Maisin: A grammatical description of an oceanic language in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Maisin: a grammatical description of an Oceanic language in PNG is a descriptive study of the Maisin language, spoken in Collingwood Bay, on the north coast of Oro Province, Papua New Guinea, with particular treatment of those features that distinguish the language from other Austronesian languages within the Papuan Tip cluster. Some of the distinctive features of Maisin described here include its topic and focus marking system; its use of postpositional phrases (showing proto-Austronesian forms, but following Papuan categories); chaining of co-ordinate dependent clauses preceding an independent clause; marking of tense, mood and aspect by suffixes rather than by prefixes; the existence of a closed set of intransitive verbs which mark subject person and number by suffixation only; and a typically Papuan style marking of medial and final verbs. After providing an overview of the phonology and syntactic structure of the language, the thesis concludes by giving particular attention to the topic and focus marking system, and some tentative suggestions regarding the interaction of these markers within the information structure system of the language.