Bahonga 'ta roa (Taroan)

Taroan is spoken on a collection of small islands, despite which it has shown surprising resistance to fragmentation into dialects, perhaps because its speakers are consummate ocean sailors and thus maintain frequent contact with each other. The name for the language means "what is needed for speaking." (The naming of the language as Taroan came from a misunderstanding of 'ta roa as a proper name--there is no single native word for the language.)

Sound Inventory

Taroan has a relatively restricted sound inventory:

    p       t       c/k
    b       d       g
    m       n       ng
            s
    w               y
            l
            r
    h

    a       e       i       o       u
    ai      ei              oi      ui
    au

The "w" is pronounced somewhere between American English /w/ and a "purer" bilabial as in medial Spanish b/v. Stops are always unaspirated.

Taroan makes no phonemic distinction of short versus long vowels. (Vowels that have stress accent do tend to be pronounced slightly longer than unaccented vowels.) Terminal vowels and vowels followed by other vowels are pronounced more open than vowels followed by consonants. An apostrophe at the beginning of a word indicates that an unaccented intial vowel has been elided (because the preceding vowel is identical).

Syllables are typically CV or V, with occasional VC or CVC. Multiconsonant clusters are avoided by insertion of a vowel, usually "a".

Lexicon

A brief lexicon is here.

Grammar

Substantives

Taroan optionally marks number in nouns and pronouns with an enclitic particle. Gender is unmarked except in personal pronouns. Adjectives precede nouns, so in effect they "use" the number marking on the noun. The number markers are:

The mass plural is used only with inanimates (or to impolitely talk about a crowd of people).

Comparatives and Superlatives

Comparative and superlatives are marked by modifying the adjective with one of these enclitics:

Adverbs

Adverbs are distinguished from adjectives only by usage, not form (in that they precede a verb instead of a noun).

Personal Pronouns

An enclitic ra added to a personal pronoun makes it into a possessive pronoun, which is treated like an adjective and thus precedes the thing possessed.p

Articles

Taroan marks definiteness with the enclitic particle "pa", which follows all other enclitics. There are no other articles.

Demonstratives

The demonstratives (which occupy preceding position, like adjectives) are:

Verbs

Verbs have a form for perfective aspect and another form for imperfective aspect. Change of aspect is expressed by a relatively irregular sound change, either by change to a vowel grade or by voicing a voiceless consonant. For example, roa (= "speak") versus rua (= "spoke") and tua (= "make") versus dua (= "made").

Verbs are not otherwise inflected. Person, number, etc., are understood from the subject. The only voices are the active and the imperative. Time and tense are expressed, respectively, by adverbs and by pairs of particles that "bracket" the whole clauses whose verbs are being marked. The tense brackets are:

Note that these particles always are first and last in a clause, the only exception being a relativizing particle that introduces a subordinate clause. Examples:

Voice

Taroan does not mark voice as a category. An inventory of adjectives/adverbs have the equivalent function. For instance:

O na nui roa o.
FUT I maybe speak FUT.
I might/may speak.

Other uses of verbs

The closest Taroan has to any notion of an infinitive, verbal noun, or verbal adjective is simply the use of the imperfective form of the verb in the place of a noun. This usage can have any of the three above senses.

Imperatives

Imperatives are made with the imperfective form of the verb:

Roa!
Speak!

Stress Accent

Multi-syllable Taroan words are regularly given primary accent on the next-to-last syllable. Monosyllables have primary accent, except for the enclitics. The first of tense "brackets" always has primary accent; the second always is unaccented.

Compounding

Taroan speakers do not usually go in for making long words. Instead, a string of adjectives and nouns used adjectivally will be composed to describe something for which a single word is not available.

Word Order

Word order is SVO without marking, or almost anything if enclitic markers are used. The markers are:

The topic enclitic can be used after and in addition to any of the others to mark a new topic of discourse.

Marking with the enclitics is mandatory for the indirect (recipient and benefactive) objects and for both direct objects if there are two. An example of the latter situation is:

Na roa wa-ma bole-mo.
I speak he 1st-DOBJ brave 2nd-DOBJ.
I call him brave.

Simple Statements

The imperfective copula is zero:

Eledi-tau sai ngo.
Elf-COLL-PL this place.
All of the elves are here.

The perfective copula is i:

Eledi-tau i sai ngo.
Elf-COLL-PL PERF-COPULA this place.
All of the elves were here (at one point of time).

The copula in either form accepts the "bracketing" tense markers:

E 'ledi-tau sai ngo e.
PAST elf-COLL-PL this place PAST.
All of the elves were here (for a long time).

E 'ledi-tau i sai ngo e.
PAST elf-COLL-PL PERF-COPULA this place PAST.
All of the elves were here (at some point in the past).

O eledi-tau sai ngo o.
FUT elf-COLL-PL this place FUT.
All of the elves will be here.

Statements in Contrast Word-order

Questions

Questions are formed by prefixing n- to both of the tense "bracket" particles around a main clause. If brackets are not present, the particle nu brackets the clause. For example:

Nu eledi-tau sai ngo nu?
QUEST elf-COLL-PL this place QUEST?
Are all of the elves here?

No eledi-tau sai ngo no?
QUEST-FUT elf-COLL-PL this place QUEST-FUT?
Will all of the elves be here?

Negatives

The simple negative is aoe, which follows what it negates, though it has primary accent rather than being an enclitc. (The pronunciation is unusual: the word has three syllables and the accent is on the first one.) When negating the whole clause, the negative follows the verb, or follows the subject if the clause uses the zero copula. For example:

Eledi aoe sai ngo.
Elf NOT this place.
No elf is here.

The negative imperfective copula is auwe:

Eledi auwe sai ngo.
Elf IMP-COPULA-NOT this place.
There isn't an elf here / There aren't any elves here.

The negative perfective copula is auwa:

Eledi auwa sai ngo.
Elf PERF-COPULA-NOT this place.
There wasn't an elf here / There weren't any elves here.

A negative of denial, aoe, used alone, has the force of the English sentence "it is not" or "it is not so", or it can be used postpositively to form an emphatic negative.

Accidence Rules

Vowel Elision

The second of identical vowels in Taroan is regularly elided, if the vowel is initial in the word and is unaccented, unless the elision would take away the word's only vowel.