Bowden John. Taba (Makian Dalam): description of an Austronesian language from Eastern Indonesia

University of Melbourne, 1997. — 540 p.This thesis is a descriptive grammar of Taba (also known as Makian Dalam or East Makian). Taba is an Austronesian (South Halmahera/Eastern Malayo-Polynesian) language spoken by over 20,000 people on Makian island and neighbouring areas of North Maluku in eastern Indonesia. Taba has typologically unusual word-order correlations, explained as a result of contact between Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages of the North Maluku sprachbund. It is predominantly a head-marking language with basic AVO word order, is both post- and prepositional, with most modifiers following the head noun, but with the genitive preceding the head noun. Taba has an unexceptional inventory of 15 indigenous consonants and 5 indigenous vowels. A fairly complex variety of intial geminate consonants and consonant clusters are found. Many of the consonant clusters are exceptional with respect to widely held expectations based on hierarchies of sonority.