Coordination strategies and inclusory constructions in New Caledonian and other Oceanic languages

Isabelle Bril (1)

1 LACITO - Langues et civilisations à tradition orale

Oceanic languages, among which New Caledonian languages, are of some typological interest in that they tend to use various 'and' coordination markers for different categories of conjuncts (noun phrases, verb phrases or clauses), as well as for different subcategories of nouns (animate vs. inanimate), of verbs (stative vs. active) and of clauses (same subject vs. different subject clause coordination). Besides, each of these 'and' conjunctions have a predominant semantic feature (inclusory, comitative, additive) as well as specific syntactic properties.
The first part of this article is a detailed case-study of some of the coordinators in Nêlêmwa , to be followed by some comparative data from other New Caledonian languages (Ajië, Bwatoo, Cèmuhî, Nyelâyu, Tîrî) and other Oceanic languages of Papua New Guinea (Manam, Tolai), the Solomon Islands (Toqabaqita), Vanuatu (Mwotlap) and Fiji (Boumaa Fijian).

Mots clés: coordination; coordination inclusive; comitative; langues océaniennes

Domaines: Linguistique

Isabelle Bril. Coordination strategies and inclusory constructions in New Caledonian and other Oceanic languages. Martin Haspelmath. Coordinating constructions, 58, Benjamins, pp.499-533, 2004, Typological studies in Language. ⟨halshs-00006064⟩