In Word Hunters, eleven distinguished linguists reflect on their career-spanning linguistic fieldwork. Over decades, each has repeatedly stood up to physical, intellectual, interpersonal, intercultural, and sometimes political challenges in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. These… read more
Clause chains are sequences of clauses with under-specified verbal predicates, plus a single clause with a fully-specified verbal predicate. Clause chains represent the morpho-syntactic demarcation of a speech unit greater than a single clause, but the precise length of this unit is rarely… read more
Languages that lack grammatical gender often still index the sex of humans and higher animates through lexical means (Braun 2001). In the Papuan language Nungon, natural sex is indicated lexically, with gendered person and kin terms. Certain person terms may also function as nominal modifiers.… read more
Clause chaining in Papuan languages is a keystone of the literature on switch-reference (Haiman & Munro 1983, Stirling 1993). Canonically, a clause chain is considered to comprise one or more ‘medial’ clauses, followed by a single ‘final’ clause. In Nungon and other Papuan languages, canonical… read more
