A grammar of Ma Manda

This is a grammar of Ma Manda, a Papuan (non-Austronesian) language of Papua New Guinea. Ma Manda is spoken by 1600 people located in the southern slopes of the Saruwaged Range, in the Huon Peninsula of Morobe Province. The grammar is divided into eight parts. Part I is an introduction, focusing on the language and its people, and then on scope, methodology, and a typological overview. Part II addresses phonology, with chapters on phonemes and orthography, phonotactics, morphophonemics, prosody, and the phonological word. Part III addresses word classes, with chapters for every open class, and one on closed classes. Part IV addresses the noun phrase, including chapters on NP structure, possession, grammatical relations, number, and coordination. Part V addresses deixis, with a chapter each on pronouns and demonstratives. Part VI addresses the verb and verb phrase, with chapters on morphology and complex predicates, and then a chapter for every category expressed in the predicate: tense, aspect, pluractionality, reality status, and modality. Part VII addresses the clause, including verbless clauses, mood, and clause-linking. Part VIII addresses discourse, focusing on information structure, rhetorical devices, and bridging constructions. The analysis is supported by culturally-embedded examples from a recorded text corpus. The appendix presents these as interlinear texts, which form the backbone of the analysis presented in the description. The result is a comprehensive preservation of this endangered language for its speakers, and for linguistic and anthropological scholars working in the Papuan arena. ISBN 9783862889167 (Hardbound). Outstanding grammars from Australia 18. 663pp. 2018.