Mbula language
Encyclopedia
Mbula is an Austronesian language
spoken by around 2,500 people on Umboi Island
and Sakar Island
in the Morobe Province
of Papua New Guinea
. Its basic word order
is subject–verb–object; it has a nominative–accusative case-marking strategy.
in the Madang Province
of Papua New Guinea, along the coast of Finschafen and across New Britain
. However more recent evidence suggests that it is a descendant of the Vitiaz Dialect Linkage. Its nearest genetic relations are the Kilenge and Maleu languages, its nearest geographic neighbour is the Papuan Kovai language.
and some 30% speak and understand some Ngero. Due to missionization and other factors, 35% can speak and write English.
phonemes of Mbula are as shown in the following table:
The consonant /b/ is realised as [β] intervocalically. Prenasalised stops, while requiring two phonetic units, exist as a single phonemic unit. The palatal glide /j/ is treated as being underlyingly vocalic in morphophonemic analysis while the labio-velar glide /w/ is analysed consonantally. All voiceless plosives, /p t k/, are optionally pronounced with a voiceless nasal release word finally. All velars are fronted or backed, depending on the vowel immediately contiguous to them within the same syllable. /t/ is palatalized to a voiceless, laminal, post-alveolar plosive when followed by a morpheme boundary and /i/.
Vowels are subject to two rules: penultimate lengthening which means that external realisations may be long vowels while the underlying form is a short vowel and epenthesis which means the insertion of a vowel where the underlying form of the morpheme does not contain one. Epenthesis
is regressive which means that epenthetic vowels take on the quality of the first vowel in the rest of the form. Vowel length is contrastive as can be seen in the following examples:
[molo] - long
[moːlo] - a type of ant
[mbili] - domestic animal
[mbiːli] - new shoot of a plant
[ipata] - 3SG be heavy
[ipaːta] - 3SG reads
structure is generally (C)V(C). VV can sometimes form a syllable in the case of a diphthong
or long vowel and syllable structure can be analysed as CCV when /w/ or /j/ is analysed as a C.
Orthography
As stated above, vowel length is contrastive. What would be written phonetically as a: is represented by aa. All long vowels are written this way. All alveolars (/t/, /d/, /n/, /nd/) are dental-alveolars. They are represented in the orthography by t, d, n and nd. The /j/ sound is represented by y. The complete orthography of Mbula is as follows:
a e i o u b d g k l m mb n nd ŋ ŋg p r s t w z y
A E I O U B D G K L M Mb N Nd ¿ ¿g P R S T W Z Y
Syntax
In an ideal grammar each classificatory word type would belong only to one category and in Mbula that is mostly the case. However, in the following three areas, word-forms exist which are hard to nail down as one or the other:
The occurrence of a form in a wide range of conversational environments can result in the gradual loss of morphological features which are not appropriate to some particular conversational environments as well as the morphological gain of features which are appropriate to other conversational environments. This can mean ultimately either category shift of a word class or even just the general greying of the word classes as iron clad categories.
didi - wall
-didi - to wall in
peeze - paddle
-peeze - to paddle
kor - implement for sweeping
-kor - to sweep up using this implement
ris - a line
-ris - to draw a line
There are eight semantic features of noun referents which are especially important for characterising the morphosyntactic behaviour of Mbula nouns:
Pronouns also inflect for nominative, accusative, referent and locative cases. Most pronouns are composed of an initial case marker plus a person-number marker. The nominative series of pronouns is generally used to encode animate participants which function as subjects. There are three demonstrative pronouns: ingi (this one, these ones), ina (that one, those ones) and inga (that one over there, those ones over there). Accusative pronouns encode animate participants which function as objects. The referent pronouns encode virtually any animate oblique argument. Locative pronouns indicate an animate location toward which an action is taking place in dynamic predications, or at which an item is located. The locative form is also used to encode possession. Interrogative pronouns such as who, when, where, operate in a replacement fashion. That is, the interrogative pronoun is used in place of the normal syntactic position of the item being questioned.
All of these non-inflecting verbs function only as predicates in clauses. Thus they cannot function as heads of noun phrases and they cannot function as restrictive modifiers of nouns unless they are relativised or nominalised. Syntactically, they resemble inflected verbs. They are only distinguished from other verbs morphologically.
