User:Bluefeather98/sandbox3

Maia(Maya) is a Papuan language of Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, and is a member of the Trans-New Guinealanguage 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 above to the right of the lead 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 does not have case markings, but does often have agreement between nouns and their adjectives and between verbs and their objects.

Clitics
Clitics are an especially 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)iand the topic marker =(n)oto 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.

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

The verbalizing suffix -(n)acan be used to create verbs from nouns and adjectives, as in the 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'

Prefixes 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 on verbs in Maia.

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'

Agreement Affixes
Maia also contains inflectional affixes involved in agreement. In 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.'In 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.'

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.