A grammatical description of the Tondano (Toundano) language

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Arts, Communication, and Critical Enquiry, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

This thesis is a grammatical description of Tondano (Toulour dialect), an endangered Austronesian language primarily spoken in the northern tip of the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Tondano has a number of typological similarities to indigenous languages spoken in the Philippines, northern Borneo, and Taiwan, with the most prominent being a symmetrical voice marking system. The data for this research come from extensive in situ fieldwork in the Minahasa region of North Sulawesi over a period of approximately eleven months during three field trips. The primary source of data are digital audio and video recordings which comprise a variety of discourse genres. This thesis contains 10 chapters which cover the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language, with special attention given to the symmetrical voice marking system and the effects it has on various parts of the grammar. This research represents the sole contemporary grammatical description of this language within a broad framework of Basic Linguistic Theory.