Tamambo language


Tamambo, or Malo, is an Oceanic language spoken by 4,000 people on Malo and nearby islands in Vanuatu.

Phonology

Vowels

FrontBack
High
Mid
Low

become respectively when unstressed and before another vowel. may also become for some speakers.

Consonants

The prenasalized postalveolar stop is often affricated and voiceless, i.e..
Younger speakers often realize as initially and medially, while is often replaced by.
is usually realized as initially, but some speakers use. Medially, it may be pronounced as any of.

Writing system

Few speakers of Tamambo are literate, and there is no standard orthography. Spelling conventions used include:

Pronouns and person markers

In Tamambo, personal pronouns distinguish between first, second, and third person. There is an inclusive and exclusive marking on the first-person plural and gender is not marked. There are four classes of pronouns, which is not uncommon in other Austronesian languages:
Independent pronounsSubject pronounsObject pronounsPossessive pronouns
1SGiauku-au-ku
2SGnihoo-ho-m
3SGniamo / a -a / -e-na
1PL.Ihindaka-nda-nda
1PL.Ekamamkakamam-mam
2PLkamimnokamim-mim
3PLnirana-ra-ra

Independent pronouns

Independent pronouns behave grammatically similarly to other NPs in that they can occur in the same slot as a subject NP, functioning as the head of a NP. However, in regular discourse, they are not used a great deal due the obligatory nature of cross-referencing subject pronouns. Use of independent pronouns is often seen as unnecessary and unusual except in the following situations:
In the instance where two NPs are joined as a single subject, the independent pronoun reflects the number of the conjoint NP:
and
Thus, merging the two above clauses into one, the independent pronoun must change to reflect total number of subjects:

Introducing a new referent

When a new referent is introduced into the discourse, the independent pronoun is used. In this case, kamam:

Reintroduction of referent

In this example, the IP hinda in the second sentence is used to refer back to tahasi in the first sentence.

Emphasis on participation of known subject

According to Jauncey, this is the most common use of the IP. Comparing the two examples, the latter placing the emphasis on the subject:
and

Subject pronouns

Subject pronouns are an obligatory component of a verbal phrase, indicating the person and number of the NP. They can either co-occur with the NP or independent in the subject slot, or exist without if the subject has been deleted through ellipsis or previously known context.

Object pronouns

Object pronouns are very similar looking to independent pronouns, appearing to be abbreviations of the independent pronoun as seen in the pronoun paradigm above. Object pronouns behave similarly to the object NP, occurring in the same syntactic slot, however only one or the other is used, both cannot be used simultaneously as an object argument – which is unusual in Oceanic languages as many languages have obligatory object pronominal cross-referencing on the verb agreeing with NP object.

Possessive pronouns

Possessive pronouns substitute for NP possessor, suffixing to the possessed noun in direct possessive constructions or to one the four possessive classifiers in indirect constructions.

Direct possession

Indirect possession

Negation

Negation in Tamambo involves the use of a negative particle; negative verb and negative aspectuals to change positive constructions into negative ones.

Negation and the VP

The negative particle -te and negative aspectual tele ‘not yet’ and lete ‘never’ can appear in the same slot of the Verb Phrase, illustrated below:
Both the negative aspectuals appear to be derived from the tense-aspect marker le and the negative particle -te. All the optional modifiers in the VP are mutually exclusive thus; the negative morphemes allow no modifiers between them and the head of the VP.

Negative particle ''-te''

The negative particle -te which expresses negative polarity on the verb is a bound morpheme, meaning it must be attached to the subject pronominal clitic. The negative particle also occurs immediately before the verb noted in example . Furthermore, example demonstrates what Jauncey terms a ‘negative progressive’; a way of expressing the negative in the present tense such as ‘he’s not doing it’ using the negative particle -te.

Negative aspectuals

The negative aspectuals are used to refer to different aspects of time. The aspectual lete ‘never’ is used to refer to event times that are prior to speech time noted in example and .
The negative aspectual tele ‘not yet’ is used only where the events are referring to an event time prior to or simultaneous with speech time noted in example and .



Negation and modality

In Tamambo, modality can be expressed through the future marker –mbo and the two 3SG subject pronouns, mo and a. In Tamambo realis is ‘the grammatical or lexical marking of an event time or situation that has happened or is happening relative to speech time’ and irrealis refers to ‘the grammatical or lexical marking of an event time or situation that may have happened, or that may or may not happen in the future’. In Tamambo, the negative particle -te and aspectual lete can be used in conjunction with the 3SG irrealis a to express that a situation or action is not known to have happened. This is used because the negative markers cannot occur next to the future marker –mbo, however they can occur separately in the same construction evident in example containing lete.




In Tamambo, only the 3SG preverbal subject form has a irrealis, thus when -te is used with other preverbal subject pronouns, the time of event can be ambiguous, and phrases must be understood from context and other lexemes. For example, illustrates the various interpretations one phrase may have.

Negative verb ''tete''

The negative verb tete is a part of Tamambo's closed subset of intransitive verbs, meaning that it has grammatical limitations. For example, the verb tete can only be used in conjunction with the 3SG preverbal subject pronominal clitic. The negative verb tete can function with a valency of zero or one. Valency refers to the number of syntactic arguments a verb can have.

Zero Valency

The most common use of the verb tete is illustrated in example , where the verb has zero valency. 
The 3SG pronoun's of a and mo are used in conjunction with tete to respond to varying questions depending on whether the answer is certain or not. Example illustrates the use of a and tete in a construction to answer a question where the answer is not certain.
However, if the answer is certain than mo and tete are used highlighted in example .

Valency of one

If tete functions with a valency of one, then the intransitive subject must precede the verb similar to a prototypical verb phrase. In this situation, 3SG marking can only represent both the singular and plural, highlighted in example .


Tete can also function with an ‘existential meaning’ illustrated in example , to express there was ‘no one/no people’.



Ambient serial verb constructions

The negative verb tete can also be used following a verb in an ambient serial verb construction. In Tamambo, a serial verb construction is defined by Jauncey as ‘a sequence of two or more verbs that combine to function as a single predicate’. Furthermore, the term ambient in this verb construction refers to the phenomena when a verb, which follows a transitive or intransitive verb, makes a predication concerning the previous event rather than the participant. When the negative tete verb is used in an ambient serial verb construction, tete makes a negative predication regarding the event expressed by the previous verb highlighted in example and . Furthermore, in this instance it is ungrammatical to insert other words between the negative verb and the previous verb.



Negation and realis conditional sentences

Negative realis conditional sentences express an idea that something will happen if the condition is not met, such as an imperative or warning. The sentence outlines the conditions, and includes an ‘otherwise’ or ‘if not’ component. The condition and the ‘if not’ component occur together before the main clause illustrated in example .

Abbreviations

1,2,3    first, second, third person
ART     article
CLFR   classifier
FUT     future
IRR      irrealis
NEG     negative particle
O         object pronoun
P          possessive pronominal
PL        plural
PREP   preposition
SG        singular
SUB     subject
TA       tense-aspect marker