User:Bcatoto/Neverver

Neverver is an Austronesian language spoken by the Mindu and Sakhan peoples on the island of Malekula of Vanuatu. It is spoken mainly in the Limap and Lingarakh villages of Malekula. With 500 native speakers left, it is classified as a threatened language. Though previously an unwritten language, one of the chiefs of the Limap village has spent the past 25 years translating hymns into an orthographic system in order to encourage people to learn more songs. Furthermore, storytellers are beginning to write down the oral traditions they carry in an effort to preserve their history.

Vowels
Neverver contains a total of eight vowel phonemes, five regular vowels and three diphthongs. The vowel phonemes are given in the table on the left using the International Phonemic Alphabet (IPA), where phonemes that appear on the left are unrounded and those that appear on the right are rounded. A list of diphthongs are also provided in the table on the right along with examples.

Consonants
Neverver contains a total of 26 consonant phonemes in five distinct places of articulation and seven distinct manners of articulation. A notable feature of Neverver is that some voiced consonants appear only in its prenasalized form. Another feature of Neverver's consonants is that some have a contrastive geminate counterpart. The consonant phonemes are given in the table below using the IPA, where phonemes that appear on the left are voiceless and those that appear on the right are voiced.

Syllable structure
Neverver allows for syllables with up to one consonant in the onset and in the coda, including syllables with only a nucleus. This means the structure of syllables is (C)V(C). An example of the possible syllable structures is given in the table below where the corresponding syllables are in bold.

Stress
Stress does not serve any phonemic purpose and is regular. It generally falls on the singular syllable of monosyllabic words and on the penultimate syllable of multisyllabic words. In compounds, each stem is treated separately so stress is assigned to each following the general stress pattern. An example of the assignment of stress in common words are given in the table below.

Verbs follow a stress pattern that is different from the general stress pattern. In verbs, stress falls on the first syllable of the verb stem, disregarding the obligatory prefix; however, in imperative statements, stress is placed on the subject/mood prefix and on the first syllable of the verb stem. During reduplication, primary stress is assigned to the first instance of the reduplication. An example of the assignment of stress in verbs, instances of reduplication, and imperative statements are given in the table below.

Morphology
Neverver can be classified as a fusional synthetic language as words usually contain more than one morpheme and many morphemes contain up to three meanings. Most of the morphology in the language is inflectional. The only instances of derivational morphology is the nominalizing prefix/suffix, which attaches to verbs in order to turn the verb into the head of a noun phrase, and applicative voice suffix.

Affixation
Prefixes are extremely common as most verbs are bound roots and require an obligatory prefix to be attached that indicates agreement with the subject and expresses mood. Prefixes are also used to mark common nouns, with the prefix taking the shape n(V)-. Examples of both prefixes are shown with both verbs in the sentence attached to the prefix im-, which agrees with a third-singular subject and conveys the irrealis mood, and the common noun "year" containing the prefix ni-. Neverver has only two suffixes, -ikh, which is attached to verbs to indicate applicative voice, and -ian, which also attaches to verbs in order to nominalize them. The nominalizing suffix is mostly used in conjunction with the nominalizing prefix ni-, but there are rare instances where they are used apart. Examples of both suffixes are given below.

Reduplication
Reduplication is common throughout speech in Neverver and is most commonly used in verb phrases. Its functions include:


 * forming detransitive verbs
 * forming stative verbs and stative nominal modifiers
 * expressing imperfective
 * expressing the quantity of participants or events
 * expressing negation or inability

Reduplication has two main restraints:


 * 1) The reduplicative prefix is constrained to the form CV(C).
 * 2) The coda of the reduplicative prefix and the onset of the stem that the prefix is attaching to must differ.

An example of reduplication is given below. Reduplication is mostly expressed through prefixation; however, there are two cases that reduplicate via suffixation in order to accomodate the template described in the first constraint. The noun ale "far away" is reduplicated into the form ale-le-le-le to convey greater distance, and similarly, the interjection ave "no" is reduplicated into the form ave-ve-ve-ve. Since both nouns are vowel-initial, reduplicating by prefixing would violate the CV(C) template, causing the reduplication to shift to suffixation.

Compounding
Neverver contains several different types of compounding.

Noun-Noun Compounds
Nouns can compound with other nouns to form another noun related to both stems. If the second stem is a common noun, it generally drops the common noun marker n(V)-. Below are examples of noun-noun compound words, their stems and their respective meanings, and the overall meaning of the compound.

Noun-Verb Compounds
Nouns can also compound with non-inflected verb roots to form either local or common nouns. In Neverver, local nouns are nouns with spatial or temporal meaning and common nouns are "entities in the environmental, cultural and technological context". In this case, the noun always occurs before the verb, and the verb does not have its subject/mood prefix attached. Below are examples of noun-verb compound words, their stems and their respective meanings, and the overall meaning of the compound.

Verb-Noun Compounds
Verb-noun compounds are distinct from noun-verb compounds as they form an intransitive verb by combining transitive verbs with its respective patient argument. The resulting intransitive verb usually takes on a slightly new meaning associated with a common activity. Below are examples of verb-noun compound words, their stems and their respective meanings, and the overall meaning of the compound.

Suppletion
One example of suppletion in Neverver is the third-person possessive determiner. The singular third-person possessive determiner is titi, while the plural form is titi-dr; however, in n-final words, titi becomes ei, while the plural form becomes adr.

Basic word order
The basic word order of Neverver is SVO, which is followed by all sentences, including those with intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive verbs. An example of a basic sentence with a transitive verb is given below.

Head-complement pairs
In similar fashion to the verb phrase, all head-complement pairs are head-initial.

Adposition
The adposition is followed by its complement, making the adposition phrase head-initial.

Possession
The possessee is followed by the possessor, making the possession phrase head-initial.

Subordinate
The subordinator is followed by the clause, making the subordinate phrase head-initial.