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Description:
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Mian is a non-Austronesian ('Papuan') language of the Ok family spoken in
the Highlands fringe in western Papua New Guinea. Mian has approximately
1,400 speakers and is highly endangered. This grammar is the first
comprehensive description of the language. It is based on primary field data
consisting of a text corpus that covers different genres of the oral tradition,
namely myths and ancestor stories, historical accounts, accounts of the
initiation ritual, conversations, and procedural texts. The corpus was recorded
by the author during a total of eleven months of field work from 2004 to 2008.
The book provides a thorough description of all areas of Mian grammar and
gives an in-depth analysis of many points of typological interest, such as the
complex system of lexical tone, the interaction between a gender system and
a system of classificatory prefixes on verbs of object movement,
manipulation or handling, which allows the highlighting of certain
characteristics of a referent in a given situation, the complex verbal
morphology which allows fine-grained tense-aspect-mood distinctions, and a
switch-reference system in which switch-reference suffixes on medial verbs
are homophonous with and derived from suffixes functioning as tense and
aspect markers in final verbs. The book is rounded off by a collection of
traditional and contemporary texts (fully glossed and translated) and a word
list comprising some 1,600 items, giving lexical tone, word class and
meaning.
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