Yélî Dnye
The language Yélî Dnye is spoken by 3,750 people on Rossel , an island belonging to the Louisiade archipelago (census by the Rossel Health Center 1998, quoted from Ethnologue 2005). Alternative names are Yele (mostly used in literature), Yeleyong , Yela , Yeletnye , Yelidnye or Rossel .
Genetic situation
Since Yele is not Austronesian , it is known as the Papuan language . Whether Yele belongs to the East Papua languages (for example in Ethnologue and Ruhlen 1991) or is an isolated language has not yet been conclusively clarified.
Phonology
Yélî Dnye is known for some unusual phonological properties . With 90 phonemes, the language has the largest phoneme inventory in the Pacific region. Many consonantic phonemes have double articulation .
Morphosyntax
The language is also known for its high morphosyntactic complexity: The language is polypersonal and marks the verb not only grammatical properties of the subject , but also of the object . The language is extremely fusional and encodes this information together with numerous other morphosyntactic information ( tense , aspect , mode, etc.) in a morpheme . The verbal and nominal paradigms are also highly suppletive .
literature
- Henderson, James (1995): Phonology and grammar of Yele, Papua New Guinea. Pacific Linguistics B-112. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- Levinson, Stephen (2006): "Evolution of culture in a microcosm." In S. Levinson & P. Jaison (eds.), Evolution and Culture , 1-41. Cambridge, Ma .: MIT Press. An essay on cultural evolution and the relationship to language, with examples from Yélî Dnye.
- Ruhlen, Merritt (1991): A Guide to the World's Languages. Volume 1: Classification. Edward Arnold, London-Melbourne-Auckland 1991.
Individual evidence
- ↑ See for all information Levinson (2006: 20).