Akei Language
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Akei, or Tasiriki, is an
Oceanic Oceanic may refer to: *Of or relating to the ocean *Of or relating to Oceania **Oceanic climate **Oceanic languages **Oceanic person or people, also called "Pacific Islander(s)" Places * Oceanic, British Columbia, a settlement on Smith Island, ...
language or dialect spoken in southwestern coastal
Espiritu Santo Espiritu Santo (, ; ) is the largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, with an area of and a population of around 40,000 according to the 2009 census. Geography The island belongs to the archipelago of the New Hebrides in the Pacific region ...
in
Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...
, centred in the village of Tasiriki. In 1981, it was estimated to have 650 speakers.


Names

Other names for Akei are Eralado, Ipayato, Lamarakai, Marino, Navaka, Penantsiro, Pilipili, Tasiriki and Wailapa, presumably based on the areas where it is spoken. The alternate name ''Tasiriki'' literally means "small water" ( "water", "small").


Classification

Akei is generally described as a language, but also as a dialect of the proposed, lexicostastically defined Southwest Santo language along with
Araki Araki may refer to: People * Araki (surname) (荒木) * Hirohiko Araki (荒木 飛呂彦), a Japanese manga artist, fashion designer and illustrator * Nobuyoshi Araki (荒木 経惟), a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist also known by t ...
, Tangoa, and Wailapa. It has also been described as a
dialect chain A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated variet ...
, with its dialects on either end of the chain not being
mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
with each other.


Phonology

Akei's vowels are ''a'', ''e'', ''i'', ''o'', and ''u''. Its consonants are ''r'', ''l'', ''k'', '', ''j'', ''t'', ''n'', ''p'', ''mp'', ''b'', ''mb'', ''m'', ''v'', ''s'' and ''z''. However, the precise phonemes these letters represent are uncertain.


Grammar


Nouns

Akei has no
articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article(s) may also refer to: ...
. Akei mostly lacks
grammatical gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...
, although for some nouns denoting relationships the feminine is marked by the prefix (e.g. "his son", but "his daughter"). In other cases, natural sex is indicated by separate words or by ("male") or ("female") following the noun (e.g. "man-servant", "maid-servant").
Plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...
s are unmarked and are shown only by juxtaposition of an adjective or pronoun (e.g. "many animals"). In enumeration the word precedes and forms the plural of relationship nouns (e.g. "Esau took them his wife, his sons, his daughters, all his people").
Agent noun In linguistics, an agent noun (in Latin, ) is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action, and that identifies an entity that does that action. For example, ''driver'' is an agent noun formed from the verb ''drive''. Usually, '' ...
s are formed by the word "man" followed by a word indicating the action (e.g. "teacher", from "to teach").
Demonym A demonym (; ) or 'gentilic' () is a word that identifies a group of people ( inhabitants, residents, natives) in relation to a particular place. Demonyms are usually derived from the name of the place ( hamlet, village, town, city, region, ...
s are formed by the word preceding the place name (e.g. "Jew"), in both singular and plural. The word ("female") precedes in the feminine (e.g. "woman of Samaria"). The word can also be used (e.g. "Hebrews"). In many cases, the noun is omitted and implied by context.


Pronouns

The following table contains Akei's
personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it''). Personal pronouns may also take different f ...
s. Akei has a
clusivity In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the address ...
distinction: a grammatical difference between inclusive and exclusive first person pronouns. The inclusive form is used when including the addressee, whereas the exclusive form excludes them. There is a single
demonstrative pronoun Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic, their meaning depending on a particular fram ...
, , meaning "this" or "that". This may be preceded by the third person pronouns and to mark singularity or plurality: "this", "that"; "these", "those". The
interrogative pronouns An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
are "who?", "what?" and "what is?".
Indefinite pronoun An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun which does not have a specific, familiar referent. Indefinite pronouns are in contrast to definite pronouns. Indefinite pronouns can represent either count nouns or noncount nouns. They often have related for ...
s include "any", "anyone", "one", "other", "some, others", "all, every", and "everyone". The reflexive or
intensive In grammar, an intensive word form is one which denotes stronger, more forceful, or more concentrated action relative to the root on which the intensive is built. Intensives are usually lexical formations, but there may be a regular process for for ...
pronoun is "self, by one's self, alone" followed by a suffixed possessive pronoun (e.g. "they told one another", "he was alone"). is also used (e.g. "why do you look at one another?"). See the following table: There are shortened forms of the subject and object pronouns, used either as an
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...
or as separate words. There is no shortened form of the second person plural and first person exclusive plural object pronouns; the full pronoun is used instead (e.g. "ask us", but "ask you").


