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Typological profile of the Great Andamanese family

  • Bernard Comrie EMAIL logo and Raoul Zamponi
Published/Copyright: February 28, 2017

Abstract

Great Andamanese constitutes alongside Ongan one of the two indigenous language families of the Andaman Islands. The phonological typology of the Great Andamanese languages includes a number of features of areal interest, including retroflex consonants (characteristic of South Asia) and lack of phonemic fricatives (reconstructed for Proto-Dravidian). Its morphosyntactic typology has some unremarkable features from a global typological perspective, such as verb-final clause order combined with postpositions and possessor-before-possessed but with postnominal attributive adjectives, alongside highly unusual features such as: somatic prefixes; several series of personal pronouns whose choice depends not only on grammatical relation/semantic role but also, for instance, on clause type; negation of a verbal clause by expressing it as the non-finite subject of a negative copular clause; and root ellipsis.

Grammatical abbreviations in morphological glosses

1, 2, 3

1st, 2nd, 3rd person

A

transitive subject

abs

absolutive

all

allative

appr

apprehensive

att.getter

attention-getter

ben

benefactive

caus

causative

coll

collective

cop

(affirmative) copula

CS

copula subject

dat

dative

def

definite (article)

dem

demonstrative

dist

distal

E

extension to core

emph

emphatic

foc

focus

hon

honorific

imm.pst

immediate past

imp

imperative

impfv

imperfective

iness

inessive

intdub

interrogative-dubitative

interj

interjection

loc

locative

neg

negative

neg.cop

negative copula

nmlz

nominalizer

npst

non-past

O

object

pl, pl.

plural

plup

pluperfect

poss

possessive

pret

preterite

prev

preverb

prog

progressive

prox

proximal

purp

purposive

refl

reflexive

rel

relative

S

intransitive subject

sg, sg.

singular

sp

somatic prefix

stat

stative

wh

constituent question

y/n

polarity question

zroot

zero (or omitted) root

In addition, we use the standard phonological abbreviations C (consonant) and V (vowel), and sp. for species.

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Published Online: 2017-02-28
Published in Print: 2018-10-25

©2017 by De Gruyter Mouton

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