Tawala is one of the 48 languages spoken in the Milne Bay Province

Milne Bay Province

Milne Bay is a province of Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Alotau. The province covers 14,000 km² of land and 252,990 km² of sea, within the province there are more than 600 islands, about 160 of which are inhabited...

 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...

.
The language is spoken by approximately 10,000 people who live in hamlets and small villages on the East Cape peninsula, on the shores of Milne Bay

Milne Bay

Milne Bay is a large bay in Milne Bay Province, southeastern Papua New Guinea. The bay is named after Sir Alexander Milne.The area was a site of the Battle of Milne Bay in 1942....

 and on areas of the islands of Sideia

Sideia Island

Sideia Island is an island in the Louisiade Archipelago in Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. It is located East of the end of New Guinea mainland. Its area is 107 km²....

 and Basilaki

Basilaki Island

Basilaki Island is an island in the Louisiade Archipelago in Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. It is located at the eastern end of the New Guinea mainland. Its area is 100 km2.- References :http://islands.unep.ch/...

. There are approximately 40 main centres of population each speaking the same dialect, although through the process of colonisation

Colonisation

Colonization occurs whenever any one or more species populate an area. The term, which is derived from the Latin colere, "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect", originally related to humans. However, 19th century biogeographers dominated the term to describe the...

 some centres have gained more prominence than others.

Phonology

Tawala has a moderately small consonant

Consonant

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 ,...

 inventory of 15 consonants, an average vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

 quality inventory of five vowels, and an also average consonant-vowel ratio of 3.

Consonants

	Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	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...	Retroflex Retroflex consonant A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Plosive	p  b	t  d		k  g	Ɂ
Labialised Plosive	pw  bw			kw  gw
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m	n
Labialised Nasal	mw
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		s			h
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...		j	l	ɰ

Vowels

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	i		u
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	e		o
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...		a

Pronouns

Tawala distinguishes three persons

Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...

: first, second and third. There are only two grammatical numbers

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

, singular and plural although first person plural makes a distinction between inclusive and exclusive

Clusivity

In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...

.


Although there are five classes of pronouns in Tawala only the independent pronouns class should be considered as pronouns proper as they are the only class consisting of free forms. The remaining four classes occur with independent pronouns in a phrase.

Independent Pronouns

Person Grammatical person Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...	| Number
	Singular	Plural
1INC	tau	tauta
1EXCL		tauyai
2	tam	taumi
3	tauna	tauhi

Subject Prefix and Object Enclitic

Subject prefixes and object enclitics

Clitic

In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...

 attach to a verb to mark person and number of both subject and object respectively.

	1SG	2SG	3SG	1PL.INC	1PL.EXC	2PL	3PL
Object Enclitic	-u/we	-m	-ni/ya	-ta	-yai	-mi	-hi
Subject Prefix	a-	u-	i-	ta-	to-	o-	hi-

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

Tauhi	hai	mae	hi-nonogo-ge-ni.
they	their	stay	3PL-prepare-TRV-3SG
"They prepared their residence."

Possession

Tawala distinguishes alienable and inalienable possession

Inalienable possession

In linguistics, inalienable possession refers to the linguistic properties of certain nouns or nominal morphemes based on the fact that they are always possessed. The semantic underpinning is that entities like body parts and relatives do not exist apart from a possessor. For example, a hand...

.

Possessive Pronouns

Alienable possession is constructed by a free-standing possessive pronoun

Possessive pronoun

A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...

 that marks the person and number of the possessor

Possession (linguistics)

Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses the referent of the other ....

.

Person Grammatical person Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...	| Number
	Singular	Plural
1INC	u	ata
1EXCL		i
2	om	omi
3	a	hai

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

Lawa	hai	tano	hi-dewa-hi.
person	POSS.3PL	garden	3PL-make-3PL
"The people made their gardens."

Pronominal Enclitics

Inalienable possession is constructed by attaching a pronominal enclitic to the possessed noun.

Person Grammatical person Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...	| Number
	Singular	Plural
1INC	-u/we	-ta
1EXCL		-yai
2	-m	-mi
3	-na	-hi

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

polo	ae-na
pig	leg-POSS.3SG
"The pig's leg."

External Links

Tawala Language at Ethnologue