Complementizer
Complementisers are uninflected forms which only govern a following sentence. The combination of a complementiser and a following sentence becomes the constituent in a noun or predicate phrase. Mbula contains seven types of complementiser:
Conjunctions
There are a great deal of conjunctions in Mbula that each encode their own subtly different meaning. However, all conjunctions fall broadly into four categories: temporal conjunctions, conditional conjunctions, causal conjunctions and disjunctions.
a - I want to say something
ais - I want something
ha - I hear something, I don't know what it is
ii - I don't know
lak - I want to ask you something
som - I do not agree with you
yo(o) - I say you did something good
ywe - I think you are bad
in the Mbula language is not complex. There is little inflection
of both nouns and verbs and few derivation
al processes. Most words in the Mbula language are mono-morphemic. Multi-morphemic words can be formed via the following processes:
These processes will be discussed below.
1sg - ang
2sg - nothing ~ ku
3sg - i
1pl.inc - t
1pl.exc - am
2pl - k
3pl - ti
gen.1sg - ng
gen.2sg - m
gen.3sg - VnV
gen.1pl.inc - ndV
gen.1pl.inc - yam
gen.2pl - yom
gen.3pl - n
and some other minor processes. Compounding is not a very productive process in Mbula though is far more common in verbs than in nouns. Verbs can compound with adverbs, nouns and other verbs to create verbs. Nouns are more likely to be derived by the nominalising suffix -nga. When combined with adverbs it yields stative nouns, with nouns it can either signal an intensification of meaning or a slight change in meaning (with no intensification), it turns stative verbs into stative nouns and dynamic verbs into nouns. Semantically, -nga derivations tend to convey the idea of generic, habitual or characteristic actions. A further nominalisation suffix -i exists but is far less productive than -nga. Transitivity of predicates can be altered by the addition of one or more of the following prefixes: pa, par, m and these are extremely productive processes. Finally, reduplication can result in any one of the following meanings: plurality, distribution, intensification, diminution or habitual-durative action (action that is somehow extended).
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
spoken by around 2,500 people on Umboi Island
Umboi Island
Umboi is a volcanic island between the mainland of Papua New Guinea and the island of New Britain. It is separated from New Britain by Dampier Strait and has an elevation of 1,548 m. Umboi is a Holocene complex volcano with no historic eruptions...
and Sakar Island
Sakar Island
Sakar Island is a volcanic island northwest of New Britain in the Bismarck Sea, at . It is a stratovolcano with a summit crater lake. No recorded eruptions are known.- References :*...
in the Morobe Province
Morobe
Morobe may refer to several places in Papua New Guinea:*Morobe Province*Morobe, Papua New Guinea*Morobe Goldfield *Morobe Bay...
of Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
. Its basic word order
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
is subject–verb–object; it has a nominative–accusative case-marking strategy.
Name
Mbula speakers generally display difficulty expressing a name for their language. Historically it has been referenced as Mangap or Kaimanga but Kaimanga is considered an offensive term along the lines of "unsophisticated bush person". Mangap is not in known use however Mangaaba is the name given to Mbula speakers by Siassi Islanders. Mbula is the only name known to have been used by Mbula speakers themselves, though many of them are unfamiliar with this.Language Family and Origin
Mbula is a member of the Oceanic group of Austronesian languages. It was originally proposed as a member of the Siassi Family language group which is a set of languages extending from Karkar IslandKarkar Island
Karkar Island is an oval-shaped volcanic island located in the Bismarck Sea, about 30 kilometres off the north coast of mainland Papua New Guinea in Madang Province. The island is about 25 km in length and 19 km in width. In the centre is an active volcano with two nested calderas...
in the Madang Province
Madang Province
Madang is a province on the northern coast of mainland Papua New Guinea. The province has many of the country's highest peaks, active volcanoes and its biggest mix of languages...
of Papua New Guinea, along the coast of Finschafen and across New Britain
New Britain
New Britain, or Niu Briten, is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from the island of New Guinea by the Dampier and Vitiaz Straits and from New Ireland by St. George's Channel...
