← Back to research

Topological Relations in Pohnpeian

Pohnpei
Federated States of Micronesia
topological relations
Pohnpeian language
evolutionary classification trees

Rentz, B. (2017). Topological Relations in Pohnpeian. Linguistics Vanguard, 3(1), 20160092. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0092

Author
Affiliation

Bradley Rentz

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Published

August 2017

Abstract

This article explores a more nuanced understanding of topological relations in the Pohnpeian language (Austronesian). The BowPed Toolkit (Bowerman and Pederson 1992. Topological relations picture series. In Space stimuli kit 1.2: November 1992, 51, Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. http://fieldmanuals. mpi.nl/volumes/1992/bowped/.) is employed as an elicitation tool with five Pohnpeian speakers. Evolutionary classification tree modeling is used as a discovery tool to find patterns in the data. The results show that the two prepositions in Pohnpeian, nan and ni, should be redefined in terms of topological relations as ‘containment’ and ‘attachment’ respectively. Likewise the meaning of some prepositional nouns are further revised.

Important figures

Figure 16. Overlapping uses of nan, ni, pohn, and pahn.

Citation

 Add to Zotero 

@article{Rentz-2017,
    title = {Topological Relations in {Pohnpeian}},
    author = {Bradley Rentz},
    journal = {Linguistics Vanguard},
    volume = {3},
    issue = {1},
    pages = {20160092},
    doi = {10.1515/lingvan-2016-0092},
    year = {2017}
  }