Oceanic Linguistics, vol. 50, no. 2 (2011) | UH Press Journals Log
Second, lexical and grammatical borrowing are considered in turn, in an attempt to identify which elements in each of the four Papuan languages may have an origin in Oceanic languages—and indeed which elements in Oceanic languages may have their... The Papuan-Oceanic world has long been considered a hotbed of contact-induced linguistic change, and there have been a number of studies of deep linguistic influence between Papuan and Oceanic languages (like those by Thurston and Ross). This paper assesses the degree and type of contact-induced language change in the Solomon Islands, between the four Papuan languages—Bilua (spoken on Vella Lavella, Western Province), Touo (spoken on southern Rendova, Western Province), Savosavo... The Northwest Solomonic Austronesian languages of Bougainville and the western Solomon Islands display numerous linguistic characteristics that are atypical of other Austronesian languages of the Oceanic subgroup. However, while contact-induced change resulting from social contact between speakers of Austronesian and Papuan languages has been shown to play a significant role in the history of a number of languages and groups of languages in Melanesia, there... Finally, an assessment is made of the degrees of stability versus change in the Papuan and Oceanic languages of the Solomon Islands. This paper outlines the challenges of describing the relationship between morphology and valency-changing devices, and the role that valency-changing devices have in determining the primary valency of a verb in the language. The term “metaphorical euphemism” is proposed to represent both linguistic and cognitive relations of euphemism and metaphor. Longgu (Southeast Solomonic) provides an example of the complexity of transitivity in Oceanic languages. These innovative features have been assumed to reflect linguistic contact with the Papuan languages of the region. A cross-linguistic comparison of the three Formosan languages with English and Mandarin Chinese is provided and discussed from the perspectives of cognition and culture. First, a claim is made for a degree of cultural homogeneity for Papuan and Oceanic-speaking populations within the Solomons. This paper investigates metaphorical euphemisms underlying the categories of RELATIONSHIP and DEATH in three Formosan languages: Kavalan, Paiwan, and Seediq, within the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s Cognitive Metaphor Theory. We argue that these innovative structures arose through Mono-Uruavan speakers’ social contact with speakers of neighboring Papuan languages of the South Bougainville family (Nasioi, Nagovisi, Buin, Motuna). A metaphorical euphemism refers to a euphemism that adopts metaphorical mapping of both source and target domains to express the notion of a forbidden domain as a result of conscious choices from pragmatic competence....