. However more recent evidence suggests that it is a descendant of the Vitiaz Dialect Linkage. Its nearest genetic relations are the Kilenge and Maleu languages, its nearest geographic neighbour is the Papuan Kovai language.
Location
Mbula speakers are generally located in seven villages: Gaura, Yangla, Birik, Marile, Kampalap, Kabi and Sakar. These villages are located on Sakar Island and the eastern half of Umboi Island. Both islands are inactive volcanos and both are rich in game, timber and fish. Location has influenced the language in that there are many specific vocabular items for species of fish, shells, canoes, nets, spears and a pair of motion verbs '-pet - to go out, appear, happen' and '-le - to enter' which specifically describe paths of motion which are radially outward toward the sea or radially inward from the sea.People and Culture
Colonialism has had a fair impact on the culture of Mbula speakers. Missionization began in 1884 and the vast majority of Mbula speakers now identify themselves as Christian. Some traditions are retained from tribal religions, foremost among them are those concerning sorcery, white magic and divination. Two general types of magic are identified among speakers, naborou, a beneficial love magic used by many young men in their pursuit of young ladies and yaamba, a kind of mildly destructive magic used to curse and hurt others. A third kind, pu, is considered the most evil, used only to kill or disable people.Language Contact
The Mangap-Mbula are part of a previously extensive trading network with bordering language groups, especially those in the Ngero language group of the Siassi islands which formed the hub of the trading network. As a result approximately 65% of Mbula speakers are at least somewhat bilingual in Tok PisinTok Pisin
Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country...
and some 30% speak and understand some Ngero. Due to missionization and other factors, 35% can speak and write English.
Consonants
The consonantConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
phonemes of Mbula are as shown in the following table:
| Bilabial | Dental/Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless Oral Stops | p | t | k | |
| Voiced Oral Stops | b | d | ɡ | |
| Voiced Pre-Nasalised Stops | mb | nd | ŋɡ | |
| Voiceless Fricative | s | |||
| Voiced Fricatives | z | |||
| Nasals | m | n | ŋ | |
| Lateral | l | |||
| Trill | r | |||
| Glides | w | j | ||
The consonant /b/ is realised as [β] intervocalically. Prenasalised stops, while requiring two phonetic units, exist as a single phonemic unit. The palatal glide /j/ is treated as being underlyingly vocalic in morphophonemic analysis while the labio-velar glide /w/ is analysed consonantally. All voiceless plosives, /p t k/, are optionally pronounced with a voiceless nasal release word finally. All velars are fronted or backed, depending on the vowel immediately contiguous to them within the same syllable. /t/ is palatalized to a voiceless, laminal, post-alveolar plosive when followed by a morpheme boundary and /i/.
Vowels
Mbula has five vowels phonemes as shown in the following table. Phonetically front vowels are unrounded and back vowels are rounded. /i/ and /u/ can be lax or tense and /e/ can be half close tense and half open lax. All vowels can be short or long though this is interpreted in the phonology as a sequence of two vowels rather than as the existence of long vowel phonemes. The two high vowels /i/ and /u/ are lowered slightly when followed by /e/, /o/, or /a/.| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a |
Vowels are subject to two rules: penultimate lengthening which means that external realisations may be long vowels while the underlying form is a short vowel and epenthesis which means the insertion of a vowel where the underlying form of the morpheme does not contain one. Epenthesis
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
is regressive which means that epenthetic vowels take on the quality of the first vowel in the rest of the form. Vowel length is contrastive as can be seen in the following examples:
[molo] - long
[moːlo] - a type of ant
[mbili] - domestic animal
[mbiːli] - new shoot of a plant
[ipata] - 3SG be heavy
[ipaːta] - 3SG reads
Suprasegmentals
The placement of stress is predictable. In most words, primary stress falls on the penultimate syllable.Syllable Patterns
SyllableSyllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
structure is generally (C)V(C). VV can sometimes form a syllable in the case of a diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
or long vowel and syllable structure can be analysed as CCV when /w/ or /j/ is analysed as a C.
