A Grammar of Coastal Marind

By Bruno Olsson

Book Overview

This grammar provides the first modern, comprehensive description of Coastal Marind. It is a Papuan language spoken by the coastal-dwelling Marind-Anim, formerly expansionistic head-hunters of the Southern New Guinea lowlands. Like the other languages of the poorly known Anim family, Coastal Marind features astonishingly complex verb morphology and a range of unusual phenomena, including indexing of up to four arguments on the verb, verbal marking of focus (the 'Orientation' system), engagement prefixes tracking the attention of the addressee, and a system of four genders realised by intricate agreement patterns. The structure of the language is examined in a detailed but accessible way, and its many complexities are brought to life by contextualised spontaneous data, drawn from a rich audio-visual corpus.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3111120775
• ISBN13: 9783111120775
• Release Date: December 2022
• Publisher: de Gruyter Mouton
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 2.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.7" x 9.6"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary