A Grammar Sketch of Uripiv

Abstract

A Grammar Sketch of Uripiv presents a synchronic description of the grammar of Northeast Malakula/Uripiv. Uripiv is a language spoken by roughly 9,000 people, primarily on Uripiv Island in the Republic of Vanuatu. The data used for this project comprises 68 short stories, 15 audio recordings that were collected by the Malakula Languages Project and Dr Julie Barbour, and an Uripiv dictionary and unpublished grammar sketch created by missionary linguist Ross McKerras. This thesis presents a description of phonology, nouns and the noun phrase, verbs and the verb complex, verbal modifiers, clause structure, and complex clauses and predicates. The phonological system of Uripiv is complex and highly salient to any description of the language, with a number of key phonological processes discussed. This includes vowel harmony, dissimilation, and vowel deletion, which produce varying forms of verbal prefixes and verb roots. Also of particular interest are the nominal topics of relativisation and possession. The verbal modifiers section identifies unique sub-groups of post-verbal modifiers: postverbal modifiers attracted to the negator, fixed post-verbal modifiers, and postverbal modifiers not found in negative clauses. The basic word order of Uripiv is SVO, with both transitive and intransitive clauses following this ordering. A nominative accusative morphosyntactic alignment is encoded through constituent ordering and agreement morphology inflected on the verb. Finally, complex clauses are discussed, with a description of subordinate clauses, clausal conjunctions, and complex predicates such as serial verb constructions. Subordinate clauses are also of particular interest in Uripiv as they display several patterns of mood marking. Serialisation is used to encode complex actions.