West Makian (also known by the
endonym Moi
[Klamer, Marian; Ger Reesink; and Miriam van Staden. 2008. East Nusantara as a Linguistic Area. In Pieter Muysken (ed.), ''From linguistic areas to areal linguistics'', 95-149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.]) is a divergent
North Halmahera language of Indonesia. It is spoken on the coast near
Makian Island, and on the western half of that island.
West Makian has been strongly influenced by a neighboring
Austronesian language or languages to the extent that it was once classified as Austronesian, as
East Makian (Taba) still is. As a family-level isolate, it is not closely related to any other language.
A brief description of the language can be found in Voorhoeve (1982). Much influence comes from Taba, as well as
Malay,
Ternate
Ternate is a city in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and an island in the Maluku Islands. It was the ''de facto'' provincial capital of North Maluku before Sofifi on the nearby coast of Halmahera became the capital in 2010. It is off the ...
,
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, and potentially
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
.
Phonology
Vowels
West Makian has 5 or 6 vowels: /a, e, ə, i, o/, and /u/,
with /ə/ not recorded by Watuseke.
Voorhoeve states that /ə/ is only found in
Indonesian loans.
Consonants
is found almost exclusively in Indonesian loanwords. The only original Moi word with /ɲ/ is /miɲe/ - 'one.'
Consonant clusters are found almost entirely in the middle of words, with a few occurring word-initially during continuous speech. The majority of words have stress on the penultimate syllable, with a few having it on the syllable before or the last syllable. Stress is primarily phonemic.
There are two types of sentence intonation so far observed. One involves the tone rising sharply then sometimes falling again, a pattern used in emphatic imperatives and sometimes in questions. The other pattern is a sharp drop at the end of the sentence, used for declarative sentences and non-emphatic imperatives.
Vowel harmony
West Makian makes use of
regressive vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, mea ...
,
which affects the vowels of several
prefixes, the
possessive marker, and a
preposition. Specifically, they affect the prefixes
fa-,
ma-, and
fala-; the
verbal subject prefixes ta-,
na-,
ma-,
fa-, and
da-; the possessive marker
da, and the
lative,
ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
, and
locative preposition
ta.
In general, for an element ''CV'' (consonant-vowel) the pattern is as follows:
However, there are many exceptions. The stative verb ("to be dead") takes prefixes ''fa-'' (, "to kill") and ''ma-'' (, "to die") instead of the expected ''fe-'' and ''me-''. The directional verbs (''naso'' "to go to", ''no'' "to come", etc.) and the verb ''am'' ("to eat") take only verbal prefixes of the form ''Ci'' (''tiam'' "I eat", ''minaso'' "we go to", etc.). Stative verbs are identical to directionals in terms of verbal prefixes, with the exception of the 3rd person singular, which is ''i-'' for inanimates and ''ma-'' (no vowel harmony) for animates. Additionally, in the
imperative, the 2nd singular (''nV-'') and 2nd plural (''fV-'') prefixes simply assimilate to the next vowel: the verb ''uba'' ("carry") produces ''nuuba'' ("you carry it!"), ''fuuba'' ("you all carry it!").
References
Bibliography
*
*
{{Languages of Indonesia
Languages of Indonesia
North Halmahera languages