User:Bluefeather98/sandbox2

                                                                                   Maia (Maya) is a Papuan language of Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, and is a member of the Trans-New Guinea language family. Other names for the language are Banar, Pila, Saki, Suaro, Turutap, and Yakiba. It has a language endangerment status of 6a, which means that it is a vigorous and sustainable language spoken by all generations. According to a 2000 census, there are approximately 4,500 living speakers of the language, who are split between twenty-two villages in the Almani district of the Bogia sub-district.

There are variations in the Maia spoken between villages, but they can be generally categorized into two primary dialects. Of these two dialects, the Main Dialect accounts for approximately three-fourths of speakers and the Southern Dialect accounts for the remaining one-fourth. Variations of the Main Dialect tend to be predictable with only minor variations in pronunciation. The information presented in this article is based on the Wagedav dialect, a sub-dialect of the Main Dialect spoken in the Wagedav village. Note: The little chart to the right is from the existing Wikipedia page.

Phonology
The phonemic inventory of Maia is fairly small, as is typical of languages from Papua New Guinea.

In some cases, vowels and consonants are modified or deleted across morphemes in a word. These morphophonemic rules are detailed in this section.

Consonants
The following table details these consonant phonemes and allophones for each, if any. The voiced labiovelar approximant /w/ is the sole multi-place consonant in Maia.

Vowels
Maia contains the five basic vowel phonemes in the chart below:

Vowel Deletion
   There are two instantiations of this rule. The first instance applies to adjacent vowels in a verb: when two vowels are adjacent to each other at the junction of two morphemes within a verb, the first vowel is deleted. For example, 'he is eating' is not  'nimɛ - a' , as the 'ɛ' is deleted to give  'nima', as shown below. 'ø' indicates the site of deletion.

     

Underlying Form: nimɛ - a

Vowel Deletion: nimø - a

Surface Form: /nima/

Translation: 'he is eating'

The second instance is more general: when there are two identical vowels adjacent to each other at the junction of two morphemes within any word, one is deleted. For example, 'he worked' is not ' malip - a - a' , as one 'a' is deleted to give  'malipa' :

    

Underlying Form: malip - a - a

Vowel Deletion: malip - ø - a

Surface Form: /malipa/

Translation: 'he worked'

Vowel Harmony
  In words with two verb suffixes, the vowel in the final suffix is repeated in the penultimate suffix. For example, 'they killed him' is not  'uma - tatɛ - mɔ' , but is instead  'uma - tatɔ'- mɔ'.

    

Underlying Form: uma - tatɛ - mɔ

Vowel Harmony: uma - tatɔ - mɔ

Surface Form: /umatatɔmɔ/

Translation: 'they killed him'

Consonant Deletion
The consonant deletion rule applies to a few select clitics: -gat, -di, -no, -waka. When these clitics are appended to the end of another word that ends in a consonant, the initial consonant of the clitic is deleted. For example, 'always' is not 'inaβ - gat' , but is  'inaβat' .

     

Underlying Form: inaβ - gat

Consonant Deletion: inaβ - øat

Surface Form: /inaβat/

Translation: 'always'

Morphology
Maia has agreement between nouns and their adjectives and between verbs and their objects.

                                                                        

Nominalizing Suffix
The nominalizing suffix -arav can be used to create nouns from verb roots. For example,  'wadib'  means 'to argue', but  'wadib-arav' means 'the arguing'.

     

Verbalizing Suffixes
The verbalizing suffixes -a and -e can be used to create active verbs from other parts of speech, primarily nouns. For example,  'iwi'  is the word for 'a number', while  'iwi-e' is the word for "count (something)".

The derived stative verb suffix -(n)a may be affixed to the end of certain nouns and adjectives to produce a verb, as in the following case of the word for man, 'muado': 'I became a man...'

There are four classes of derived causative verb suffixes, which may be affixed to the end of a preexisting verb root to emphasize a causal relationship. These suffixes are -tate, -te, -rate, and ''-de. '' For example, 'ebe' ('wake up') is the progenitor of 'ebetate' ('to wake up (somebody)').

