A grammar of Wooi: An Austronesian language of Yapen Island, Western New Guinea
Creators: name: Sawaki, Yusuf Willem
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2016
Subjects: Wooi grammar
Descriptive
Austronesian
Yapen Island
Western New Guinea
Papua

description: This thesis is a description of Wooi, an Austronesian language of the South Halmahera-West New Guinea group, spoken on Yapen Island, Western New Guinea. The language is spoken by approximately 3,000 people in three main villages: Wooi, Woinap and Yenuari, and others scattered around cities in West Papua. The areas of grammar covered in this thesis are phonology (chapter 2), word classes (chapter 3), noun phrases (chapter 4), possession and possessive constructions (chapter 5), verbal morphology (chapter 6), the clause (chapter 7), grammatical relations (chapter 8), valence, valency changing derivations, and related constructions (chapter 9), serial verb constructions (chapter 10), complex clauses (chapter 11), topic and focus constructions (chapter 12), and deictics and spatial orientation (chapter 13). Wooi has five basic vowels, thirteen diphthongs and sixteen consonants. Consonant clusters are restricted and occur across syllables. Stress is not phonemic. Morpho-phonological processes include metathesis, vowel deletion, palatalization, vowel merger, vowel retention, fortition, lenition, nasal assimilation and consonant insertion. The language is a left-headed language in which most of the modifiers are post-nominal and the head noun is to the right of the NPs, except the possessive modifier. The basic clause structure is SVO-OBL, in which the order is fixed. Insertion is not allowed within the basic clause structure. Object alternation is not allowed. Peripheral elements such as locative and temporal adjuncts occur outside the basic clause structure, following the oblique argument. The morphology of the verb is simple, consisting of the obligatory prefixed-subject marker and the applicative marker. The object clitic is syntactically determined. Morphological realization of the subject marker varies depending on the phonological shapes of verb stems, vowel-initial or consonant-initial verb stems. The realization can be as a prefix or infix. The verb types include action verbs, derived verbs, and verbs with possessive morphology. Wooi is a nominative-accusative language. S/A are identical, as opposed to O/P. Oblique has its own marking. The grammatical relations are determined by linear word order, categorical expression, agreement marking and behavioural properties. Wooi distinguishes direct and indirect possessive constructions. In direct possessive constructions, the possessor attaches directly to the possessed noun. In indirect possessive constructions, the possessor attaches to the possessive marker, not directly to the possessed noun. There are also two other possessive types, namely, mixed type and N-N juxtaposition type, but these are more restricted. Serial verb constructions are distinguished based on their formal and semantic properties. SVCs in Wooi are considered as a monoclause consisting of two (or more) verbs in sequence. The two types of SVCs in Wooi are true SVCs and pseudo SVCs. They are mostly distinguished based on argument realisation and argument sharing. Topic and focus constructions are triggered by pragmatic requirements. Topic can be marked by NPs, pronouns and person marking/pronominal copy. Focus can be marked by NPs and focus markers, especially in contrastive focus. There are different markings for verbal focus and non-verbal focus. Deictics and spatial orientation are very complex in Wooi. There are three types of deictics in Wooi – deictic adverbs, demonstrative modifiers and demonstrative pronouns. They distinguish proximate, neutral, distal1 and distal2 orientation. The deictics have basic locative orientation but they can also be extended to temporal orientation. Spatial orientation consists of the topological types; which have stative locative verbs, the frame of reference types, which consist of intrinsic frame of reference, relative and absolute frame of references; and the motion types, which consist of motion verbs and directional prepositions