Mekeo Language

Mekeo is a language spoken in Papua New Guinea and had 19,000 speakers in 2003. It is an Oceanic language of the Papuan Tip Linkage. The two major villages that the language is spoken in are located in the Central Province of Papua New Guinea. These are named Ongofoina and Inauaisa. The language is also broken up into four dialects: East Mekeo; North West Mekeo; West Mekeo and North Mekeo. The standard dialect is East Mekeo. This main dialect is addressed throughout the article. In addition, there are at least two Mekeo-based pidgins.

Phonology

Mekeo employs a relatively simple system of phonology which consists of 10 consonants and 5 vowels. The following tables identify both the consonants and vowels present in Mekeo.

Consonants

Note that the table above displays the range of consonants used in East Mekeo which is classified as the standard dialect. North West Mekeo, West Mekeo and North Mekeo each have slightly different consonants included in their dialects.

Vowels

Mekeo has five vowels, shown on the table below:

Morphology

Pronouns and Person Markers

In Mekeo, personal pronouns primarily refer to humans, however the third person forms can also be used for animals and other objects as well. Mekeo uses a range of different pronouns for different situations. The following table shows all the main personal pronouns for East Mekeo. This includes unmarked, emphatic and reflexive personal pronouns. Note, that the emphatic pronouns are not common in East Mekeo as they compete with another more common topicaliser, ''au-ŋa''. For example, the preferred form for the first person singular would be ''lau- au-ŋa''.
In the following table, 1, 2 and 3 indicate the person, SG and PL indicate whether the example is singular or plural and I and E stand for inclusive and exclusive.

Examples

The following examples demonstrate the use of some of the above personal pronouns in context.

Grammar

Possessive Constructions

Possession in Mekeo has two morpho-syntactic distinctions: direct or indirect constructions. Direct possession concerns kinship relations and ‘part of a whole relations’ and these kind of relations are cultural in origin. Indirect possession covers a more general possession of alienable property.

Direct Possession

Direct possession relies on relational terms that often form closed subsystems such as kinship terms. In Mekeo, the two relation terms involved in each equation are joined by another term that operates like a transitive verb. The third term is the ‘relator’ and must be marked for agreement with one of the other terms in the equation. The relator follows the subject and/or the object. The relator is marked for the person and number of the second term or the object.

Indirect Possession

Expressing alienable possession in Mekeo requires the prefix ''E-'' and its various realisations (including zero). This morpheme is then optionally preceded by a free or bound pronoun and then the compulsory suffixed by a pronominal suffix which indicates the person and number of the possessor.

The negative is expressed with negators maini, aibaia and laa'i:

The following is an example of an alternation of the cliticisation process:

Another morpheme to express possession is the location pronoun KE- (realised as ke or ʔe). This pronoun expresses location or place:

Negation

Mekeo expresses negation in three ways:

* through the negative particle ''aʼi'', which negates nominal predicates;
* through existential negators, which differ between dialects; and
* through a negative verb prefix, which negates verbal predicates.

This three-way functional distinction between different types of negation is typical of Oceanic languages.

Nominal Negation

Nominal predicates (which consist of one or more nominals) are negated in two ways — through either the negative particle or proclitic ''aʼi'', or through existential negator particles.

The negative particle ''aʼi'' is found in all dialects of Mekeo, with ⟨ʼ⟩ pronounced as either a weak glottal stop or slight pause most dialects, or even not at all () in East Mekeo.Jones (1998) only attempts a rough phonemic transcription of this particle, but does record this variation between dialects. ''Aʼi'' negates a nominal predicate as seen in examples 10 and 11:

''Aʼi'' also occurs as a proclitic particle before nominals, as seen in examples 12 and 13. In this case is functions similar to the English prefixes 'non-' or 'un-'.

All four dialects of Mekeo have existential negators: ''maini'' in North-West Mekeo, ''aibaia'' or ''aibaida'' in West Mekeo, ''aibaia'' or ''aibaiza'' in North Mekeo, and ''laaʼi'' in East Mekeo. The existential negators are sentence-final predicates — where a verb would otherwise be — and express denial of the existence, presence or identity of the preceding nominal predicate.See Mosel (1999) for an explanation of the interpretation of the term 'denial' in this context. Examples 14 to 17 show the existential negator of each dialect.

In both West Mekeo and Northern Mekeo, ''aibaia'' can be analyzed as a compound of ''a'i'' 'not' and ''baia'' 'mere'. These two dialects also have an intrusive consonant, so ''aibaia'' is often realised as in West Mekeo and in North Mekeo.

The existential negators can also function similarly to ''aʼi'', so examples 14 and 16 above could alternatively be read as "She is not his wife" (or "He is not her husband") and "This is not sugar" respectively.

Verbal Negation

Verbal predicates (which consist of a verb wordJones (1998) notes that while a Mekeo verb and its various affixes have traditionally been referred to as a 'verb phrase', this construction is more accurately called a "verb word". and its arguments) in Mekeo are negated by a negator prefix attached to the predicate's verb word. Within the verb word, the negator prefix is found between tense-aspect-mood prefixes and the subject marker, with an intrusive consonant before the subject marker in some dialects. This negator prefix negates the entire verbal predicate. The position of the negator prefix between the tense-aspect-mood prefixes and the verb base is generally common in Oceanic languages.

