Introduction

"Introduction". Introduction. 1983-12-31. pp. IX–XXII. doi:10.1515/9780824843069-002. ISBN 978-0-8248-4306-9.

Abstract: Ponapean is the native language of the indigenous people of the island of Ponape. Ponape is located approximately halfway between Hawaii and Indonesia at 6° 54' north latitude and 158° 14' east longitude within the geographic area known as Micronesia. Ponape and its two satellite atolls, Pakin and Ant, are also known as the Senyavin Islands. On older maps, Ponape alone is sometimes called Ascension Island. Ponapean is a Nuclear Micronesian member of the large family of languages named Austronesian. At present, there are approximately 15,000 native speakers of Ponapean. Along with English, this language serves as a lingua franca for the linguistically diverse Ponape District of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. While no detailed language variation studies have been conducted in this area, on the island of Ponape itself two major dialects of Ponapean may be easily discerned. These are: (1) the Kiti dialect, spoken primarily in the municipality of that name, and (2) the Main or Northern dialect, spoken on the rest of the island. The varieties of speech spoken on three neighboring atolls-Ngatik, Pingelap, and Mokil-are very closely related to Ponapean and, along with Ponapean, are to varying degrees mutually intelligible. Collectively, the language of all these speech communities is called Ponapeic. Other languages classified as Nuclear Micronesian are Gilbertese, Marshallese, Kusaiean, the Trukic languages, and probably Nauruan. The major grammatical features of Ponapean have been described in the companion volume to this work, entitled Ponapean Reference Grammar, henceforth abbreviated PRG. Consequently, the scope of this introduction will be limited to providing information helpful in using this dictionary. Where it is necessary to employ grammatical terminology that may be unfamiliar to the reader, cross references to the PRG are provided. The introductory materials that follow are divided into three main sections. The first section serves…

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