Possession

A noun in the
genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...
follows the
head noun In linguistics, the head or nucleus of a phrase is the word that determines the syntactic category of that phrase. For example, the head of the noun phrase "boiling hot water" is the noun (head noun) "water". Analogously, the head of a compound ...
(i.e. the possessor follows the possessed, e.g. "river's bank", literally "bank river"). In regard to
possession Possession may refer to: Law *Dependent territory, an area of land over which another country exercises sovereignty, but which does not have the full right of participation in that country's governance *Drug possession, a crime *Ownership *Pe ...
, there are essentially two classes of noun. Head nouns of the first class are suffixed with if the genitive noun is also of the first class (e.g. "name of the woman"). First class nouns suffix the pronoun to show possession (e.g. "my son"), including when the noun is used as a
preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...
. If the genitive noun is of the second class, the head noun is suffixed with (e.g. "daughter of a man"). Connecting a second class head noun and its genitive are the
particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
for general possession, for food and drink, and for property generally. is suffixed and is placed in between the head and its genitive (e.g. "badness of man"). The pronoun is suffixed to these particles, and precedes the noun (e.g. "my land"). See the following table with as the example: The possessive pronouns , , and correspond to the English "mine", "thine", "his", etc; they are used without a noun (e.g. "my teaching is not mine, (but) his that sent me". The preposition "with" is used with a suffixed pronoun as a possessive (e.g. "your wife", literally "woman with you").


Verbs

A noun may be used as a verb (e.g. "rain stayed on the earth", "I will make it, it will rain on the earth"), although the verb may also be entirely different from the noun (e.g. "to fight", "fighter, soldier"). Verbs may be transitive or
intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additi ...
; in the former case, the object pronoun is suffixed. Akei has a
zero copula Zero copula, also known as null copula, is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula (linguistics), copula ''to be'' in English). One can distinguish languag ...
; the
predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...
simply follows the subject (e.g. "it (was) so", "I (am) Pharaoh").
Negation In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...
is shown by the particle , which follows the tense particles (e.g. "I do not know him"). Causativity is indicated with the verb "to do, to make" in a separate phrase (e.g. "I will make him he shall again stand", i.e. "I will raise him up"). Passivity is indicated with a third person plural pronoun in the
active Active may refer to: Music * ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea * "Active" (song), a 2024 song by Asake and Travis Scott from Asake's album ''Lungu Boy'' * Active Records, a record label Ships * ''Active'' (ship), several com ...
(e.g. "my money is restored", literally "my money they give back"). The subject is sometimes omitted (e.g. "(it) was written"). The verb "to know", and its negative equivalent indicate ability or inability and precede the main verb (e.g. "who can hear it?"). The
interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence (linguistics), sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its Declarative ...
mood is identical to that of the
indicative A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentence Dec ...
, unless an interrogative adverb or pronoun is used (e.g. "will you go away also?"). The imperative mood is expressed with the second person present pronouns (e.g. "stand up!"), and similarly with the
hortative In linguistics, hortative modalities (; abbreviated ) are verbal expressions used by the speaker to encourage or discourage an action. Different hortatives can be used to express greater or lesser intensity, or the speaker's attitude, for or a ...
in the other persons (e.g. "let us go likewise!"). The prohibitive (negative imperative) and dehortative (negative hortative) moods are expressed with , which can be used with or without the particle and pronouns (e.g. "don't hinder me!"). The verb "to allow" expresses permission (e.g. "let me go up!", literally "allow me I will go up"). To express the
subjunctive The subjunctive (also known as the conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unrealit ...
, one sentence simply follows the other (e.g. "I go (that) I may (shall) awake him"), and likewise with the conditional (e.g. "(if) he sleep, he will again (be) well"). Alternatively, for the subjunctive, the noun with a
pronominal In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not con ...
suffix is added to the end of the sentence (e.g. "I am come, that they may have life"). The particle , following the tense particle, indicates repetition of an action (e.g. "he came again"), and indicates continuance (e.g. "he is still alive").


Tense

The particle indicates the present tense. It is abbreviated to suffixed to the shortened form of the subject pronoun, except for the third person singular, where the particle is used on its own (e.g. "he sees", but "you say it"). The particle indicates the
past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...
, following the shortened form of the subject pronoun. However, like the present tense, the particle is used without the preceding pronoun for the third person singular (e.g. "he saw them", but "I did eat it"). The
future tense In grammar, a future tense ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''achètera'', mea ...
is indicated by following the shortened form of the subject pronoun. Note the third person singular is used before , in contrast to the other tenses (e.g. "he shall have life through it", "I shall tell you").


