A Grammar of Teiwa

Marian Klamer
de Gruyter
9783110226065
3-11-022606-5

Teiwa is a non-Austronesian ('Papuan') language spoken on the island of Pantar, in eastern Indonesia. It has approximately 4,000 speakers and is highly endangered. The genetic relationship between the Alor-Pantar languages and other Papuan languages remains controversial. Located some 1,000 km from their putative Papuan neighbors on the New Guinea mainland, they are the most distant westerly Papuan outliers. This volume presents a grammatical description of one of these 'outlier' languages. The grammar is based on primary field data, collected by the author in 2003-2007. A selection of glossed and translated Teiwa texts of various genres and word lists (Teiwa-English / English-Teiwa) are included.