Tombonuwo (Tambonuo) is a Paitanic language spoken in the Pitas and Labuk-Sugut Districts of northwest

Sabah Sabah () is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah has land borders with the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and Indonesia's North Kalima ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

Phonology

Consonants

The phonemes are voiceless. All other expressions are voiced.

Vowels

is often pronounced as unrounded . is neutralized to in a pre-stressed syllable.

Morphology

Focus

Sabahan languages are characterized by "focus" morphology, which marks a syntactic relationship between the predicate of a clause and the "focused" noun phrase of the clause (see

Austronesian alignment Symmetrical voice, also known as Austronesian alignment or the Austronesian focus system, is a typologically unusual kind of morphosyntactic alignment in which "one argument can be marked as having a special relationship to the verb". This speci ...

). Tombonuwo has four focus categories, conventionally labelled "actor", "patient", "referent" and "theme". Focus is marked by affixation on the verb. * Actor: ''-um-'' / ''m(u)-'' * Patient: ''-on'' (Present tense) / -∅ (Past tense) * Referent: ''-an'' * Theme: ''i-''

Tense and aspect

The only marked tense in Tombonuwo is past tense. * Past tense: ''n-'' (''-in-'') * Stative: ''o-'' * Perfective: ''ko-'' * Non-volitional past tense: ''n-o-'' * Accomplishment: ''n-o-ko-''

Demonstratives

* Near the speaker: * Far from the speaker: * Medium distance from the speaker:

References

Paitanic languages Languages of Malaysia Endangered Austronesian languages {{Austronesian-lang-stub