Year: 1965
Type: book
Abstract: PREF ACEDuring three years of linguistic research in \Vestern N ew Guinea in the service of the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde (Royal Institute of Linguistics, Geography and Ethnology, The Hague) , the writer had as his main task the study and analysis of a hitherto undescribed langllage.\Vhen the choice feIl on the Nimboran language, it was not to be foreseen that this meant opening up a gold mine of linguistic data.Indeed, the investigations, though of ten slow and laborious, proved most rewarding.The amount of data was so overwhelming that ren10uiding them into a complete description required much time.Moreover, it was my wish to do more than just listing the facts.From the outset, I tried to undig the generative aspect of the linguistic structure.Therefore, the idea was not to compile a corpus of data which could be analysed later on, but to find out what role every element that was recorded could play in building new utterances.This meant that the description was to be made along new lines.It was only af ter years that I found the peace to complete this task.In the near future I hope to add a description of Nimboran syntax, some texts, and a vocabulary to the phonological and morphological parts, embodied in the present volume.I owe agreat debt of gratitude to the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde for both organizing the research and publishing the results, and to the former Government of N etherlands New Guinea and the Netherlands Organisation for the Advancement of Pure Research (Z.W.O.) for liberally subsidizing the project.I am also deeply in debt to Dr. J. van Baal, th en Governor of Netherlands New Guinea, whose sympathetic and interested attitude appeared most helpful, and to Mr. C. J. Grader and Dr. J. V. de Bruyn of the Bureau of Native Affairs (Kantoor voor Bevolkingszaken) who did very much in paving the way and taking charge of all sorts of practical arrangements.Much help was also given by the District-Officers, Dr. Vv'.J. H. Kouwenhoven and
Source: BRILL eBooks
Author: J.C. Anceaux
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W576968833