Buch, Englisch, Band 268, 60 Seiten
Buch, Englisch, Band 268, 60 Seiten
Reihe: Languages of the World, Materials
ISBN: 978-3-929075-94-6
Verlag: LINCOM
Urak Lawoi’ is a language of the Austronesian family woth close linguistic links with Malai. It is similar to the village level of the Malay language, without the refinements introduced in modern Bahasa Malaysia. Most of its vocabulary has cognates in Malay, but it has been influenced by the predominant Thai language of South Thailand. It is spoken by between 3000 and 4000 people who are strand-dwellers living on the islands from Phuket south to the Malaysian border. It has little in the way of inflectional morpholgy with most morphosyntactic categories expressed at the level of the phrase. Its pronoun system distinguishes singular and plural number and distinguishes between exclusive and inclusive first person.
This sketch of Urak Lawoi’ grammar vovers all levels of the language up to the discourse structure, and includes some sample texts showing the application of the syntactic structure. It includes a detailed analysis of the verb phrase and insights into the international patterns.