David P Quinton
Eighteen years of engaging in conversation with the Temiars in Kelantan, Malaysia, has enabled David P. Quinton to piece together the grammatical rules which their language follows. In 2022, he embarked on the daunting task of a systematic description of these rules, in line with other linguistic accounts of ’Aslian’ or Malayan indigenous languages. The result is a detailed account of phonology and processes of lexical morphology, with a description of word classes including nouns, names, kin terms, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, ideophones and conjunctives, along with expressive phrases and phrase formation. In the appendices, a lexical comparison of Temiar and Semai can be found, containing some 1300 equivalent words, together with lists of 1500 fossilised morphemes and a great list of almost 900 ideophonic words.While there still remain areas to analyse and add to this work, as it stands it must be the most complete attempt at describing Temiar grammar to date. Students of Senoic languages or linguistics in general will benefit greatly from referencing the rich detail in this volume.See thesenoistory.com/books for more info!
