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2007
- handle: 10670/1.wbqb7m
- halshs: halshs-00135828
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
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Article nominal Torres Banks langues océaniennesSujets proches
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Alexandre François, « Noun articles in Torres and Banks languages : Conservation and innovation », HAL-SHS : linguistique, ID : 10670/1.wbqb7m
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Unlike most Vanuatu languages further south, the seventeen languages spoken in the Torres and Banks is still productively make use of noun phrase articles. This paper describes the morphology, syntax and semantics of these article systems. While these languages have preserved the contrast between "common" and "personal" phrases - often preserving the POc markers *na and *i/*e - they also have undergone several change patterns. Some articles, while remaining syntactically free, have become prefixes; in a few cases, total accretion to the noun root eventually took place. Also noteworthy is the creation of a new common article *wo: in five languages, *na has been restricted to inalienable non-human nouns with a human specific possessor - which makes it typologically quite an unusual article.