Abstract
Gender is not a typical feature of Austronesian languages. In the insular region of Indonesia directly west of New Guinea, however, a semantic gender distinction of neuter versus nonneuter is commonplace. In this paper, I argue that this gender distinction is an areal feature that has been independently innovated several times in the Austronesian languages of the region. I further contend that this feature is likely to have developed under influence from Papuan languages possessing similar systems.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 407-435 |
Number of pages | 29 |
Journal | Oceanic Linguistics |
Volume | 49 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2010 |