OrthographyOrthographyThe orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
As stated above, vowel length is contrastive. What would be written phonetically as a: is represented by aa. All long vowels are written this way. All alveolars (/t/, /d/, /n/, /nd/) are dental-alveolars. They are represented in the orthography by t, d, n and nd. The /j/ sound is represented by y. The complete orthography of Mbula is as follows:a e i o u b d g k l m mb n nd ŋ ŋg p r s t w z y
A E I O U B D G K L M Mb N Nd ¿ ¿g P R S T W Z Y
SyntaxSyntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
and Word Classes
In an ideal grammar each classificatory word type would belong only to one category and in Mbula that is mostly the case. However, in the following three areas, word-forms exist which are hard to nail down as one or the other:- verbs and prepositions
- verbs and adverbs
- verbs and instrumental nouns
The occurrence of a form in a wide range of conversational environments can result in the gradual loss of morphological features which are not appropriate to some particular conversational environments as well as the morphological gain of features which are appropriate to other conversational environments. This can mean ultimately either category shift of a word class or even just the general greying of the word classes as iron clad categories.
Verbs and Prepositions
Prototypical verbs and prototypical prepositions exist along a cline with verbs at the start, prepositions at the end, and multicategoried word types in the middle:- forms inflected with the Subject prefixes which function syntactically only as predicatePredicate (grammar)There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
s in sentences - forms not inflected with the Subject prefixes which syntactically function only as predicates in sentences (the uninflected verbs discussed below in verbs)
- forms potentially exhibiting Subject agreement inflection which function syntactically as both predicates in sentences and in serial constructions (the prepositional verbs discussed below)
- forms never exhibiting inflection and which function syntactically only as prepositions
Verbs and Adverbs
Prototypical verbs and adverbs exist along a cline with verbs at the start, adverbs at the end and multicategoried word types in the middle:- inflected verbs which never occur as modifiers within the predicate phrase and never occur in cosubordinate adverbial predications
- inflected verbs which never occur as modifiers within the predicate phrase, and can occur in either a preceding or following cosubordinate adverbial predication
- uninflected verbs which never occur as modifiers within the predicate phrase, but which can occur in either a preceding or following cosubordinate adverbial predication
- forms which can occur as modifiers in the predicate phrase after the object or occur as uninflected verbs in an adjacent cosubordinate adverbial predication
- forms which occur immediately after the object and never function as predicates in an adjacent cosubordinate adverbial construction
- forms which can occur immediately after the predicate and never function as a predicate in an adjacent cosubordinate adverbial construction
Verbs and Instrumental Nouns
Verbs and instrumental nouns crossover in that verbs theoretically derived from these nouns appear in an identical form. I.e., there is no overt morphological derivation which might indicate what direction the derivation has occurred in. Examples include:didi - wall
-didi - to wall in
peeze - paddle
-peeze - to paddle
kor - implement for sweeping
-kor - to sweep up using this implement
ris - a line
-ris - to draw a line
Nouns
There is no syntactic distinction between nouns and adjectives in Mbula. Nouns are syntactically distinguished by the following three characteristics:- They may function 'in isolation' (i.e. without any further syntactic modification) as arguments in a predication, a property that distinguishes them from non-inflecting stative verbs.
- When functioning as the heads of noun phrases, nouns occur phrase initially with all modifiers following.
- A subclass of nouns is morphologically distinguished by being obligatorily inflected with a set of genitive suffixes.
There are eight semantic features of noun referents which are especially important for characterising the morphosyntactic behaviour of Mbula nouns:
- human referent
- animate referent
- potent (the referent of the noun can be viewed as the ultimate cause of some process which affects another entity)
- concrete (the noun can potentially refer to a physical location to which, at which, or from which an event takes place)
- temporal (the noun may be used to delineate the time at which an event takes place)
- potentially consumable (the referent of the noun can be eaten or drunk)
- individuated/count (the referent of the noun may be easily separated from its environment and may not be divided without changing its essential nature/character)
- inalienableAlienability (linguistics)Alienability as a grammatical concept in some languages, such as Tlingit, Rama, or Paama, related to the concept of possession.A noun is called inalienable noun, if it must always have a possessed relationship with another noun...
