LINGUIST List 14.3409

Wed Dec 10 2003

Books: Language Description: Crowley

Editor for this issue: Madhavi Jammalamadaka <madhulinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. lincom.europa, Ura: Crowley

Title: Ura
Series Title: Languages of the World/ Materials 240
			
Publication Year: 2003
Publisher: Lincom GmbH www.lincom-europa.com
 http://lincom.at		 
			
Editor: Terry Crowley, The University of Waikato
Paperback: ISBN: 3895865109, Pages: 60, Price: EUR 29.20
			
Abstract:

Ura is a moribund language, spoken fluently by only about half a dozen
elderly people on the island of Erromango in southern Vanuatu. One of
its closest relatives - Utaha - became extinct in 1954, though the
remaining language of Erromango - Sye - is still universally spoken by
a total of about 1400 people. Like the other languages of the southern
islands of Vanuatu, Ura is a member of a fairly distinct grouping of
structurally somewhat aberrant languages within the much larger
Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian languages.
	This description is a salvage study of the grammar of this
otherwise sketchly known language. The area of greatest complexity is
the verb morphology, where extensive patterns of root mutation result
in verb roots appearing in quite different guises in a range of
morphosyntactic environments. The language also has a set of
inflectional categories of verbs that is unusually large, as well as
morphological marking that is morphotactically unusually complex for
an Oceanic language. However, while this description focuses to a
considerable extent on moprhology, the major syntactic patterns are
also presented.

2nd printing. (visit our webshop: www.lincom.at)

Lingfield(s): Language Description

Subject Language(s): Ura (Language Code: URO)
			 
Written In: English (Language Code: ENG)

 See this book announcement on our website: 
 http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=8316.