Selayar or Selayarese is a
Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by about 100,000 people on the
island of Selayar in
South Sulawesi
South Sulawesi ( id, Sulawesi Selatan) is a province in the southern peninsula of Sulawesi. The Selayar Islands archipelago to the south of Sulawesi is also part of the province. The capital is Makassar. The province is bordered by Central Sula ...
province,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
.
Phonology
Vowels
Vowels are lengthened when stressed and in an open syllable.
Nasalization
Nasalization extends from nasal consonants to the following vowels, continuing until blocked by an
intonation break or a consonant other than a
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
:
: "A dog urinated on him."
: "A lizard urinated on him, and a dog defecated on him."
Consonants
Of the coronals, the voiceless stop is
dental, while the others are
alveolar Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit.
Uses in anatomy and zoology
* Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs
** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte
** Alveolar duct
** Alveolar macrophage
* ...
.
Morphology
Selayarese intransitive verbs index pronominal arguments via an
absolutive
In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative†...
enclitic.
[
][
]
In transitive verbs the less agent-like argument is indexed by the absolutive enclitic.
References
{{Austronesian languages
South Sulawesi languages
Languages of Sulawesi
South Sulawesi