Syllable pattern & stress

spoken by approximately 6,500 speakers in the Iliomar subdistrict, in

the south-east of the Republic of East Timor. While previous sources

considered it to be a dialect of the larger language Makasae, the present

study, which is based on primary data gathered by the author during

fieldwork in East Timor, notes sufficient grammatical differences from

the latter to warrant the treatment of Makalero as a separate language.

Together with four other languages of Timor, Makalero has been classified

as belonging to the Trans-New Guinea family, making it one of the

westernmost Papuan languages. While it retains scattered derivational

and inflectional processes, it is largely isolating in structure. Underlying

the organisation of discourse at a very basic level is the rigid structure

of the Makalero clause, which allows for the expression of two verbal

arguments at most. A characteristic feature of this clause structure is the

presence of two distinct, mutually exclusive argument positions within the

verb phrase, the first of which is reserved for undergoers, while the second

may express either undergoers, or location and manner information.

The description brought forward in this dissertation is not couched in a

particular theoretical framework, although insights from several linguistic

theories are adduced to support the analysis; it is thus accessible to scholars

from differing backgrounds. With its coverage of Makalero structure from the

phonology through word classes and morphology to basic syntax and some

issues on the discourse level, this book is of particular interest to scholars of

both Papuan and Austronesian languages as well as linguistic typology. The

appendices provide transcripts of several Makalero texts as well as a MakaleroEnglish and an English-Makalero word list