Paamese language

Paamese, or Paama, is the language of the island of Paama in Northern Vanuatu. There is no indigenous term for the language; however linguists have adopted the term Paamese to refer to it. Both a grammar and a dictionary of Paamese have been produced by Terry Crowley.

Classification

Paamese is an Austronesian language of Vanuatu. It is most closely related to the language of Southeastern Ambrym. The two languages, while sharing 60-70% of the lexical cognate, are not mutually intelligible.

Geographic distribution

Paama itself is a small island in the Malampa Province. The island is no more than wide and long. There is no running water on the island except after heavy storms.
In the 1999 census in Vanuatu, 7,000 people identified as Paamese, with 2,000 on the island itself and others through the urban hubs of Vanuatu, particularly Port Vila.

Dialects/Varieties

Paamese spoken in different parts of the island does differ slightly phonologically and morphologically but not enough to determine definite 'dialects splits'. Even in the extreme north and extreme south, places with the biggest difference, both groups can still communicate fully. There is no question of mutual intelligibility being impaired.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Stress is phonologically distinctive in Paamese. Syllable structure is CV in the casual form, arising from final vowel loss from the more careful form.

Writing system

There is a Paamese orthography which has been in use for over 75 years which accurately represents almost all of the consonant phonemes. The only point of difference is the labial fricative, which, although voiceless in most environments, is written. The velar nasal is written with the digraph. A long vowel is written with a macron over the vowel:.

Grammar

Nominal phrases

In Paamese nominals can occur in four environments:

as verbal subjects with cross-reference on the verb for person and number
as verbal objects with cross-reference on the verb for properness
as prepositional objects
as heads of nominal phrases with associated adjuncts

There are four major classes of nominals:

Pronouns
Indefinites
Possessives
Nouns
Pronouns

Free pronouns in Paamese:
The paucal is generally used for numbers in the range of about three to six, and the plural is generally used for numbers greater than twelve. In the range of six to twelve, whether a speaker of Paamese uses paucal or plural is dependent on what the thing being spoken about is contrasted with. For example, one's patrilineage will be referred to paucally when it is contrasted with that of the whole village, but plurally when it is contrasted with just the nuclear family. The paucal is also sometimes used even when it is referring to a very large number if it is contrasted with an even bigger number; for example comparing the population of Paama with that of Vanuatu as a whole. However, using the paucal with numbers above twelve is rare.

Indefinites

Unlike other nominals, indefinites can occur not only as nominal phrase heads, but also as adjuncts to other heads. There are two types of indefinites. The first are numerals. When Crowley was writing in 1982 he stated that the numeral system of Paamese was not used by anyone under the age of 30 and only rarely by those older than 30. It is unlikely, therefore, that many speakers use it today.
The following is a list of the seven non-numeral indefinites in Paamese:

sav - another
savosav - other
tetāi - any
koa, some
tei - some of it/them
haulu - many/much
musav - many/much
Possessives

All nouns fall into one of two subclasses using different constructions for possession. Categories can roughly be defined semantically into alienable and inalienable possession. Inalienability, semantically can be described as the relationship held between an animate possessor and an aspect of this possessor which can't exist independently of that being.
Body parts are the most common inalienable possession, but not all body parts are treated as inalienable; internal body parts are largely seen as alienable unless they are perceived to be central to emotions, individuality or maintenance of life itself. This can be explained through the experience of butchering or cooking of animals in which the internal organs are removed and thus alienated from the body. Extrusions that are expelled in normal bodily functions are regarded as inalienable while those that are periodically expelled or as a result of sickness are regarded as alienable. As such, bodily fluids such as urine, saliva, blood and excrement are treated as inalienable while sweat, blood clots and ear wax are alienable. An exception to this rule is vomit, however, which is treated as inalienable. Inalienability also extends to relations between people with blood relations being expressed in the alienable possessive construction.
Inalienable and alienable possessions are marked using different possessive constructions. Inalienable possessions are marked with a possessive suffix attaching directly onto the noun.
; NOUN-SUFFIX
While alienable possessions are marked with a possessive constituent to which the possessive suffix attaches.
; NOUN POSS-SUFFIX
The possessive suffix in both subclasses, however, is the same.
These classes are quite rigid and if an inalienable noun, semantically, can be alienated it would still have to be expressed using the inalienable construction.
Alienable possessions can be split into further subclasses represented by the different possessive constituent that the noun takes. These also have a semantic correspondence indicating the relationship between the possessed noun and the possessor.

