Overview

This is the first full grammar of a Western Papuan outlier language. Tidore is spoken in the North Moluccas of Indonesia and it is classified as belonging to the North Halmahera language. This is, however, an area in which Austronesian and Papuan languages have been in contact for at least 2,000 years and Tidore clearly shows many characteristics of Austronesian languages. This grammar gives insights into how Papuan and Austronesian features may blend into one language. It poses questions to the (im)possibility of genetic classification and the existence of 'mixed languages'. The grammar addresses a number of issues in relation to bilingualism and language contact that are only rarely discussed in descriptive grammars. It shows that in a descriptive grammar, bilingualism cannot be presented merely as an aspect of the couleur locale. Instead, bilingualism poses very serious questions on what the nature of the indigenous language to be described is. Tidore is furthermore interesting in its rather unique use of person cross-referencing both in clauses and in possessive constructions and it has an elaborate system of spatial deixis that includes reference to sea, land and the palace of the sultan, for which it has a set of directional verbs, locational predicates, and demonstrative enclitics. In conjunction with word order and prepositional phrases, these express source, direction, location and destination in quite intricate ways.

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9783110218565

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Miriam van Staden, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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