Claire Moyse-Faurie

Topics in Oceanic morphosyntax

The Oceanic languages, a subgroup within the Austronesian language family, comprise at least 450 languages in the geographical area encompassing Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The articles in this book deal with morphosyntactic properties related to sentence types and nominal expressions in under-explored and endangered Oceanic languages. These properties may vary within the family, they give rise to new empirical generalizations, and they illustrate properties that are relevant for theoretical developments in modern linguistic theory.

Noun-phrase conjunction in Austronesian languages: additive, inclusory and comitative strategies

This is an investigation of various types of NP conjunctive strategies in Austronesian languages, additive, inclusory and comitative strategies. The focus is on asymmetrical conjunction involved in the inclusory and comitative types; the aim is to delineate the syntactic constraints and semantic parameters on the use of these conjunctive constructions, as well as their pragmatic effects, including an analysis of the etymology of some of these conjunctive morphemes (comitative marker, noun ‘fellow’, verb ‘accompany, be with’).