Possessor Prefixes
Possessor prefixes, summarized in the table below, are appended in front of a possessed noun or in front of an adjective. When appended to a noun, these affixes agree in person and number with the possessor; when appended to an adjective, these affixes agree in person and number with the noun they describe. The distinction between singularity and plurality is established with a difference in stress patterns. The following example illustrates a noun belonging to a possessor. The second-person prefix ni-'indicates that the swelling is 'yours'.ni-subum

2s-swelling

'your swelling'The next example illustrates an adjective "belonging" to the object being described. The prefix u-indicates that the quality of being short belongs to the tree. nanam u-kabu

tree 3s-short

'short tree'

Affixes on Verbs
The above prefixes are also frequently, but not always, appended to verbs to indicate the recipient of an action. Transitive verbs with objects require the presence of such a prefix, while intransitive verbs are more variable. The following example illustrates this: the custom is the recipient of the following Muado ono-na-di wi-nor muata u -mias-a.

Man D1-ATN-CT 3p-INTP custom 3s-follow-RL.3s

'That man followed their custom.'The rest of this subsection details additional uses of prefixes and suffixes on verbs in Maia. Note: "Object Prefixes", "Pronoun Prefixes", and "Agreement Suffixes on Finite Verbs" are subcategories filed under "Affixes on Verbs"

Object Prefixes
Maia tends to mark transitive verbs with different prefixes depending on the animacy of the corresponding third-person object. Verbs referring to objects that are inanimate, such as food or houses, do not have a prefix. Conversely, verbs referring to objects that are animate, such as people or live animals, are marked with either the singular u- (3s) or the plural wi- (3p). The following example illustrates this: ta-refers to inanimate spears, and therefore has no prefix, while 'vase' refers to a dog, and therefore has the singular prefix u- : ... padire-sa wiav ta-sa awun u-vase-sa dumag avia-mi

... get.up-SEQ spear get-SEQ dog 3s-call-SEQ hunting go-RL.1p

'... we got up, got spears, called the dog, and went hunting'

Pronoun Prefixes
Maia also contains pronoun prefixes, as detailed in the table below. These prefixes are appended to transitive verbs to mark the object. i- and yo- are used interchangeably for first person singular object markings, as is ni- and no- for second person singular object markings. For third person singular, there is no prefix appended (ø-) if the verb is considered to be highly transitive, while u- and o- are used for verbs considered to be less transitive.

Agreement Suffixes on Finite Verbs
Maia contains suffixes that mark mood and number on both transitive and intransitive finite verbs. There are unique suffixes for realis mood, for irrealis mood, for imperative mood, and for desiderative mood.

For example, In realis mood transitive clauses, the verb must agree in both person and number with the object. In the following example, the verb for 'divide' must include the third-person-singular marker a- to indicate that it applies to a singular object in the third person (the pig): Di yo-nor     i-banam   wat  ono  buase-sa   muaina-lav-a.

DS 1s-INTP 1s-uncle  pig   D1   cut.SEQ     divide-DIST-RL.3s

'My uncle butchered the pig and divided it up.'Similarly, in realis mood intransitive clauses, the verb must agree in both person and number with the subject. The example below demonstrates that the verb for 'go' must be modified to indicate that it applies to a first-person plural subject: ... dumag avia-mi.

... hunting go-RL.1p

'we went hunting.'

Clitics
Clitics are a common means of word-building in Maia. Some clitics can be combined sequentially to produce a cumulative meaning, as in the case of combining the contrast marker clitic =(d)i and the topic marker =(n)o to indicate a topic that is in contrast with something else.

The following table summarizes the clitics in the Maia language. Consonants in parentheses are typically included only if the word to which the clitic is appended ends in a vowel.

Compounds
Maia contains noun compounds and verb compounds. Two existing nouns or two existing verbs are combined to give rise to a new noun or verb, respectively.

