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. The languages average 5,000 speakers and areunder pressure from the local Malay variety as well as the national language, Indonesian. This volume studies the internal and external linguistic history of thisinteresting group, and showcases some of its unique typological features, such as the preference to index the transitive patient-like argument on the verb but not the agent-like one; the extreme variety in morphological alignment patterns; the use of plural number words; the existence of quinary numeral systems; the elaborate spatial deictic systems involving an elevation component; and the great variation exhibited in their kinship systems. Unlike many other Papuan languages, Alor-Pantar languages do not exhibit clause-chaining, do not have switch reference systems, never suffix subject indexes to verbs, do not mark gender, but do encode clusivity in their pronominal systems. Indeed, apart from a broadly similar head-final syntactic profile, there is little else that the Alor-Pantar languages share with Papuan languages spoken in other regions. While all of them show some traces of contact with Austronesian languages, in general, borrowing from Austronesian has not been intense, and contact with Malay and Indonesian is a relatively recent phenomenon in most of the Alor-Pantar region.   This is the second edition of the volume that was originally published in 2014, as one of the first open access publications of Language Science Press. In less than three years, the first edition had more than 10,000 downloads, many of which in Indonesia, and downloads are still increasing. To us this demonstrates how important it is to use use free open access to enable both scientists and speakers of local languages in Indonesia to read this work. In this second edition, typographical errors have been corrected, some small textual improvements have been implemented, broken URL links repaired or removed, and maps and references updated. The overall content of the chapters has not been changed

The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology. Second edition.

The Alor-Pantar family constitutes the westernmost outlier group of Papuan (Non-Austronesian) languages. Its twenty or so languages are spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, located just north of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Together with the Papuan languages of Timor, they make up the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. The languages average 5,000 speakers and areunder pressure from the local Malay variety as well as the national language, Indonesian. This volume studies the internal and external linguistic history of thisinteresting group, and showcases some of its unique typological features, such as the preference to index the transitive patient-like argument on the verb but not the agent-like one; the extreme variety in morphological alignment patterns; the use of plural number words; the existence of quinary numeral systems; the elaborate spatial deictic systems involving an elevation component; and the great variation exhibited in their kinship systems. Unlike many other Papuan languages, Alor-Pantar languages do not exhibit clause-chaining, do not have switch reference systems, never suffix subject indexes to verbs, do not mark gender, but do encode clusivity in their pronominal systems. Indeed, apart from a broadly similar head-final syntactic profile, there is little else that the Alor-Pantar languages share with Papuan languages spoken in other regions. While all of them show some traces of contact with Austronesian languages, in general, borrowing from Austronesian has not been intense, and contact with Malay and Indonesian is a relatively recent phenomenon in most of the Alor-Pantar region.   This is the second edition of the volume that was originally published in 2014, as one of the first open access publications of Language Science Press. In less than three years, the first edition had more than 10,000 downloads, many of which in Indonesia, and downloads are still increasing. To us this demonstrates how important it is to use use free open access to enable both scientists and speakers of local languages in Indonesia to read this work. In this second edition, typographical errors have been corrected, some small textual improvements have been implemented, broken URL links repaired or removed, and maps and references updated. The overall content of the chapters has not been changed

The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology. Second edition.

The Alor-Pantar family constitutes the westernmost outlier group of Papuan (Non-Austronesian) languages. Its twenty or so languages are spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, located just north of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Together with the Papuan languages of Timor, they make up the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. The languages average 5,000 speakers and areunder pressure from the local Malay variety as well as the national language, Indonesian. This volume studies the internal and external linguistic history of thisinteresting group, and showcases some of its unique typological features, such as the preference to index the transitive patient-like argument on the verb but not the agent-like one; the extreme variety in morphological alignment patterns; the use of plural number words; the existence of quinary numeral systems; the elaborate spatial deictic systems involving an elevation component; and the great variation exhibited in their kinship systems. Unlike many other Papuan languages, Alor-Pantar languages do not exhibit clause-chaining, do not have switch reference systems, never suffix subject indexes to verbs, do not mark gender, but do encode clusivity in their pronominal systems. Indeed, apart from a broadly similar head-final syntactic profile, there is little else that the Alor-Pantar languages share with Papuan languages spoken in other regions. While all of them show some traces of contact with Austronesian languages, in general, borrowing from Austronesian has not been intense, and contact with Malay and Indonesian is a relatively recent phenomenon in most of the Alor-Pantar region.   This is the second edition of the volume that was originally published in 2014, as one of the first open access publications of Language Science Press. In less than three years, the first edition had more than 10,000 downloads, many of which in Indonesia, and downloads are still increasing. To us this demonstrates how important it is to use use free open access to enable both scientists and speakers of local languages in Indonesia to read this work. In this second edition, typographical errors have been corrected, some small textual improvements have been implemented, broken URL links repaired or removed, and maps and references updated. The overall content of the chapters has not been changed

The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology. Second edition.

The Alor-Pantar family constitutes the westernmost outlier group of Papuan (Non-Austronesian) languages. Its twenty or so languages are spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, located just north of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Together with the Papuan languages of Timor, they make up the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. The languages average 5,000 speakers and areunder pressure from the local Malay variety as well as the national language, Indonesian. This volume studies the internal and external linguistic history of thisinteresting group, and showcases some of its unique typological features, such as the preference to index the transitive patient-like argument on the verb but not the agent-like one; the extreme variety in morphological alignment patterns; the use of plural number words; the existence of quinary numeral systems; the elaborate spatial deictic systems involving an elevation component; and the great variation exhibited in their kinship systems. Unlike many other Papuan languages, Alor-Pantar languages do not exhibit clause-chaining, do not have switch reference systems, never suffix subject indexes to verbs, do not mark gender, but do encode clusivity in their pronominal systems. Indeed, apart from a broadly similar head-final syntactic profile, there is little else that the Alor-Pantar languages share with Papuan languages spoken in other regions. While all of them show some traces of contact with Austronesian languages, in general, borrowing from Austronesian has not been intense, and contact with Malay and Indonesian is a relatively recent phenomenon in most of the Alor-Pantar region.   This is the second edition of the volume that was originally published in 2014, as one of the first open access publications of Language Science Press. In less than three years, the first edition had more than 10,000 downloads, many of which in Indonesia, and downloads are still increasing. To us this demonstrates how important it is to use use free open access to enable both scientists and speakers of local languages in Indonesia to read this work. In this second edition, typographical errors have been corrected, some small textual improvements have been implemented, broken URL links repaired or removed, and maps and references updated. The overall content of the chapters has not been changed