Phonology
Vowels
Monophthongs
Diphthongs
Consonants
and are not phonemic, but are distinguished in the orthography.Phonotactics
Syllables can begin and end with up to one consonant each. I.e., English ''wrong'' would be an acceptable word, but ''strength'' would not. Words can only end in either a vowel or . The vowels and never occur word-initially. never occurs before or .Writing system
Literacy varies from 20% to 80% in different areas.Morphosyntax
Negation
Negation in Maisin
Negation in Maisin is achieved predominantly by morphology. In the Marua communalect, negation is marked by ''isaa… -ka'', while in the Sinapa communalect, negation is marked by ''saa… -ka''. The negation marking is discontinuous. ''Isaa'' is a morpheme located prior to the predicate of the sentence, and can be roughly glossed as ‘not’ in English. Morphologically, it is classified as a separate word. ''-ka'' is an enclitic that is found attached to a verb’s tense- or aspect-marking enclitic. Alternatively, when there is no tense- or aspect-marking enclitic in the sentence, it attaches to the predicate’s last item. Negation through ''isaa... -ka'' can be seen in the following examples. In Example 1, the verb stem 'swim’ takes both the progressive marker ''-ye'' (created through partial reduplication of the verb stem ''yee'' and the negative enclitic ''-ka'', as well as the male second-person singular pronominal enclitic. The enclitic ''-ka'' attaches to the progressive marker -''ye''. The combination of ''isaa'' and ''-ka'' in the sentence negates the action of swimming.= Maisin negation with ''isaa'' only
= In the presence of the conjunction ''-ate'' or the demonstrative ''-nen'', the ''-ka'' enclitic is removed, leaving ''isaa'' as the sole negation marker in the sentence. This occurs because ''-ate'' and ''-nen'' are both located in the same position in a word as ''-ka'' ''isaa''-only negation is demonstrated in the following examples. The presence of the demonstrative morpheme ''-nen'' in the first clause of Example 4 displaces (and removes) ''-ka.'' Thus, ''isaa'' is the sole negator of the clause. This example shows the presence of the conjunction ''-ate'', which is attached to the end of the verb stem ''kan''. This removes ''-ka'' and again leaves ''isaa'' as the only negation marker in the sentence.Maisin negation within Oceanic language family
Maisin is an Oceanic language (Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2019), and its negation system is fairly typical of Oceanic languages. Oceanic languages often express negation discontinuously, with the first element located preverbally and the second postverbally – Maisin fits this pattern, as the above examples demonstrate. Additionally, Maisin follows both the Polynesian pattern of marking negation clause-initially and the Papuan pattern of marking negation clause-finally.List of abbreviations
* FUT = 'final' future enclitic * LOC = locative enclitic * NEG = negative enclitic * PROG = progressive aspect * TOP = topic marker encliticNotes
The first interlinear text example was retrieved from page 50 of ''Maisin: A Preliminary Sketch'' by Malcolm Ross. The glossing of the morphemes ''yee'' and ''ye'' as 'PG' and the verb stem 'swim' respectively means that the negative enclitic ''-ka'' is attached to ''ye'' 'swim'. This does not seem to fit the description of ''-ka'' as attaching to the tense- or aspect-marking enclitic of the predicate. The progressive marker is generated through reduplication, and so the glossing of each morpheme may be ambiguous - that is, it may not be entirely clear as to whether ''yee'' should be glossed as 'PG' or 'swim', and likewise with the morpheme ''ye''. This may explain why the first example seems to deviate from the typical pattern of negation.See also
*References
Sources
* * * * *External links