genitive (the referent of the item is inherently associated with some other entity)
Pronouns
Pronouns make the following person/number distinctions.- 1 singular
- 1 dual exclusive
- 1 dual inclusive
- 1 plural exclusive
- 1 plural inclusive
- 2 singular
- 2 dual
- 2 plural
- 3 singular
- 3 dual
- 3 plural
Pronouns also inflect for nominative, accusative, referent and locative cases. Most pronouns are composed of an initial case marker plus a person-number marker. The nominative series of pronouns is generally used to encode animate participants which function as subjects. There are three demonstrative pronouns: ingi (this one, these ones), ina (that one, those ones) and inga (that one over there, those ones over there). Accusative pronouns encode animate participants which function as objects. The referent pronouns encode virtually any animate oblique argument. Locative pronouns indicate an animate location toward which an action is taking place in dynamic predications, or at which an item is located. The locative form is also used to encode possession. Interrogative pronouns such as who, when, where, operate in a replacement fashion. That is, the interrogative pronoun is used in place of the normal syntactic position of the item being questioned.
Verbs
The characteristic syntactic function of verbs is to act as the heads of predications in which they occur. They are defined by a number of properties:- They typically index the person and number of the subject of the sentence.
- They may contain transitivity-altering prefixes.
- They may not function as noun-phrase modifiers in certain frames.
Uninflected Verbs
There are several categories of non-inflecting verbs in Mbula:- stative experiential verbs
- stative verbs encoding properties
- verbs of manner
- aspectual verbs
All of these non-inflecting verbs function only as predicates in clauses. Thus they cannot function as heads of noun phrases and they cannot function as restrictive modifiers of nouns unless they are relativised or nominalised. Syntactically, they resemble inflected verbs. They are only distinguished from other verbs morphologically.
Adverbials
The reason this class is called adverbials and not adverbs is because Mbula contains a large collection of words which are defined as modifiers of constituents other than nouns. Semantically, such forms typically encode notions of time, aspect, manner and modality.Quantifiers
Quantifiers are uninflected forms which always occur in noun phrases following nouns, locative/alienable genitive pronouns, and attributive stative nouns, but before determiners, locative/alienable genitive prepositional phrases, relative clauses and demonstratives. The Mbula counting system is based upon the notions of five and twenty.Prepositions
Prepositions are generally uninflected forms which govern a single noun phrase complement and relate it to a head or predicate. Mbula employs five categories of prepositions:- the referent preposition -pa- used for oblique arguments
- the locative preposition -ki- used for animate goals towards which some entity moves, sites at which some entity is located and body parts which perceive something
- the preposition -kembei- used to express resemblance, similarity or approximate equality (i.e., like, as)
- the comitative and manner prepositions -ramaki-/-raama- used for accompaniment and manner
- prepositional verbs discussed below
Prepositional Verbs
These forms are a set of optionally inflected verbs which occur in serialisations functioning as case markers. As they may potentially contain inflection for third person singular in these serialisations they depart from the typical uninflected preposition. However, they retain the prepositional function of relating a dependent noun phrase to a verbal head.Demonstratives
Demonstratives in Mbula include determiners which occur in noun phrases and what one may call 'locative adverbial use' - those demonstratives which encode location in sentences. Because there is no morphological distinction between the two, they are considered to constitute a single class.ComplementizerComplementizerIn linguistics , a complementizer is a syntactic category roughly equivalent to the term subordinating conjunction in traditional grammar. For example, the word that is generally called a complementizer in English sentences like Mary believes that it is raining...
s
Complementisers are uninflected forms which only govern a following sentence. The combination of a complementiser and a following sentence becomes the constituent in a noun or predicate phrase. Mbula contains seven types of complementiser:- kokena - lest (I don't want this to happen)
- be ~ nothing - non-presupposition of factuality (I do not say this is something which has happened)
- (ta)kembei - like (I think like this)
- nothing - asserted factuality (I say this is something which has happened or is happening)
- ta(u) ~ nothing - presupposed factuality (I know that this is something which has happened and I think you know about it too)
- tabe - presupposed non-factuality (I know that this is something which has not happened and I think you know about it)
- ki - habitual event (This is the kind of thing that is always happening)
ConjunctionsConjunctionsConjunctions, is a biannual American literary journal based at Bard College. It was founded in 1981 and is currently edited by Bradford Morrow....