Adjectives

Adjectives can be a single
morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
, a compound (e.g. "hairy man", from "body" and "hair") or prefixed with (e.g. "soft"). A noun or verb may be used as an adjective without change to its form (e.g. "water pot" from "water"). Adjectives follow their noun (e.g. "good man", literally "man good"). Comparatives are formed using statements (e.g. "other things greater than these", literally "thing other is great by it thing this"). The word "only" denotes a superlative (e.g. "thy reward great exceedingly").


Adverbs

The verbs "to go up", "to go down", "to come", "to go", "to flee", when used with other verbs, become
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...
s meaning "up, down, hither, hence, away". and lose their prefix (e.g. "to lift up", "to look up", "let down your pitcher"). Interrogative adverbs include "when? (past)", "when? (future)", "why?" (literally "cause of what?") (e.g. "when did you come here?", "why do you hear him?"). Other adverbs include "now", "today", "yesterday", "tomorrow", "tonight", "last night", "in the morning", "in the evening", "when it was dark", "at that time, then", "quickly", "at first", "before", "immediately", "at all times, always", "here", "there", "yonder", "near" (with a suffixed pronoun, e.g. "Jacob went near Isaac"), "afar", "thus, so, as" (e.g. "I shall be like you", literally "like",), "therefore" (literally "because of thing that", e.g. "therefore I rejoice greatly", "very, exceedingly".


Prepositions

The
locative In grammar, the locative case ( ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. In languages using it, the locative case may perform a function which in English would be expressed with such prepositions as "in", "on", "at", and " ...
preposition is (e.g. "on the road", "in the house"). It is also used referring to motion to or from a place, except with proper nouns (e.g. "they go away from (at) this place", but "he came (from) Egypt"). can also be used as an
instrumental An instrumental or instrumental song is music without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through Semantic change, semantic widening, a broader sense of the word s ...
(e.g. "he pierced his side with a spear"). means "about, concerning" and is used with the object pronouns (e.g. "I have heard it said about thee"). becomes instrumental at the end of a verbal phrase (e.g. "I give thee this field", literally "field this I give thee with it"). means "to, with, from a person" (e.g. "it came to him"). Many prepositions come from nouns; in these cases they are used with the possessive suffixes and the locative . Some examples are "before" (e.g. "before me", literally "face"), "beside", "the middle", "under", "under", "inside", "outside", and "stead" (e.g. "instead of Abel"). Other prepositions are verbal; some examples are "after" (e.g. "they shall come after him", literally "to follow") and "round about". may also be equivalent to the English "with" (e.g. "he did not send him with his brothers").


Conjunctions

The word with suffixes (e.g ) means "because". The verb "to come" means "until". The word at the beginning of a sentence indicates doubt or hesitation. Akei lacks copulative, disjunctive, conditional or
illative In grammar, the illative case (; abbreviated ; from "brought in") is a grammatical case used in the Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Hungarian languages. It is one of the locative cases, and has the basic meaning of "into (the inside ...
conjunctions.


Numbers

Akei uses a
quinary Quinary (base 5 or pental) is a numeral system with five as the base. A possible origination of a quinary system is that there are five digits on either hand. In the quinary place system, five numerals, from 0 to 4, are used to represent any ...
numeral system A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers; that is, a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using digits or other symbols in a consistent manner. The same sequence of symbols may represent differe ...
, with a distinct word for ten. The numbers are treated as verbs and prefixed with the particle , and, for the numbers six to nine, a second particle is added. The particle is also used for some numbers. When a
cardinal numeral In linguistics, and more precisely in traditional grammar, a cardinal numeral (or cardinal number word) is a part of speech used to count. Examples in English are the words ''one'', ''two'', ''three'', and the compounds ''three hundred ndfor ...
refers to a person, it is preceded by or (e.g. "his twelve sons"). Instead of , with a number affixed refers to twenty, thirty and so on (e.g. "twenty", "thirty"). The multiplicative is used for the hundreds above the first (e.g. "two hundred", "four hundred"). Thousands above the first also use a multiplicative (e.g. "five thousand"). ' means "first", whereas other ordinals are formed by the suffix ' (e.g. ' "second"). In compounds, this suffix is added to the other components as well as to the noun (e.g. ' "in the thirteenth year"). Before a noun, ' changes to ' and is accompanied by the particle ' (e.g. ' "sixth son"). Multiplicatives are formed by prefixing , except for the number one which uses (e.g. "once", "twice", "thrice", "ten times"). Distributives are formed by reduplication (e.g. "by twos").


Selected vocabulary

The list below is a selected sample of words in Akei.


Sample text

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Religion * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Bo ...
1.1-5 in Akei: # # # # # # # # Genesis 1.1-5 in English: # In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. # And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. # And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. # And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. # And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. # And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. # And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. # And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.


References

{{authority control Espiritu Santo languages Languages of Vanuatu