OLAC Record oai:soas.ac.uk:MPI1240385

Metadata
Title:		PhD_Thesis
		Documentation of Blablanga
Contributor:		Radu Voica
Coverage:		Solomon Islands
Date:		2017-01-01
Description:		This thesis explores the structure of Blanga (iso 639-3 code blp), a previously undescribed and undocumented Austronesian language of the Solomon Islands. It opens with a sociolinguistic and ethnographic introduction to the language, their speakers and the linguistic ecology of the region, followed by a presentation of the main phonological features and an analysis of some major phonological processes, including strategies for hiatus avoidance, which constitute the base of several surface phenomena, and stress assignment, the theoretical importance of which is also revealed by surface processes. A detailed description of major morphological and morphosyntactic aspects is then made available, which continues with a discussion of Aktionsart, types of predicates and their subcategorisation frames, in an attempt to define thematic roles and identify macroroles, according to the RRG principles of lexical decomposition. Sentence-level coordination and subordination are subsequently looked at. The final chapters focus on the relations established between a predicate and its (direct) arguments and their implications for the general theory. Blanga does not use formal means of encoding semantic roles but the speakers are able to identify them based on their intuitions of verb semantics, on pragmatic and cultural knowledge, and on discourse context. There is also considerable variation in the language with respect to the order of constituents in a clause, which, in conjunction with morphosyntactic markers and prosody is used to encode topic and focus. Blanga, therefore, employs completely different means of encoding the two primary sets of predicate-argument relations. Because of the lack of a voice distinction and of other constructions in the language, evidence for the necessity of employing a third set, that of grammatical relations, is limited to verb agreement, Equi-NP coreference, coreference in chained clauses and, partially, causativisation, which comes to confirm their construction-specific character.
		At that time, Radu was a PhD candidate
Format:		application/pdf
Identifier:		oai:soas.ac.uk:MPI1240385
		IGS0048
Identifier (URI):		https://lat1.lis.soas.ac.uk/ds/asv?openpath=MPI1240385%23
Subject:		PhD Thesis
		Blablanga language
		Blanga, N. Blanga (Loghahaza Blanga)
		English language
		Pijin language
		Solomons Pijin
Subject (ISO639):		blp
		eng
		pis
OLAC Info
Archive:		Endangered Languages Archive
Description:		http://www.language-archives.org/archive/soas.ac.uk
GetRecord:		OAI-PMH request for OLAC format
GetRecord:		Pre-generated XML file
OAI Info
OaiIdentifier:		oai:soas.ac.uk:MPI1240385
DateStamp:		2018-11-07
GetRecord:		OAI-PMH request for simple DC format
Search Info
Citation:		Radu Voica. 2017-01-01. Endangered Languages Archive.
Terms:		area_Europe area_Pacific country_GB country_SB iso639_blp iso639_eng iso639_pis
Inferred Metadata
Country:		United KingdomSolomon Islands
Area:		EuropePacific