1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910141819603321

Autore

Ross Malcolm

Titolo

The lexicon of Proto-Oceanic . 2 The physical environment : the culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society / / Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley, and Meredith Osmond

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Canberra, Australia : , : ANU E Press, , 2007

©2007

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (417 pages) : illustrations, maps; digital file(s)

Collana

Pacific Linguistics ; ; 545

Disciplina

306.0995

Soggetti

Ethnology - Oceania

Human ecology - Oceania

Proto-Oceanic language - Lexicology, Historical

Ethnology

Manners and customs

Proto-Oceanic language

Oceania

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sommario/riassunto

This is the second in a series of five volumes on the lexicon of Proto Oceanic, the ancestor of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family. Each volume deals with a particular domain of culture and/or environment and consists of a collection of essays each of which presents and comments on lexical reconstructions of a particular semantic field within that domain. Volume 2 examines how Proto Oceanic speakers described their geophysical environment. An introductory chapter discusses linguistic and archaeological evidence that locates the Proto Oceanic language community in the Bismarck Archipelago in the late 2nd millennium BC. The next three chapters investigate terms used to denote inland, coastal, reef and open sea environments, and meteorological phenomena. A further chapter examines the lexicon for features of the heavens and navigational



techniques associated with the stars. How Proto Oceanic speakers talked about their environment is also described in three further chapters which treat property terms for describing inanimate objects, locational and directional terms, and terms related to the expression of time.