Example 18 shows the position of the negator prefix in the North Mekeo expression ''Fázobálifúa!'' "Don't spill it!":

Examples 19 to 22 show the negator prefix in all four Mekeo dialects. Jones tentatively reconstructs the negator prefix in Proto-Mekeo as , cognate with Motu ''asi'' and both descended from Proto-Central-Papuan .

In North-West Mekeo, the existential negator ''maini'' (see example 14) also occurs before some verbs to negate them in either the past tense or in the prohibitive mood. This occurs in addition to the regular negative prefix ''ae-'', creating a double negative, as seen in example 23. Jones suggests that this may be to reduce ambiguity where the prefix ''ae-'' has otherwise assimilated with the verb stem; other dialects have an intrusive consonant between the negator prefix and verb stem, as shown in example 24 from West Mekeo.

Demonstratives and Spatial Deictics

List of Abbreviations used for examples in this section

Demonstrative Sentence Structure

According to World Atlas of Language Structure (WALS) writer Matthew S. Dryer, Mekeo is a mixed language type, meaning it does not follow a demonstrative-noun, or noun-demonstrative sentence structure, but has both.

Mekeo is spoken in the central province of Papua New Guinea. Kaki Ae is a neighbouring language of Mekeo. It is spoken to the North-East of where Mekeo is spoken. Kaki Ae has a demonstrative-noun sentence structure. Clifton describes Kaki Ae’s noun phrase structure as Demonstrative-Place-Noun-Adjective-Numeral-Limiter, where the demonstrative precedes the noun, which is in accordance with the data on WALS.

According to Maino, Aufo and Bullock, Mekeo follows the following noun phrase structure: Demonstrative-Possessive/Noun/Adjective-Numeral/Quantifier.

Proximal Demonstratives in the Four Dialects of Mekeo

According to Jones, in Mekeo, there are three “degrees of proximity… represented in three of the four dialects”. These four dialects are NWMek (North West Mekeo), WMek (West Mekeo), NMek (North Mekeo) and EMek (East Mekeo).

According to Maino, Aufu and Bullock, there are two demonstratives 'egaina' and 'inaina/l’ina'. “These can refer to singular or plural, near or far”, and is represented in the Tentative Grammar Description with the following table.

These can be represented through the following examples, provided by Jones.

Ike auke NWMek

Inaia auke-ŋa WMek

Naimo auke-ŋa WMek

Inaina amuɁe-ŋa EMek

this dog-3SG.ASS

This (is a) dog.

This noun phrase can be expanded by adding a suffix that marks the person and number of the deictic pronoun.

'Inaina' has been dropped as the ''this'' has been changed to ''the'', and 'eɁle' (small) has been added.

There can also be a second modifier, attached before the adjective:

The demonstrative ''that'' (Eŋaina is evident here, along with the 3rd person singular noun dog and adjective. The second modifier ‘-ŋa’ has been attached to ‘eɁele’ (small).

Deictic Particles

There also exists deictic particles (DX) in Mekeo, illustrated in the West Mekeo example below:

Anaphoric and Exophoric Use of Demonstratives

Mekeo uses both anaphoric and exophoric use of demonstratives, and clear anaphors are rare in Mekeo. Anaphoric strategies are not always effective in their identification according to Jones. Jones utilises the phrase “deictic reinforcement” for Mekeos use of personal pronouns or demonstrative pronouns to refer back to what has just been mentioned. Demonstrative pronouns are used for four reasons: to announce a new topic, to return to a previously mentioned topic, to announce a new topic specifically so as to not confuse with already established topics, and to “emphasise the presumed accessibility of a referent to the hearer”.

An example of anaphoric demonstrative is shown in East Mekeo:According to Jones, the comma represents the “actual or potential pause” within the sentence.

Exophoric Use of Demonstratives

An example of exophoric use of demonstratives is highlighted by Jones: According to Jones, this sentence “translates to “As for the bird, its wing!”, that is as for the bird, it is its wing that is here important/salient/relevant”.

Jones points out that there is an “implicit deictic argument it/that”. For exophoric topics, when kin terms are used the topic is always a personal pronoun.
The personal pronoun ‘isa’ is used.

Deictic Predicates

Deictic predicates occur when the reference is not given. For example, the following response would be given to the question “Which dog do you mean?” The demonstrative eŋaɁi-na is used in the example above.

There is variation among the four dialects:

The placement of commas in important in the Mekeo language. Jones highlights that if a comma had been placed after Papie aŋa’o, then the translation would shift to “a woman who was carrying a basket”.

Trade language

Jones (1996) reports two forms of pidgin Mekeo used for trade: the ''Imunga Trade Language'' and the ''Ioi Trade Jargon''.

Notes

External links

* OLAC ha
a list of resources in and about the Mekeo language
* Paradisec ha
a number of collections that include Mekeo language materials

References

Further reading

*

{{Languages of Papua New Guinea

Languages of Papua New Guinea
Central Papuan Tip languages