A Grammar of Nama - A Papuan Language of Southern New Guinea

Nama is a Papuan language spoken by around 1200 people in the Morehead district of southern New Guinea. It is a member of the Nambu subgroup of the Yam family of languages (also known as the Morehead-Upper Maro family). This grammar is the first published comprehensive description of a language in this subgroup. Nama has an interesting complex morphology with 21 nominal suffixes (17 case-marking) and 31 verbal prefixes and suffixes, indexing arguments (person/number) and indicating tense (current, recent, remote) and aspect (perfective/imperfective, inceptive, punctual, delimited, durative). Nama also has some linguistic features that are either very rare or not attested in other languages.

Product details

• Authors: Jeff Siegel
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2025
• EAN: 9783112215081
• ISBN: 978-3-11-221508-1
• No. of pages: 350
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 22 mm x 230 mm
• Weight: 549 g
• Illustrations: 3 b/w and 19 col. ill., 69 b/w tbl.
• Series: Pacific Linguistics [PL]
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Grammatik, Linguistics, Neuguinea, Grammar, new guinea, SCI000000 SCIENCE / General, LAN009060 LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Syntax, Papuan-Sprachen, Yam Family, Papuan, Yam Familie, Papua Sprachen