Palauan language

, and Harvard citation|Georgopoulos|1991 for arguments in favor of treating Palauan as VOS. cf. Harvard citation|Wilson|1972 and Harvard citation|Josephs|1975, which assume an SVO order for Palauan.] Those who accept the VOS analysis of Palauan word order generally treat Palauan as a pro-drop language with preverbal subject agreement morphemes, final pronominal subjects are deleted (or null).

Example 1: Ak milenga er a ringngo "pro". (means: "I ate the apple.")

In the preceding example, the null pronoun "pro" is the subject "I," while the clause-initial "ak" is the first person singular subject agreement morpheme.

On the other hand, those who have analyzed Palauan as SVO necessarily reject the pro-drop analysis, instead analyzing the subject agreement morphemes as subject pronouns. In the preceding example, SVO-advocates assume that there is no "pro" and that the morpheme "ak" is simply an overt subject pronoun meaning "I." One potential problem with this analysis is that it fails to explain why overt (3rd person) subjects occur clause-finally in the presence of a co-referring 3rd person "subject pronoun" --- treating the subject pronouns as agreement morphemes circumvents this weakness. Consider the following example.

Example 2: Ng milenga er a ringngo a Olilai. (means: "Olilai ate the apple.")

Proponents of the SVO analysis must assume a shifting of the subject "a Alan" "Alan" from clause-initial to clause-final position, a movement operation that has not received acceptance cross-linguistically, but see Harvard citation|Josephs|1975 for discussion.

Palauan phrases

Some common and useful words and phrases in Palauan are listed below, with their English translations. [See Harvard citation|Josephs|1990 for a more comprehensive list of words and phrases.]

Notes

References

* Harvard reference
last = Flora
first = Jo-Ann
year = 1974
title = Palauan Phonology and Morphology
publisher = PhD Dissertation: University of California, San Diego.
* Harvard reference
last = Georgopoulos
first = Carol
year = 1986
contribution = Palauan as a VOS Language
editor = Paul Geraghty, Lois Carrington, and Stephen A. Wurm (eds.)
title = FOCAL I: Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics
publisher = Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, C-93
pages = 187-198.
* Harvard reference
last = Georgopoulos
first = Carol
year = 1991
title = Syntactic Variables: Resumptive Pronouns and A' Binding in Palauan
publisher = Dordrecht: Kluwer.
* Harvard reference
last = Josephs
first = Lewis
year = 1975
title = Palauan Reference Grammar
publisher = Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
* Harvard reference
last = Josephs
first = Lewis
year = 1990
title = New Palauan-English Dictionary
publisher = Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
* Harvard reference
last = Josephs
first = Lewis
year = 1997
title = Handbook of Palauan Grammar (Vol. 1)
publisher = Koror: Palau Ministry of Education.
* Harvard reference
last = Josephs
first = Lewis
year = 1999
title = Handbook of Palauan Grammar (Vol. 2)
publisher = Koror: Palau Ministry of Education.
* Harvard reference
last = Waters
first = Richard C.
year = 1980
title = Topicalization and Passive in Palauan
publisher = Ms., MIT
url=http://frodo.ucsc.edu/~jnuger/waters_richard_1980.pdf .
* Harvard reference
last = Wilson
first = Helen
title = The Phonology and Syntax of Palauan Verb Affixes
journal = University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics
volume = 4
issue = 5
year = 1972 .
* Harvard reference
last = Zuraw
first = Kie
year = 2003
contribution = Vowel Reduction in Palauan Reduplicants
editor = Andrea Rackowski and Norvin Richards (eds.)
title = Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association
publisher = Cambridge: MITWPL #44
pages = 385-398.

External links

* cite web
title = Ethnologue report for language code:pau
work = Ethnologue: Languages of the World
url = http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=pau
accessdaymonth = 05 September
accessyear = 2005
* cite web
title = A Palauan Linguistic Bibliography
url = http://people.ucsc.edu/~jnuger/palauan_bib.html
accessdaymonth = 09 February
accessyear = 2008
* cite web
title = Airai, Palau: Language
url = http://www.pacificworlds.com/palau/onwards/lang8.cfm
accessdaymonth = 12 October
accessyear = 2007
* cite web
title = République de Belau
url = http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/pacifique/belau.htm
language = French
accessdaymonth = 20 June
accessyear = 2007
* cite web
title = PREL - Pacific Area Language Materials: Palauan
url = http://www.prel.org/PALM/Palauan/index.asp
accessdaymonth = 09 February
accessyear = 2008
* cite web
title = Japanese and Other Loanwords in Palauan
url = http://faroutliers.wordpress.com/2007/07/28/japanese-and-other-loanwords-in-palauan/
accessdaymonth = 03 February
accessyear = 2008