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This myth tells how the island of Araki, which used to be near Hog Harbour (north-east of the island of Santo), decided once to migrate along the coast of Santo island, and eventually came to settle in its current day location, south of Santo. According to this myth, the island took with it the women of Hog Harbour; this is an interesting clue towards interpreting this story on historical grounds. The modern population of Araki is represented as descending from a former human group who would have lived on (or closer to) the eastern coast of Santo; after some period of good political relations - and especially women-exchanging traditions - with the people of Hog Harbour, that group would have left the mainland, and eventually populated the island of Araki. Other interpretations are possible, however, and the question may well be solved with the help of historical linguistics or archeology.

This myth tells how the island of Araki, which used to be near Hog Harbour (north-east of the island of Santo), decided once to migrate along the coast of Santo island, and eventually came to settle in its current day location, south of Santo. According to this myth, the island took with it the women of Hog Harbour; this is an interesting clue towards interpreting this story on historical grounds. The modern population of Araki is represented as descending from a former human group who would have lived on (or closer to) the eastern coast of Santo; after some period of good political relations - and especially women-exchanging traditions - with the people of Hog Harbour, that group would have left the mainland, and eventually populated the island of Araki. Other interpretations are possible, however, and the question may well be solved with the help of historical linguistics or archeology.

Among the many grammatical features which are shared between Hiw and Lo-Toga – the two Oceanic languages spoken in the Torres Islands of Vanuatu – are the semantics of Tense-Aspect-Mood markers, and their effects on the syntax of clause dependency. Even though these two languages possess a wealth of subordinators such as conjunctions or relativizers, two TAM markers show a clear propensity, in fluent speech, to do without these overt morphemes. Instead, these two TAM categories – labelled respectively "Subjunctive" and "Background Perfect" – tend to encode clause dependency by themselves, in a way that makes overt subordinators superfluous. Besides providing firsthand empirical data on two hitherto undescribed languages, this chapter proposes a functional hypothesis to account for the clause-linking power of these two TAM markers. The Subjunctive differs from other irrealis categories insofar as it lacks any specific illocutionary force. As for the Background Perfect, it labels its predicate as informationally backgrounded. In both cases, the clause lacks certain essential properties (illocutionary force; informational status) which are normally required to constitute a pragmatically well-formed sentence. This form of "PRAGMATIC DEMOTION" operated by the TAM marker thus makes the clause dependent on external predications, resulting in a genuine form of clause dependency and subordination. These two case studies illustrate how the syntax of clauses can be directly affected by the pragmatic parameters of discourse.

Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Gall.rev. 782 t-4,54/91#Cah.61