User:Gracesearle/finaldraft

Kokota (also known as “Ooe Kokota”) is spoken on the Island, Santa Isabel, which is located in the Solomon Island chain in the Pacific Ocean. Santa Isabel is one of the larger islands in the chain, but it has a very low population density. Kokota is the main language of three villages: Goveo and Sisigā on the North coast, and Hurepelo on the South coast, though there are a few speakers who reside in the capital, Honiara, and elsewhere. The language is classified as a 6b (threatened) on the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS). To contextualize '6b', the language is not in immediate danger of extinction since children in the villages are still taught Kokota and speak it at home despite English being the language of the school system. However, Kokota is threatened by another language, Cheke Holo, as speakers of this language move, from the west of the island, closer to the Kokota-speaking villages. Kokota is one of 37 languages in the Northwestern Solomon Group, and as with other Oceanic languages, it had limited morphological complexity.

Kokota uses little affixation and instead relies heavily on cliticization, full and partial reduplication, and compounding. Phonologically, Kokota has a diverse array of vowels and consonants and makes interesting use of stress assignment. Regarding its basic syntax, Kokota is consistently head-initial. The sections below expand on each of these topics to give an overview of the Kokota language.

Phonology
The phonemic inventory of Kokota consists of 22 consonants and 5 vowels.

Vowels
Kokota has five vowel phonemes as shown in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) chart below and uses no phonemic diphthongs. There are two front vowels, /i/ and /e/, one central vowel, /a/, and two back vowels: a maximally rounded /u/ and a slightly rounded /o/. Note to grader: The IPA symbol appears in /.../ while the orthography used in the wiki appears to the left of the /.../

Consonants
There are 22 consonants in Kokota. There are five contrastive places of articulation and five contrastive manners.

Note to grader: I know this table looks a bit much but Prof. Kalin and I spoke very extensively about this matter in particular and agreed on this visual representation to merge mine with the existing (as in the vowel chart, the grammar's [thus my wiki page's] orthography is outside the brackets while the IPA representations are in /.../)

Syllable structure
Kokota uses three types of syllable structure for the most part: V, CV, and CCV. Most (88% of 746 syllables examined) are CV (V and CCV each represent 6%). However, there are also rare cases where a CCVV or CVV syllable may occur. Thus, Kokota structure is: (C)(C)V(V). Final consonant codas usually occur only in words borrowed from another language. The CCVV structure is extremely rare as Kokota does not use phonemic 'diphthongs' and the term simply refers to 2 vowels occurring in sequence in a single syllable. In CC initial syllables, the first consonant (C1) must be an obstruent or fricative, specifically: the labial plosives /p/, /b/, velar plosives /k/, /g/, labial fricatives /f/, /v/, or coronal fricatives /s/, /z/. The second consonant (C2) must be a voiced coronal sonorant ( /ɾ/, /l/, or /n/). The table below illustrates the possible CC onset cluster pairings.

''Note to grader: I see your comment regarding 'use their orthography' but on page 21, this is the exact orthography used minus the '?' in front of 'sɾ' which I omitted but will add here. ''

The table below contains representations of the basic, productive syllable structures in Kokota.

Note to grader: I found words throughout the grammar for this table as there was no such table in the grammar but understanding Kokota syllable structure allowed me to segment these words and provide clarity to the reader.

Stress
Kokota uses trochaic stress patterns (stressed-unstressed in sequence, counting from the left edge of a word). Stress in the language varies widely among speakers, but there are patterns to the variation. Three main factors contribute to this variability: the limited morphology of Kokota, the fact some words are irregular by nature, and finally because of the present transition in stress assignment. The language is currently in a period of transition as it moves from relying on stress assignment based on moras and moves to stress assignment by syllable. The age of the speaker is a defining factor in stress use as members of older generations assign stress based on weight while younger generations assign stress based on syllables, placing main stress on the leftmost syllable of the word.

Example 1
Words can be divided into syllables (σ) and feet (φ) and syllables may be divided further into moras (μ). Two moras grouped together comprise a foot. An important restriction on foot formation in Kokota is that their construction cannot split moras of the same syllable. For example, a word that has three syllables CV.CV.CVV has four moras CV, CV, CV, V. These moras are split into two feet: [CV.CV] and [CVV].

Assigning stress based on mora uses bimoraic feet to determine where a word receives stress. In CVV.CV words like /bae.su/ ('shark') the syllables are split as bae and su. The word subdivides into three moras: ba, e, su. The first two moras ba and e become Foot 1 and su is a 'left-over' mora. The first mora is stressed (ba), though in speech the whole syllable receives stress so bae is stressed in this word (see below where the stressed syllable is bolded).

baesu φ: bae,        - σ: bae,        su μ: ba, e,      su

In contrast, a younger speaker of Kokota would assign stress based on bisyllabic feet. Following the syllable structure above, bae is again the stressed syllable but this is simply coincidental as stress is assigned to the first syllable (of the two: bae.su). This coincidence will not always be the case as demonstrated in the next example, below.

Example 2
CV.CVV words like /ka.lae/ ('reef') show more complex stress assignment. 'ka.lae' has three moras: ka, la, e and two syllables: ka, lae. For older speakers, the feet are assigned differently than in bae.su because ordinary foot assignment would take the first two moras and thus would split the lae syllable. Since this is impossible, foot assignment begins with the second mora and thus the first foot is lae and stress falls on the first mora of that foot (and the rest of the syllable).

kalae φ: -,    la e σ: ka,    la e μ: ka,    la,  e

A younger speaker uses the simpler, syllable-based foot parsing: stress thus falls on the first syllable ka while the second syllable lae is unstressed.

Morphology
Morphology in the Kokota language relies on stress and tone shifts, cliticization, reduplication, and compounding as well as affixation in case/agreement marking.

Cliticization
By adding two clitics on to the root noun /dadara/, Kokota specifies who possesses it as well as its proximity, as shown in the gloss below.

The gloss of /dadaraḡuine/ is: 'this blood of mine'

/Dadara/ is the root meaning 'blood'; /gu/ indicates 1st person singular possessive ("my").

A more complex form of cliticization occurs in the example sentence below:

'They made nut and coconut paste here at those standing stones.'

(Notes: the standing stones 'titili' have spiritual significance; NT is the indicator of neutral modality; CNT is continuous; NV refers to something that is not visible)

Partial Reduplication
Partial reduplication in Kokota generally derives nouns from verbs. Below are two examples:

Compounding (nouns)
Both endocentric and exocentric compounding occur.

Endocentric Compounding
Endocentric compounding in Kokota results in words that serve the grammatical purpose that one of its constituent words does. There are three examples below.

Exocentric Compounding
Exocentric compounding in Kokota results in words that do not serve the grammatical purpose that any of the constituent words do. There are two examples below.

Syntax
Syntax in Kokota follows the basic sequential order: Subject -> Verb -> Object.

An example is shown below.

ia koilo n-e zogu ka kokorako

theSG coconut RL-3S* drop LOC chicken

'The coconut fell on the chicken.'

Subject: ia koilo n-e     Verb: zogu      Object: ka kokorako

*RL-3S is the abbreviation for - realis 3rd person subject meaning that the sentence relates to a factual occurrence (realis) and the subject is third-person (s/he or it).