A grammar of Nese

This thesis is a grammatical description of the Nese language, which is spoken in North West Malekula and is a member of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The language has some characteristics which are typical of Oceanic langauges such as the indirect and direct split in its possessive system. Chapter 1 is an introduction to the thesis, containing information regarding the linguistic setting of Vanuatu and Malekula in general. It also considers previous work on the language. Chapter 2 is an outline of Nese’s phonological structure. This is followed by Chapter 3 which is a description of the different constituents which make up the open and closed word classes in Nese. Chapter 4 analyses the structure of the noun phrase and chapter 5 describes the prepositional phrases. The structure of the verb phrase in Nese is discussed in Chapter 6 and this is followed by an analysis of the simple sentences in Chapter 7. Lastly, Chapter 8 is focussed on complex sentences and contains an analysis of coordinate and subordinate constructions.