The Yimas Language of New Guinea Book

Within the island of New Guinea there are over 1,000 languages, with the vast majority either unrecorded or very poorly described. This book is a detailed descriptive grammar of the Yimas language the native tongue of two small villages numbering about 250 people in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea.

Typologically, the Yimas language is one of the most interesting in the world, and this grammar of Yimas is one of the fullest descriptions of any New Guinea language-indeed, it is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatments of the language of a traditional people anywhere.

This book is not written in any set theoretical framework. Its organization attempts to reflect the structure of the Yimas language as closely as possible, and therefore the description is eclectic, choosing various ideas from different theories when they seem best to elucidate the structure of the language. The phonology is largely cast in an autosegmental framework, though the morphology and syntax reflect a broad structuralist-fuctionalist perspective. However, the author does not rigidly adhere to these frameworks; he modifies them, where necessary to make the grammar accessible to the widest possible audience.