A-n 'his/her/its ; 'intended specially for him/her/it'; 'specially characteristic of him/her/it'
Emo-n 'his/her/its '
Ese-n 'his/her '
One-n 'his/her/its '

These subclasses are not as rigid and a noun can be used with different possessive constituent according to its use.
When the possessed noun isn't a pronoun, the third person singular possessive suffix is attached to the possessed noun, which is then followed by the possessor noun.
If the possessed noun is inalienable, the third person singular suffix attaches directly to the noun with the possessor noun following.
No morpheme of any kind can intervene between a possessive suffix and the possessed noun in this construction.

Nouns

There are five subtypes of nouns in Paamese. The first are individual names of people or animals, that is of some particular person or animal. For example, Schnookims or Fido rather than cat or dog. Individual names are cross-referenced on the verb in object position with the same suffix used for pronouns, rather than the suffix used for non-proper objects.

Location nouns

There are two kinds of location nouns: relative and absolute. The relative nouns are a closed class of ten words with meanings such as above or nearby. The absolute nouns are an open class and refer to some specific location. Location nouns generally occur in the spatial case. Unlike all other nouns, in this case they take a zero marking rather than the preposition eni. Relative location nouns are distinguished grammatically from the absolute location nouns on the basis that they can freely enter into prepositionally linked complex nominal phrases while the absolute nouns cannot.

Time nouns

Time nouns are distinguished from other nouns grammatically on the basis that they can only be in the oblique or relative case. Like location nouns, they come in two types. The first can only receive a zero marking in the oblique case, while the second can be marked with either a zero marking or with the prepositions eni or teni.

Descriptive nouns

Descriptive nouns are marginal members of the noun category. Semantically, they describe some property or quality attributed to something, and grammatically they usually behave like adjectives, that is they occur as adjuncts in a copular verb phrase. However unlike adjectives they do occasionally appear in distinctly nominal slots such as in the subject or object position to a verb. Further, unlike an adjective, they cannot simply follow a head noun as an adjunct.

Common nouns

Common nouns include nouns that do not fit into any of the above noun categories. They are characterized grammatically as not having any of the special grammatical restrictions that apply to the other nouns, and also by the verb taking the non-proper suffix when a common noun is in the object position. Semantically, they include anything that can be considered alienable or inalienable.

Verb phrases

Paamese demonstrates extensive inflectional morphology on verbs, distinguishing between a number of different modal categories that are expressed as prefixes. Verb phrases in Paamese are distinguishable as they have as their head as member of the class of verbs followed by its associated verbal adjuncts and modifiers.

Verb roots

The verb root form is bounded on the left by subject-mood prefixes and on the right by inflectional suffixes. The root itself differs in form according to the nature of the environment it occurs in. Verb roots fall into one of six different classes according to the ways that the initial segment inflects. This inflection is demonstrated in the following table.

Class	A	B	C	D
I	t-	t-	r-	d-
II	k-	k-	k-	g-
III	k-	Ø-	k-	g-
IV	h-	h-	v-	v-
V	Ø-	Ø-	Ø-	mu-
VI	Ø-	Ø-	Ø-	Ø-

Each of the four root forms denotes a specific set of morpho-syntactic environments:

A
*as the second part of a compound noun
B
*in all affirmative irrealis moods of the verb
*when there is some preceding derivational morpheme
*when there is no preceding morpheme and the verb carries the nominalizer –ene
C
*as an adjunct to a verb phrase head
D
*in the realis mood of the verb
*in the negative form of the verb

A verb is entered into the lexicon in its A-form.
Transitive verbs can be further subdivided into classes according to the variation of the final segment of the root:

Class	X	Y	Z
1	-e	-a	-aa
2	-o	-a	-aa
3	-a	-a	-aa
4	-V	-V	-V

X
*word finally
*before the common object cross reference suffix –nV
*before a reduplicated part of a word
Y
*before bound object pronouns
*before the common object cross-reference suffix –e/-ie
Z
*before the partitive suffix –tei
*before the nominalizing suffix –ene