A grammar of Tinrin (New Caledonia)

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. Show more