{"id":395,"date":"2010-04-19T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T08:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=395"},"modified":"2010-02-11T13:23:55","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T11:23:55","slug":"a-grammar-of-toqabaqita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=395","title":{"rendered":"A grammar of Toqabaqita"},"content":{"rendered":"
A grammar of Toqabaqita. <\/strong>2 vols. By Frantisek Lichtenberk<\/strong>. <\/strong>(Mouton grammar library 42.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. Pp. 1356. ISBN 9783110195873<\/a>. $158 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Peter Freeouf<\/strong>,<\/a> Chiang Mai University<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a massive and detailed two hardback volume grammar of Toqabaqita, which is spoken by around 12,500 people at the northern end of Malaita Island in the central Solomon Islands. Toqabaqita is a member of the Southeast Solomonic branch of Oceanic, a subgroup of the widespread Austronesian family. Toqabaqita shares a number of the characteristic phonological and morphosyntactic features common to many Oceanic languages. These features include a relatively simple phonological system; a complex pronominal system, with an inclusive\/exclusive distinction in the nonsingular first person pronominals; three numbers\u00a0 (i.e. singular, dual, plural) in all three persons; obligatory expression of alienable and inalienable possession; object-indexing suffixes with transitive verbs; and a complex system of subject markers fused with markers of nonfuture tense, future tense with imperfective aspect, sequentiality, negation, and dehortative markers, each with a distinct paradigm of forms (143\u201344).<\/p>\n

The grammar consists of forty chapters and an appendix (1331\u201345) that contains two recorded, interlinearly glossed texts with translation. The grammar contains twenty tables, three maps, and two charts showing the genetic relationship of Toqabaqita. Vol. 1 contains Chs. 1\u201314, which consists of a brief overview of the language and its genetic affiliation. This is followed by Ch. 2, \u2018Phonology\u2019, which contains a comprehensive survey of the phoneme inventory, phonological processes, and orthographic conventions used in the grammar. Ch 3, \u2018Grammatical profile\u2019, provides a short overview of the principal morphosyntactic patterns and word classes. The remaining chapters in vol. 1 examine the verbal morphology (Chs. 4\u20135), nominal morphology and noun phrases, including pronominals (Chs. 6\u20139), prepositional phrases (Ch. 10), coordination of noun and prepositional phrases (Ch. 11), nominal and verbal compounding (Ch. 12), demonstratives (Ch. 13), and \u2018Constructions with inclusory pronominals\u2019 (Ch. 14).<\/p>\n

Vol. 2 consists of chapters 15\u201340. \u2018Tense and aspect\u2019 are dealt with in Ch. 15, the function of subject markers in Ch. 16, \u2018Negation\u2019 in Ch. 17, \u2018Mood\u2019 in Ch. 18, \u2018Interrogatives\u2019 in Ch. 19, and \u2018Imperatives\u2019 in Ch. 20. The following chapters (Chs. 21\u201339) explore various morphosyntactic issues, including clausal syntax. Ch. 40, the final chapter, describes the sociolinguistic relationship between Toqabaqita, Solomon Islands Pijin, and English. Each volume has a short section of notes at or near the end of the volume. References (1333\u201343) and a detailed grammar topic index (1345\u201356) complete vol. 2.<\/p>\n

As an example of the linguistic detail characteristic of the work, this grammar presents an interesting discussion of whether the possible consonants that form the first sound of the short and long transitive suffixes are best analyzed as part of the underlying stem, as a feature of a conjugation, or, as the author proposes, are best understood with a morpho-lexemic analysis, in which the initial consonants of the transitive suffixes are analyzed as separate but \u2018semantically empty\u2019 morphs (90\u201397).<\/p>\n

This grammar must be one of the most comprehensive and detailed grammars ever written for an Austronesian language. It is truly monumental in scope and depth and is written lucidly in the contemporary style of language description without a heavy theoretical orientation. As such, it will be very accessible and useful to linguists with various interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A grammar of Toqabaqita. 2 vols. By Frantisek Lichtenberk. (Mouton grammar library 42.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. Pp. 1356. ISBN 9783110195873. $158 (Hb). Reviewed by Peter Freeouf, Chiang Mai University This is a massive and detailed two hardback volume grammar of Toqabaqita, which is spoken by around 12,500 people at the northern end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":396,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}