Noun compounds in Maia include ' muado nanum'  : separately, muado ' means 'man' and ' nanum ' means 'woman', but compounding together gives rise to the new meaning of 'people'. Similarly,  'kakape'  ('bee') and 'yag'  ('water') together are the compound word  'kakapeyag' ('honey'). 

                                            

Maia also contains verb compounds, as illustrated below with the example of  'witailika', which combines the verbs for 'get' and 'come up' to generate 'produce'.  wi-ta+ilik-a

3p-get+come.up-RL.3s

'he/she produced them'                                  

Reduplication
Full or partial reduplication of nouns in Maia can indicate plurality, a diminutive, or the derived adverb form of the word. The Maia word ' kuvik ' ('side') can be repeated as ' kuvik kuvik ' to mean 'each side'. The word for 'house' is ' dawa ' and the word for small house is ' dawadawa '. Lastly, an example of the third case is ' riwaro ' ('nothing') partially reduplicated into 'ririwaro ' to mean 'aimlessly'.

Full or partial reduplication of verb roots indicates an augmentation of the action or indicates a repeated action. Typically reduplication occurs in two different forms: either repetition of only the first syllable or repetition of the entire root. For example, ' gubue ' means 'to fold' while ' gugubue ' means 'to fold repeatedly', and ' ipua ' means 'to peel' while 'ipuaipua ' means 'to peel repeatedly'.                                                       

Reduplication or partial reduplication of adjectives can serve three different purposes: to indicate augmentation, plurality, or diminishment. An example of reduplication used to express augmentation, repeating the Maia word for 'good' (' lov ') changes the meaning to 'very good' ( 'lovlov '). Reduplication can also indicate plurality, as in the example of 'nanam kani' ('big tree') and 'nanam kanikani ' ('big trees'), or ' maia ' ('thing') and ' maiamaia ' ('things'). Lastly, reduplication can signal the diminutive form of a word, as in the case of ' isav ' ('hot') and 'isisav ' ('warm').                         

Numeral quantifiers utilize a special case of reduplication. Complete reduplication of a number indicates something in succession (' iner ' alone means 'two', but ' ineriner ' means 'two by two'), while partial reduplication of a number acts as a multiplier ('ininer ' means 'double').

Stress
Stress patterns are used to differentiate between 1st and 2nd person singular and plural inalienably possessed nouns. (Maia has some nouns that are inalienably possessed, which include body parts, kinship terms, and position nouns.) For example, ‘my skin’ is / i’ dia /, but ‘our skin’ is / ’ idia /.

Transitive Clauses
The basic word order of Maia is SOV for transitive clauses, as illustrated by the transitive sentence example below in which 'dog' is the subject, 'pig' is the object, and 'chase' is the verb. Ii-nor awun  maia=di wat  kani o-nor ono dibo-mo

‘Our dogs chased the/that very big pig.’

Intransitive Clauses
The basic word order is SV for intransitive clauses, as illustrated by the example below: Aba            kerek+an-a.

Place/time darkness+say-RL.3s

'The place was/became dark.'

Ditransitive Clauses
For clauses that have both an indirect object and a direct object, the indirect object typically comes before the direct object. The following example, in which 'Kunia' is the indirect object and 'plate' is the direct object, illustrates this: Kunia una u-s-a.

Kunia plate 3s-give-RL.3s

'He/she gave the plate to Kunia.'                        

Modifiers
In all of my grammar's examples for adverbials (p. 62-67), adverbs were placed before the verb. In all examples for adjectives (p. 58-61), adjectives were placed after their nouns.

Adverbials
Adverbs are placed before the verb in adverbial phrases: ''Me+da       rakrak      no-de-re.

NEG+AD2 crossly   2s-tell-IMP.PF.p

'Don't tell him/her crossly.'

Adjectives
Adjectives are placed immediately after the noun that they describe: Av upam iwo nag-uk.

Village small D2L look-IMP.PF.s

'Look at that small village over there.'