Palauan

University of Hawaii Press. 384 pages. Includes illustrations and maps. Almost one-quarter of the world's languages are (or were) spoken in the Pacific, making it linguistically the most complex region in the world. Although numerous technical books on groups of Pacific or Australian languages have been published, and descriptions of individual languages are available, until now there has been no single book that attempts a wide regional coverage for a general audience. Pacific Languages introduces readers to the grammatical features of Oceanic, Papuan, and Australian languages as well as to the semantic structures of these languages. For readers without a formal linguistic background, a brief introduction to descriptive linguistics is provided. In addition to describing the structure of Pacific languages, this volume places them in their historical and geographical context, discusses the linguistic evidence for the settlement of the Pacific, and speculates on the reason for the region's many languages. It devotes considerable attention to the effects of contact between speakers of different languages and to the development of Pidgin and Creole languages in the Pacific. Throughout, technical language is kept to a minimum without oversimplifying the concepts or the issues involved. A glossary of technical terms, maps, and diagrams help identify a language geographically or genetically; reading lists and a language index guide the researcher interested in a particular language or group to other sources of information. Here at last is a clear and straightforward overview of Pacific languages for linguists and anyone interested in the history of sociology of the Pacific.

University of Hawaii Press. 552 pages. Hardcover. This is an extremely thorough dictionary. Over 14,000 entries, plus grammatical notes and verb conjugations. This revision is designed to be an easily accessible reference for identifying vocabulary items of Palauan, which are often culture-bound, semantically rich, and structurally quite complex. Thousands of Palauan entries are new or greatly expanded. Users will benefit from a much wider range of vocabulary, especially in the areas of flora and fauna, Palauan legend, and borrowed words from both English and Japanese. The expanded English-Palauan finder list allows for quick reference to the Palauan equivalents of many English words.