Rembong-Wangka : Its position among the Manggaraic languages, some formative elements and adnominal possession

Sammanfattning: Rembong-Wangka is an Austronesian language, which together with other little described languages, belongs to the Manggaraic subgroup of Austronesian. One aim is to present information about them, as well as other languages in the area, drawn from not readily accessible sources, including archival material, and information collected by the author in Flores. An estimation of the number of speakers of Rembong-Wangka, the dialects and a map of settlements where the language is spoken, are given. The second aim is to describe adnominal possessive constructions, and the third to discuss etymologies of morphological elements in these constructions. The material to answer these questions was collected during two short field trips. Written glossed texts in a Rembong-Wangka corpus constructed by the author were used and analysed in the FLEx program. In pronominal possession, the possessor can be expressed by pronominal enclitics or oblique pronouns. The latter of these two strategies is more emphatic. Non-pronominal possession can be expressed by juxtaposition or with a Possession Construction Marker (PCM). Juxtaposition is used mostly for non-prototypical possession or possession-like relationships and PCMs mainly for prototypical possession. The etymology of the oblique pronouns is discussed, as well as the possible etymological connections of Central Flores PCMs with different words in Rembong-Wangka.