The system of consonantal phonemes is fairly typical for the region. Voicedstops are prenasalized. The difference between bilabial consonants with and without a labio-velar release is relevant only before front vowels.
There are seven phonemically distinct vowel qualities, with one long and one short vowelphoneme for each variety, plus a marginally phonemic . The distinction between mid and open-mid vowels is only phonemic after alveolar consonants, as in tee "axe" vs. téé "see".
Front
Central
Back
Close
,
,
Mid
,
,
Open-mid
,
,
Open
,
Word classes
The four major word classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Only nouns can stand in argument position, only verbs and some adjectives can be used as predicates without the copula i, only adjectives can be used as attributes to nouns without further modification. The two biggest word classes by far are nouns and verbs.
Nouns
There are three subclasses of nouns. The biggest subclass consists of 'general nouns' such as em "house" or myaop "volcano"; in contrast to the other two classes, these nouns do not need to specify a possessor, they cannot be inflected and they cannot be directly followed by another noun phrase. 'Inflected nouns' always indicate their possessor by a person-number ending: Transitive or relational nouns also obligatorily specify an inalienable possessor, but this possessor is given by a subsequent noun phrase, not by an inflectional ending. Known, definite, non-human possessors can also be indicated by the suffix -sye or its allomorph-tye: "the shell of the bush nut" "its shell"
Verbs
Among verbs, there are several subgroups which differ either in terms of transitivity or in terms of the number of their internal argument.
Transitivity
There are three degrees of transitivity: verbs can be either intransitive, semitransitive or transitive. Intransitive verbs such as oko "walk" never take an object noun phrase. Semitransitive verbs can optionally be followed by an object noun phrase with indefinite reference; by contrast, transitive verbs are always interpreted to have a definite object.
Semitransitive en "eat":
Transitive ane "eat":
-
Pluractionality
While most verbs are neutral with regard to the number of their arguments, some verbs can take only singular arguments and some verbs can only take non-singular arguments. For example, mur, tesi and medap all mean "fall down", but only medap can have either a singular or a plural subject. By contrast, mur can only take a singular subject, while the subject of tesi always refers to more than one entity :
A simple assertive clause always contains a subject pronoun, a TAM marker and a predicate - except forthird person singular subjects, for which there is no subject pronoun. Predicates can consist of a verb, an adjective or a copula plus noun phrase or adverbial phrase. Third person pronouns may be preceded by a subject NP. A few examples are given below:
There are two kinds of personal pronouns, subject pronouns and non-subject pronouns. Subject pronouns end in a vowel and are followed directly by a TAM marker. They are obligatory in assertive clauses. Non-subject pronouns are used as topics or objects of verbs or prepositions. Each pronoun represents a combination of a person and a number value. There are four person values: first person inclusive, first person exclusive, second person and third person. The four number values are singular, dual, paucal and plural.
