The Surrey section is part of a larger EuroBabel project, in which we collaborate with colleagues in Leiden, the Netherlands, who work on extended documentation, numerical systems, and spatial reference in the Alor-Pantar languages [http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucl/research/research-projects/alor-pantar-languages.html], and colleagues in Fairbanks, who work on the language prehistory and toponyms [http://www.uaf.edu/alor/projects/ip2/].

This project concentrates on two typologically interesting phenomena in the Alor-Pantar languages. First, the system of pronominal prefixes on verbs and nouns, which is striking for (i) the unusual marking of objects/patients instead of subjects/agents, (ii) their high sensitivity to multiple semantic and pragmatic factors, which make them diagnostic of the interactions between multiple linguistic levels, and (iii) their co-occurrence, with distinct functional allocation, on different word classes. These phenomena can shed light on the semantic underpinnings of grammatical features.

The second focus is on the variety of ‘functional’ verbs, that is, verb lexemes which cross multiple syntactic and morphological categories, and call for an analytical framework that maintains the categorical distinctions necessary for a coherent theory of language, while at the same time admitting the fluidity of the attested facts.

This project is funded by the Art and Humanities Research Council UK (grant AH/H500251/1 ALOR-PANTAR), within the EuroBabel project.

A list of outputs can be found here.

There will be a dissemination workshop on the Alor-Pantar languages at the British Academy in London on the 14th of  September 2012

Project members
Prof Greville Corbett, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Dr Dunstan Brown, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
Dr Matthew Baerman, Research Fellow
Dr Sebastian Fedden, Research Fellow