Grammar of Kove: an Austronesian language of the West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of Kove, an Austronesian language spoken in the West New Britain Province of Papua New Guinea. Kove is primarily spoken in 18 villages, including some on the small islands north of New Britain. There are about 9,000 people living in the area, but many are not fluent speakers of Kove. The dissertation presents an analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Kove. The analysis is based on elicitation and texts in a corpus, which were collected during six field trips between 2001 to 2011. The grammar takes a functional approach, and illustrates how each component works with other elements and what kind of functions each component has. Kove grammar includes many typologically interesting aspects; in particular, the articles, possessive constructions, system of possessive nominalization, mechanisms for valency change, plural markers, and serial verb constructions involve grammatical elements of special interest. Given that very little documentation of Kove and related languages currently exists, the data and analysis in this dissertation will benefit both academic scholars and the Kove community.