There are a great deal of conjunctions in Mbula that each encode their own subtly different meaning. However, all conjunctions fall broadly into four categories: temporal conjunctions, conditional conjunctions, causal conjunctions and disjunctions.Interjections
There are a number of interjections in Mbula, all of which play no role in the grammar of the language, but which function to convey the speaker's attitudes and intentions. They always occur sentence initially and include the following examples:a - I want to say something
ais - I want something
ha - I hear something, I don't know what it is
ii - I don't know
lak - I want to ask you something
som - I do not agree with you
yo(o) - I say you did something good
ywe - I think you are bad
Morphology
Word structureMorphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
in the Mbula language is not complex. There is little inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
of both nouns and verbs and few derivation
Derivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
al processes. Most words in the Mbula language are mono-morphemic. Multi-morphemic words can be formed via the following processes:
- indexing on verbs for the person and number of the Subject
- inflection of inalienable nouns for the person and number of their genitives
- reduplication
- derivation of predicates to increase or decrease their transitivity
- compounding
- nominalisation
These processes will be discussed below.
Inflectional Morphology
The only types of inflectional processes in the language are on verbs for the person and number of the Subject, inflection of inalienable nouns for the person and number of their genitives as well as pronoun person/number distinctions.Verbal Inflection
Verbs typically index the person and number of the subject of the sentence with the following set of subject prefixes:1sg - ang
2sg - nothing ~ ku
3sg - i
1pl.inc - t
1pl.exc - am
2pl - k
3pl - ti
Inflection of Inalienable Nouns
Mbula contains a class of nouns which are obligatorily inflected with genitive suffixes. 'Inalienable' is a term that describes the semantic nature of the nouns. That is, they are semantically considered in speakers’ minds to be inalienable or inseparable from something. Examples include body parts and family members – concepts which exist in relation to something else, just the way an edge cannot exist without being the edge of something. Following is a list of the genitive suffixes:gen.1sg - ng
gen.2sg - m
gen.3sg - VnV
gen.1pl.inc - ndV
gen.1pl.inc - yam
gen.2pl - yom
gen.3pl - n
Pronoun Inflection
Pronouns in Mbula inflect for first, second and third person as well as singular, dual and plural, as well as inclusive and exclusive in the first person. They also change depending on whether they are in the nominative, accusative, referent or locative case. The following table details the paradigm:| Nominative | Accusative | Referent | Locative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1SG | nio | yo | pio | tio |
| 2SG | nu ~ niwi | u | pu ~ piwi | ku ~ kiwi |
| 3SG | ni | i | pini | kini |
| 1DU.INC | ituru | |||
| 1DU.EXC | niamru | |||
| 2DU | niomru | |||
| 3DU | ziru | |||
| 1PL.INC | iti | ti | piti | kiti |
| 1PL.EXC | niam | yam | piam | tiam |
| 2PL | niom | yom | piom | tiom |
| 3PL | zin | zin | pizin | kizin |
Derivational Morphology
The following types of derivation occur in Mbula: compounding of nouns and verbs, creation of nouns by means other than compounding, derivational devices which alter the transitivity of verbs, reduplicationReduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
and some other minor processes. Compounding is not a very productive process in Mbula though is far more common in verbs than in nouns. Verbs can compound with adverbs, nouns and other verbs to create verbs. Nouns are more likely to be derived by the nominalising suffix -nga. When combined with adverbs it yields stative nouns, with nouns it can either signal an intensification of meaning or a slight change in meaning (with no intensification), it turns stative verbs into stative nouns and dynamic verbs into nouns. Semantically, -nga derivations tend to convey the idea of generic, habitual or characteristic actions. A further nominalisation suffix -i exists but is far less productive than -nga. Transitivity of predicates can be altered by the addition of one or more of the following prefixes: pa, par, m and these are extremely productive processes. Finally, reduplication can result in any one of the following meanings: plurality, distribution, intensification, diminution or habitual-durative action (action that is somehow extended).