EAN: 9783111357546

A SKETCH GRAMMAR OF KOPAR - WILLIAM A FOLEY KAR...

Kopar is a very moribund  close to extinct  language spoken in three villages at the mouth of
the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. This is the only description of the language available. It
also discusses areas where rapid language shift is affecting the structure of Kopar. Although
the period of fieldwork was necessarily short  this book provides as comprehensive a
description as possible of the grammatical structure of this complex and fascinating language.
It is quite thorough and detailed and goes well beyond what is normally considered a sketch
grammar. It covers all the phenomena essential to description and comparison and gives clear 
typologically sound definitions and explanations. The grammar is written with the research
interests of language typologists and comparative grammarians foremost in mind. Typologically 
Kopar can be described as a split ergative  polysynthetic language. The language lacks nominal
case marking so ergativity or lack thereof is signaled by verbal agreement affixes. Tenses and
moods which describe as yet unrealized events  like future and imperative  pattern accusatively
for agreement affixes  while those express realized events  like past and present  pattern
ergatively. In addition  the ergative case schema is overlaid by a direct-inverse inflectional
schema determined by a person hierarchy  a feature Kopar shares with other languages in its
Lower Sepik family. As a polysynthetic language  incorporation of sentential elements like
temporals  locationals  adverbials and verbals is extensive  though noun incorporation is not.
Sadly  this work is all the documentation we will likely ever have of Kopar  a language of
potentially very high theoretical interest  given its rare typological profile. It will
certainly be of interest to language typologists and comparative grammarians  and anyone who
wants to explore the range of language variation

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