Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Mono-Alu language
Austronesian language spoken in the Solomon Islands From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
Mono,[2] also known as Alu, is an Oceanic language spoken in the Solomon Islands, belonging to the Austronesian language family. As of 1999, it was reportedly spoken by a total of 2,944 people: 660 speakers on Treasury Island (Mono proper), 2,270 on Shortland Island (Alu dialect), and 14 on Fauro Island.[1]
The Mono-Alu language has been documented by Joel L. Fagan,[3] a researcher in the Department of Linguistics at the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. His publication A Grammatical Analysis of Mono-Alu (Bougainville Straits, Solomon Islands)[4] is the first and, to date, the only translation and grammatical analysis of the Mono-Alu language.
Remove ads
Orthography
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.[5]
- R was traditionally used more than D, but D is used more often in loanwords or in names that have been introduced into the language. It is also used to represent the allophonic variant [d] of the phoneme /ɾ/.[6]
- The letter V is used to represent the allophonic variant [v] of the phoneme /b/.
- The letter H is sometimes replaced by F.
- The 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.
Remove ads
Phonology
Summarize
Perspective
Consonants
There are 13 phonemic consonants in Mono-Alu.
- /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 and i/ are heard as glides [w, j] within vowel environments.[6][4]
- Other sounds /z/ and /d͡ʒ/ only occur in loanwords.[6]
Vowels
The Mono-Alu vowel system consists of five phonemic monophthongs and three long vowels.
- /i/ has the allophone [iʲ] and 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 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 Vs 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’).
In both the coda and nucleic positions, N is always realized as velar [ŋ] before /k/, /g/ /ʔ/, and /h/.[6]
Remove ads
Numerals
Summarize
Perspective
The number system of Mono-Alu is very similar to other Austronesian languages.[7] For example, Mono-Alu shares the words for the numbers 'two' (elua) and 'five' (lima) with the Hawaiian language. A word for 'zero' (menna) exists in the language and also holds the meaning of 'nothing.' Fagan identified the numbers from one to ten thousand in Mono-Alu.
Mono-Alu also makes use of ordinal numbers. However, only 'first' (famma) is a unique word, and the rest are constructed through affixations.
Grammar
Summarize
Perspective
Pronouns
Mono-Alu, like many other Austronesian languages, uses two separate pronouns for the first-person plural 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 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 'head woman'
- Tua-na 'his grandfather' – Tete-na 'his grandmother'
- Kanega 'old man' (husband) – Magota 'old woman' (wife)
- By using an ordinal 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.[citation needed]
Adverbs
Some exceptions within the rules of Mono-Alu have been discovered.[8]
Two adverbs of place, instead of being written with a double consonant, are written with only one accented consonant.
- e.g. Nai (instead of NNai) – 'here'
- 'Nao (instead of NNao) – 'there'
Instead of the aspirate h, the letter f can be used:
Articles
There are no definite articles in Alu. The number elea ('one') is used as an indefinite article.[4]
Remove ads
References
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads