Zabana is an Oceanic language spoken almost exclusively in the Kia district on the northern part of

Santa Isabel Island Santa Isabel Island (also known as Isabel, Ysabel and Mahaga) is the longest in Solomon Islands, the third largest in terms of surface area, and the largest in the group of islands in Isabel Province. Location and geographic data Choiseul lies t ...

in the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...

. Zabana is considered a developing language (EGIDS 5) which means that the language is in vigorous use, with literature in a standardized form being used by some though this is not yet widespread or sustainable. It is one of the most spoken languages on Santa Isabel Island, competing with Cheke Holo. There is a 30% to 60% literacy rate in Zabana as a first language and a 25% to 50% literacy rate in Zabana as a second language.

Location

Zabana is almost exclusively spoken on Santa Isabel Island which is the largest island in the Isabel provenience and the third largest island in the Solomon Island chain. Zabana is one of the eight different languages spoken on Santa Isabel island. Out of the other seven different languages spoken on the island, Zabana shares major similarities with

Kokota Kokota is a town and sub-prefecture in the Lola Prefecture in the Nzérékoré Region of south-eastern Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of G ...

and Cheke Holo (also known as Maringe.) A combination dialect of Zabana and Cheke Holo is also developed and widely spoken within the area.

Phonology

Zabana only contains open syllables, since there are no

consonant clusters In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

and geminate vowels in the language.

Vocal stress In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as ...

on a single phoneme does not exist in Zabana, instead certain syllables called penultimate syllables (the final syllable of a word that ends in a vowel) are stressed. When compared to the neighboring languages, Zabana has fewer phonemes than its neighbors, in particular

Morphology

There are two types of verbs in Zabana, transitive and intransitive verbs. *

Transitive Verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transitiv ...

: Can be attached with a suffix which indexes the direct or indirect object. *

Intransitive Verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...

: Verbs which convey motion of some sort. In Zabana, possession is denoted syntactically by a possessive suffix attached to the noun such as ''no'' or ''ka''. Words such as "father", "mother", and "uncle" can never take on a possessive suffix. Larger numbers are made by compounding "Cardinal Numbers" such as one through ten and the exponential factors of ten such as one hundred and one thousand. Reduplication is used in Zabana to derive intransitive verbs from transitive terms and to derive nouns from verbs.

Sentence Structure

Zabana is a mainly a VSO (Verb, Subject, Object) language.

Declarative

Declarative sentences are denoted by a drop in intonation at the end of the sentence and the basic sentence structure or word ordering of a declarative sentence is shown below.

Interrogative

There are four basic types of question sentences in Zabana: polar questions (yes/no), content questions, alternative questions, dubitative questions (rhetorical). * Polar Question: Denoted by a rise in intonation at the end of a sentence * Content Questions: Denoted by the use of one of the four interrogative words and by a fall in intonation at the end of the question * Alternative Questions: In Zabana they are usually request or open ended questions

Honorific Language

There is a chiefly language form of Zabana which is used when addressing clan chiefs.

Complex Sentences

Complex sentences in Zabana are formed when a conjoined clause is used in a sentence, by using one of the three different connectors: ''nia'', ''ga'', and ''ba'' which are "and", "or", and "but" respectively. The exception of this rule is the connecting particle ''ghe'' which is used to denote a conditional sentence or question and ''nia'' must be used to connect the pronoun and the proper noun together. ''ghe'' can also be used in a complex sentence to link together two different proper nouns.

Conditional Sentence

In Zabana there are two different types of conditional sentences: simple and counterfactual sentences. Both sentences use the particle ''la'' to denote that they are conditional sentences. * Simple Conditional: Denoted by the use of the particle ''to'' along with the particle ''la'', simple conditional sentences state a hypothetical situation in Zabana.

Example: To nanarela ghatu e kotoro hofi ini "If it rains today, the roof will leak." * Counterfactual: States a situation where the condition is no fulfilled.
Example: Geke meha la ia vaka norao gela to lao ara kia "If the boat had come yesterday, I would have gone to Kia."

External links
*
Paradisec The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel-to ...
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multiple collection that include Zabana language materials.

References
{{Austronesian languages Languages of the Solomon Islands Ysabel languages