Classifiers in Kilivila - A description of their function and use

Senft, Gunter

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Classifiers in Kilivila - A description of their function and use

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Senft, Gunter
Language and Cognition Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Senft, G. (2016). Classifiers in Kilivila - A description of their function and use. Talk presented at Workshop of the Surrey Morphology Group on "Gender and classifiers: Diachronic and synchronic variation". University of Surrey, Guildford. 2016-01-28 - 2016-01-29.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0029-75E2-0

Abstract

In this seminar I examine the system of 88 classifiers that I documented being used by the inhabitants of Tauwema, my village of residence on Kaile’una Island during my field research in 1982/83 and 1989. After a brief outline of their main grammatical and discourse functions point out that on the basis of semantic analyses the 88 classifiers can be seen as operating dynamically within 20 semantic domains, with much potential for substitution of classifiers within and between domains. Then I show that the actual use of this classifier system can be described by variable rules. Finally I develop a network model to adequately describe the dynamics of this system (see Senft 1986; 1987; 1996).