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Lexical flexibility in Oceanic languages
Edited by Eva van Lier
[Studies in Language 41:2] 2017
► pp. 294–357

The economy of word classes in Hiw, Vanuatu

Grammatically flexible, lexically rigid

| CNRS – LACITO, Paris | A.N.U., Canberra

The issue of lexical flexibility is best tackled as the articulation of two separate mappings: one that assigns lexical items to word classes; another one that associates these word classes with the syntactic functions they can access. A language may endow its lexemes with more or less multicategoriality, and its word classes with more or less multifunctionality: these are two distinct facets of lexical flexibility, which should be assessed separately. Focusing on Hiw, an Oceanic language of northern Vanuatu, I show that lexical flexibility is there mostly due to the high multifunctionality of its word classes, each of which can regularly access a broad array of syntactic functions. Conversely, Hiw ranks relatively low on the scale of multicategoriality: most of its lexemes are assigned just one word class. This is how a language can be grammatically flexible, yet lexically rigid.

Article outline
  • 1.On lexical flexibility
  • 2.Walk on two legs: Lexical mapping, grammatical mapping
    • 2.1From lexemes to word classes, from word classes to functions
    • 2.2Lexical vs. grammatical flexibility
    • 2.3Multicategoriality vs. multifunctionality
    • 2.4Assessing lexical flexibility in Hiw
    • 2.5This study
  • 3.The main syntactic functions of Hiw
    • 3.1The clause in Hiw
    • 3.2Head of a predicate phrase
    • 3.3Modifier in a predicate phrase
      • 3.3.1Internal syntax of the predicate phrase
      • 3.3.2Contrasting adverbs and adjuncts
    • 3.4Head of an argument phrase
    • 3.5Modifier in an argument phrase
    • 3.6Adjuncts
  • 4.Defining the word classes of Hiw
    • 4.1Grammatical flexibility in Hiw
    • 4.2Verbs
      • 4.2.1Head of a predicate phrase
      • 4.2.2Modifier in a predicate phrase
      • 4.2.3Other functions
    • 4.3Adjectives
    • 4.4Numerals
    • 4.5Adverbs
    • 4.6Adjuncts
    • 4.7Nouns
      • 4.7.1Strong nouns vs weak nouns
      • 4.7.2Syntactic analysis
      • 4.7.3Semantic definition of the two classes
      • 4.7.4Gender classifiers
      • 4.7.5Modifiers in an argument phrase
        • 4.7.5.1Weak nouns
        • 4.7.5.2Strong nouns
      • 4.7.6Head of direct predicate
      • 4.7.7Head of a tam predicate
        • 4.7.7.1Strong nouns
        • 4.7.7.2Weak nouns
      • 4.7.8Summary: nouns
  • 5.Multicategoriality in Hiw
    • 5.1Noun–Verb hybrids
      • 5.1.1Presentation of noun–verb hybrids
      • 5.1.2Hybrid lexemes vs. nominalising derivation
      • 5.1.3The limits of lexical flexibility
    • 5.2Noun–locative hybrids
  • 6.Cross-linguistic prospects
    • 6.1Analysing each language on its own grounds
    • 6.2A unified method for assessing lexical flexibility
      • 6.2.1Selecting relevant syntactic functions
      • 6.2.2Identifying word classes
      • 6.2.3Multifunctionality: From word classes to functions
      • 6.2.4Multicategoriality: from lexemes to word classes
    • 6.3Language comparison and quantification
      • 6.3.1A metric for multifunctionality
      • 6.3.2A metric for grammatical flexibility
      • 6.3.3A note on Tahitian
      • 6.3.4A metric for multicategoriality
  • 7.Conclusion: Lexically rigid, grammatically flexible
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • Hiw orthography
  • References
Published online: 5 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.41.2.03fra
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