Lau of North Malaita, Solomon Islands: a language description

Abstract

Lau is an Austronesian Oceanic language, a member of the Northern Malaita branch of the South-East Solomonic subgroup. From Sio Bay at the very north-eastern tip of the island of Malaita down to Ngalia reef, the Lau language is spoken along the coast and on the artificial islands by around 17,000 people. Lau is an AVO/VS language that possesses head-marking characteristics. After an introduction to the language, its people, its contact with neighbouring languages in Chapter 1, a presentation of the phonology follows in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 begins the discussion of the morphosyntax of the language with the structure of the verb phrase. Chapters 4 and 5 look at the noun phrase and prepositional phrases. Chapter 6 is concerned with possessive and associative constructions. The most significant distinction between Lau and other Oceanic languages is the marking of the so-called ‘indirect possessive’. Lau does not exhibit the usual suffixing pronominal forms to an adjacent possessive constituent; rather the relation between possessum and possessor is expressed by a free independent pronominal form or a lexical noun phrase. Chapter 7 focuses on the expressions of tense, aspect, and modality in the language. Chapters 8 and 9 are concerned with clause structure. Chapter 8 details nonverbal clauses, negation, interrogatives, self-contained situations, and topic and focus, as well as temporal and locational clauses. Chapter 9 goes on to describe subordinate and coordinate clauses. Along with the language affiliation of the Austronesian family as appendixes, a sample text is included.