A grammar of Tinrin (New Caledonia)
Date
1990
Authors
Osumi, Midori
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Abstract
This dissertation presents an analysis of the phonology, morphology and syntax of
Tinrin, one of the least investigated New Caledonian languages. The language is
spoken by about 400 people in the Lafoa area in the southern part of New Caledonia.
The analysis has been undertaken with materials obtained in nine months of field
work conducted in Petit Couli, Lafoa and Noumea, New Caledonia.
Chapter 1 provides background information on the language and a brief description
about some dialectal variations. Some data I collected from the last speaker of the
Tinrin in Ile des Pins is presented here.
Chapter 2 discusses the phonology of Tinrin. A phoneme inventory comprising 30
consonants and 14 vowels (6 of which are nasal) is established, and phonotactics, stress,
intonation, phonological processes and the morphophonemic rules are discussed. At the
end of this chapter, proposals are made for an orthography employed in the rest of the
thesis.
Chapter 3 deals with word classes; the morpho-syntactic definition of each
grammatical category, the relationship between these categories, and the multiple
functions of some words are discussed.
The morphological description presented in Chapters 4 and 5 examines systematic
word formation, the use of various affixes and other processes. The functions of
individual nominal prefixes are described in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, the correlation of
some nouns /verbs with classificatory prefixes is discussed. A summary table illustrates
the extensive use of classificatory prefixes and their combination with various verbal
stems.
Chapters 6 through 8 analyse the syntactic structure of Tinrin. Chapter 6 describes
the structure of the nominal phrase including various possessive constructions, and
Chapter 7 the verb phrase. The functions of tense-aspect markers and verbal modifiers
are described, and combination and word order among them are examined. Verb
serialization and linked verb constructions are also discussed in this chapter.
Syntax on the clause/sentence level is discussed in Chapter 8. Various clause types,
including complementation, relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and emphatic
constructions are described. Topicalisation, pseudo-passive and passive constructions
are also discussed, and it is argued that they form a continuum along the active-passive
polarity.
A basic kinship terminology and an illustrative text are included at the end of the
thesis.
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DOI
10.25911/5d723d38ee552