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Mono-Alu language
Austronesian language spoken in the Solomon Islands From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Mono, or Alu, is an Oceanic language of the Solomon Islands, reportedly spoken by 660 people on Treasury Island (Mono proper), 2,270 on Shortland Island (Alu dialect), and 14 on Fauro Island in 1999.[1]
The Mono-Alu language has been documented by Joel L. Fagan,[2] a researcher for the Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. His publication, "A Grammatical Analysis of Mono-Alu (Bougainville Straits, Solomon Islands),"[3] is the first and only translations and analyses of the Mono-Alu language.
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Phonology
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The Alu alphabet
- The Alu alphabet has 19 letters: A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, and V.
- Of these letters, D was seldom used instead of R for euphony's sake but is used now in new foreign words or names introduced in the language. It is also used to represent the allophonic variant [d] of the phoneme /ɾ/.
- The letter V is used to represent the allophonic variant [v] of the phoneme /b/.
- H can sometimes be replaced by F.
- Length distinctions of vowels and nasals are not represented in the current orthography.
- Although not in the alphabet, the letters J and Z can be used to represent the marginal phonemes /d͡ʒ/ and /z/, respectively, which only occur in loanwords and appear to be phonologically integrated.
Consonants
There are 13 phonemic consonants in Mono-Alu.
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- /b/ can also be heard as fricatives [β, v] under certain conditions.
- /ɡ/ can be heard as [ɣ] in free variation.
- /ɾ/ can also be heard as [d] in free variation within word-initial position, or as [dɾ] when following a nasal.
- /u, i/ are heard as glides [w, j] within vowel environments.[4][3]
- Other sounds /z/ and /d͡ʒ/ only occur in loanwords.[4]
Vowels
The Mono-Alu vowel system consists of five phonemic monophthongs and three long vowels.
- /i/ has the allophone [iʲ] and it occurs before other vowels (e.g. [sɐpɐiʲɐ] ‘tuber species’, [mɐniʲɔkɔ] ‘papaya’).
- /u/ can occur as [ʊ] in casual speech when the vowel is short and it does not occur in word-final open syllables. The allophone [uʷ] occurs before /i/ and /ɛ/ (e.g. [kuʷisɐ] ‘basket’, [suʷɛlɛ] ‘sleep’).
- /ɔ/ has the allophonic variant [ɔʷ] and it occurs in the exclamation [kɔʷɛ] and is the only instance where this allophone is attested. Elsewhere it is pronounced as [ɔ].
- /ɐ/ and /ɛ/ do not have allophones.
Syllable Structure
The syllable structure can be either (C)V1(V2)(N) or (ʔ)N, where C can be any consonant (including nasals), V can be any vowel, and N can be either /n/ or /ŋ/. The sequence V1V2 represents a long vowel if both V's are the same phoneme, or a diphthong if they are different. In the syllable pattern (ʔ)N, N is a nasal syllabic nucleus (e.g. [ŋ̩.kɐ] ‘mother’, [ŋ̩.kɔ.tɔ] ‘take, hold’).
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Both in coda and nucleic position, N is always realized as velar [ŋ] before /k/, /g/ /ʔ/, and /h/.[4]
Numerals
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The number system of Mono-Alu is very similar to other Austronesian languages.[5] For example, Mono-Alu shares the numbers 'two' (elua) and 'five' (lima) with the Hawaiian language. A number for 'zero' exists in the language, but is under the same use as the word 'nothing.' Fagan identified numbers from one to ten thousand in Mono-Alu.
Mono-Alu also made[clarification needed] use of ordinal numbers. However, only 'first' (famma) is an actual word, where as all other successive numbers are a grammatical construct.
Grammar
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Pronouns
Mono-Alu, like many other Austronesian languages, uses two separate pronouns for the first-person plural in order to express clusivity - that is, one first person plural pronoun is inclusive (including the listener), and the other is exclusive (not including the listener). Mono-Alu does not have third person pronouns. Fagan translated pronouns and their possessives.
Affixes
Mono-Alu is very specific regarding adverbs and other verb affixes. Verbs can be altered with a prefix, infix, and a suffix.
| a | place where or whether,[clarification needed] alternate form ang occurs after a |
| ng | added to the first of two names gives the meaning 'and', alternate form m |
| ua | denotes addition, 'and', 'with' |
| -a | 'of', especially before -ang, alternate forms an, ang, aan |
| afa- | 'what?' |
| -ata | often found after verbs and other words, alternate forms eta, ita, ota, uta |
| ga | particle, most often after the first word in a sentence, untranslatable; 'so, therefore' at the beginning of a sentence, also used with pronoun forms to emphasise them: gafa, gami, gai, gaina, gang, etc. |
| -nana | equivalent to copula, alternate form nina |
| -titi | strengthens the idea of repetition or duration |
Grammatical gender
There are two ways of indicating differences of grammatical gender:
- By different words: - e.g.
- Tiong 'man' – Betafa 'woman'
- Fanua 'men' – Talaiva 'women'
- Lalaafa 'headman' – Mamaefa 'headwoman'
- Tua-na 'his grandfather' – Tete-na 'his grandmother'
- Kanega 'old man' (husband) – Magota 'old woman' (wife)
- By using an ord[spelling?] indicative of sex: – e.g.
- Kui manuale 'baby' (male) – Kui batafa 'baby' (female)
- Boo sule 'boar' – Boo tuaru 'sow' (sule and tuaru are used for animals only)
In other cases, there is no distinction between masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Adverbs
Some exceptions within the rules of Mono-Alu have been discovered.[6]
Two adverbs of place, instead of being written with a double consonant, are written with only one accentuated.
- e.g. Nai (instead of NNai) – 'here'
- 'Nao (instead of NNao) – 'there'
Instead of the aspirate h, the letter f can be used:
- in verbs preceded by the causative ha (or fa)
- e.g. fasoku (or hasoku) – 'let come'
- in verbs preceded by the prefix han (or fan), meaning reciprocity or duality
Articles
There is no definite article in Alu. The number elea ('one') is used as an indefinite article.[3]
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References
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