Barbour, Julie ReneeWilliams, Claudia2021-07-212019Williams, C. (2019). Lamap: A grammar of the simple verbal clause (Thesis, Master of Arts (Applied) (MA(Applied))). The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/14472https://hdl.handle.net/10289/14472This thesis presents an analysis of the simple verbal clause in Lamap, a language in the Southeast of Malakula Island in Vanuatu. Almost forty years on from Charpentier’s (1979) account of the language written in French, this study takes the first steps towards a modern linguistic analysis of the language. This current analysis is based on natural speech and framed in descriptive and typological linguistics. The thesis presents Lamap’s synchronic phonological system before addressing nominals and the noun phrase in the language. Three noun classes could be identified. A basic noun phrase structure is illustrated following the description of nominal modification. The verb complex and simple verbal clause are described in chapters five and six. One of the major findings of my studies is the identification of two bound subject index paradigms in Lamap as opposed to Charpentier’s (1979) reported single paradigm of ‘preverbal pronouns’. Further, a transitive morpheme and a set of singular object pro-indexes were also identified with the new Lamap Corpus. A further point of interest are negative and prohibitive construction strategies whereby one of two negators can be situated at the beginning of the verb complex, and where clear patterns occur in the selection of subject index paradigms. The order of constituents and nominal agreement morphology on the verb identify the language as having the nominative accusative morphosyntactic alignment, with basic SV/AVO word order, subject prefixes and object suffixes. Additionally the language is predominantly head-modifier in the simple verbal clause.enAll items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.VanuatuLamapPort SandwichGrammarSimple ClauseThesis2019-05-30