Selected Proceedings from the Tenth Conference on Oceanic Linguistics (COOL10)

Language and Culture DigitalResources Documentation and Description 45 Selected Proceedings from the Tenth Conference On Oceanic Linguistics (COOL10) Special issue editors: Brenda H. Boerger and Paul Unger Selected Proceedings from the Tenth Conference On Oceanic Linguistics (COOL10) Special issue editors Brenda H. Boerger and Paul Unger SIL Language and Culture Documentation and Description 45 © 2019 SIL International® ISSN 1939-0785 Fair Use Policy Documents published in the Language and Culture Documentation and Description series are intended for scholarly research and educational use. You may make copies of these publications for research or instructional purposes (under fair use guidelines) free of charge and without further permission. Republication or commercial use of Language and Culture Documentation and Description or the documents contained therein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder(s). 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Series Editor Lana Martens Managing Editor Eric Kindberg Copy Editors Barbara Shannon Newton Frank Linda Towne ii Preface to this Special Issue COOL10 in the context of previous conferences The Solomon Islands National Museum and the Solomon Islands Translation Advisory Group (SITAG) co- sponsored the 10th Conference On Oceanic Linguistics (COOL10) in Honiara, Solomon Islands on July 10- 15, 2017. COOL has met throughout the Pacific, but this is the first time it has been held in the Solomon Islands. COOL01 in 1993 was at USP, in Port Vila, Vanuatu. COOL has also met in Fiji, New Caledonia, and Niue. COOL08 was in New Zealand and COOL09 in Australia, so participants at COOL09 expressed strong opinions that COOL10 should be held in a country where the majority of languages spoken there are from the Oceanic language family. Therefore, the Solomon Islands was chosen to be the venue for COOL10. SITAG has collaborated with the National Museum twice previously on language-related projects in 2008 and 2012, so this event is a continuation of an on-going relationship through our shared desire to contribute to language and culture vitality in the Solomon Islands. As part of that effort, Thursday afternoon was dedicated to the “Solomon Islands Consortium for Language Development,” a gathering of community members and leaders in government, education, and non-governmental organizations who are interested in supporting language development in the country. Papers in this volume The nine papers in this volume are representative of the forty papers presented at the conference. In addition to general papers on Oceanic languages, the conference invited papers for two special sessions—one on ethnobotany and another on ethnoarts. These two foci were in conjunction with the plenary lectures on Monday and Friday. Will McClatchey’s opening plenary lecture was, “Finding Reciprocal Value in Language for Botanists and Linguists.” It was immediately followed by an ethnobotany workshop co-led by him and Myknee Q. Sirikolo, Jr., Director of the Solomon Islands Herbarium and Botanical Gardens. The closing plenary by Alexandre François was, “Words from Our Ancestors: The Art of Sung Poetry in Northern Vanuatu.” It built on momentum from the Sa'a community’s music and dance performances presented at the conference dinner the previous evening. Five papers relate to descriptive linguistics of languages in Oceania—two from Solomon Islands languages and three from Vanuatu languages. From the Solomon Islands, Brenda Boerger’s paper discusses the “Marked Use of Personal Directionals in Natügu [ntu] Narrative Texts,” claiming that Natügu personal directionals can be used in narrative discourse to shift from a narrator perspective to a main character perspective. This main character perspective occurs at the peak of the narrative. These findings demonstrate that accurate description of directionals in a language must examine their functions at the discourse level, not just in individual sentences. The second descriptive paper dealing with a Solomon Islands language is Paul Unger’s “Reduced Duplication in Doku [lgr]: Geminate Consonants and Stressed Vowel Syncope in Southeast Solomonic.” He identifies the element which native speakers call “heavy” sounds as being word-initial geminate consonants. These include consonants from the classes of voiced and voiceless stops, voiced and voiceless fricatives, and nasals. Doku geminates give the language a unique place in the Southeast Solomonic language family, in that—based on available descriptions—it is the only language with geminate consonants (word initial or otherwise). In the larger Oceanic context it appears to be the only language in which there is stressed vowel syncope in disyllabic roots that results in single syllable, monomoraic forms. This is counter to Blust’s 2007 argument for restorative disyllabism. The other three descriptive papers are about languages of Vanuatu. Ana Krajinović presents, “Comparative Study of Conditional Clauses in Nafsan [erk].” This corpus-based study demonstrates that while conditional clauses frequently require a subordinating conditional marker in the protasis, in Nafsan conditional clauses are structurally identical to two juxtaposed clauses. Thieberger (2006) identifies –f and =fla as conditional and possibility markers, respectively. She posits that the structures with –f and =fla are in fact juxtaposed clauses, not subordinated structures, and that the conditional reading is iii pragmatically conditioned rather than grammatically determined. Nafsan also makes use of a discourse marker wel ‘thus/like’ (Thieberger 2006) to mark the protasis of conditionals, and this strategy seems to be canonically specialized to express conditionals. The two Nafsan strategies are compared with those of other Oceanic languages. Manfred Krifka discusses, “Honorific and Affiliative Uses of Dual and Paucal Number in Daakie [ptv].” He presents various uses of dual and paucal number forms in Daakie, in particular, the use of dual nominals to address and refer to one’s relatives who stand in a taboo relationship to the speaker. This is compared to the few other languages for which this use of dual is reported. He also presents the use of the paucal forms as referring to a small group of persons or entities, but also to potentially larger groups that the speaker affiliates with. He argues that the honorific dual is motivated by similar considerations as the honorific plural, and that the affiliative paucal is motivated by similar considerations as the emotive use of diminutives. This makes researchers aware of underreported functions of number features and encourages increased description and analysis of them. The third descriptive paper about a language of Vanuatu is by Tsutomo (Tom) Sato, entitled, “The Durational Ratios of Short and Long Segments in Mele [mxe] and their Linguistic Functions.” His paper clarifies the durational ratios (DR) of short and long segments in Mele (Imere), a Polynesian Outlier. Not only short and long vowels, but also short and long consonants function to show grammatical distinctions, as well as semantic contrasts. The DR of short to long vowels in Mele is identified as 1.125, which is second lowest when compared with those of six non-Polynesian languages. Comparisons are also made with other Polynesian languages based on fieldwork on Tuvaluan and Hawaiian, including distinctions for singular and plural, plus active and passive. Sato suggests that long and short contrast may be phasing out in Mele, or that pitch intensity may also play a role in differentiating long and short segments. We turn now to the two papers in this collection having an ethnoarts focus—one related to music and poetry and the other related to an indigenous craft. Stephanie Geneix-Rabault and Suzie Bearune engage us with, “Eralo! Sing! The Example of Waueng in Nengone [nen].” (Mare Island, New Caledonia).” Toward an ethnomusico–linguistic approach, the paper’s focus is an analysis of the waueng, a genre of oral literature in Nengone, one of the Kanak languages spoken by Mare and Tiga people of New Caledonia. The waueng is a vocal song performed by young men, and its themes are generally love verse. This oral genre has not been well documented in the literature (Ammann, 1997(a) and (b); and Aufray, 2000), in comparison to other traditional knowledge, such as lullabies, histories, declamations, songs, instrumental music, or dances. Thus, their work is a contribution to the knowledge of an oral genre that is not much described or known. The paper gives the readers context by presenting Nengone and its oral literature, then describes the waueng genre in detail, including its linguistic and musical characteristics, nature, and function. Finally, the musico-linguistic analysis of some of waueng’s songs reveal how these performances transgress linguistic and musical norms, as well as sometimes subverting social boundaries and hierarchical systems. The second ethnoarts

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