Palau language

Palaui
Spoken in	Palau , Guam
speaker	approx. 15,000
Linguistic ; classification	Austronesian Malayo Polynesian West Malayo Polynesian Palaui ;
Official status
Official language in	Palau
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	-
ISO 639 -2	pau
ISO 639-3	pau

Palauisch (also Belauisch , Selbstbez. A tekoi er a Belau ) is an Austronesian language that is spoken in Palau and in parts of Guam. The language has about 15,000 speakers.

classification

Palaui belongs to the West-Malayo-Polynesian group within the Austronesian languages. Besides Chamorro, it is the only language of this group that is spoken in Micronesia. In the West Malayo Polynesian group, Palaui has no close relatives and can therefore be viewed as an isolated language within this family.

history

Around 1000 BC Palau was settled. The occupations of the island by the Spaniards , Germans , Japanese and Americans , which have been changing over and over again since the 16th century , have hardly influenced the language apart from a few loan words.

Location of Palau

Palau

Official status

Alongside English, Palau is the official language of the Republic of Palau and is spoken in parts of Guam, where it is not one of the officially recognized languages. Palau has around 15,000 speakers.

Dialects and sociolects

There is very little dialect variation in Palaui.

Phonetics and Phonology

According to the system

With ten consonants and six vowels, the sound inventory of Palaui is relatively small compared to other Austronesian languages (e.g. Fiji: 20 consonants, five vowels). There are some peculiarities in the sound distribution.

Consonants

	bilabial		dental		alveolar		velar		glottal
	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.
Plosives		b	t	d			k		ʔ
Nasals		m						ŋ
Tap						ɾ
Fricatives					s
lateral approximants						l

Vowels

	front	central	back
high	i		u
central	ɛ	ə
deep		a

The vowels of Palau have few allophones . The phonemes [ə] and [e] are contrastive; that is, they can appear in the same context. The vowel length is a distinctive feature in Palau that separates words from one another. Long vowels are articulated as gliding sounds : [i:] and [e:] are pronounced as [y] gliding sounds, [u:] and [o:] as [w] gliding sounds.

delek [dəlekʰ] 'my nail' (from deel [dεyl] Nagel)

delek [Delek] 'my belly' (of diil [diyl] 'belly')

book [buw ʔ ə] 'betel nut'

chiis [ ʔ iys] 'escape'

Word Accent

The word accent for words without a suffix is generally on the panultima. There are a small number of unstressed monosyllabic words, e.g. B. chad [ʔað] 'person'. In suffixed forms, the word accent shifts to the suffix.

Sound distribution

Although Palaui has a voiced bilabial sound / b /, its unvoiced counterpart / p / does not exist. According to the criteria of the markedness approach , this is unusual: / p / is more unmarked than / b / and is therefore the more likely sound. So if one of these sounds is missing, it should be / b /. The lack of the voiceless bilabial plosive can be explained by the sound change from Proto-Austronesian (PAN) / * p / to Palauian / w /. PAN / * b /, on the other hand, has not changed and remains in Palau as / b /.

The less marked segment is also missing in nasals : there is / ŋ /, but not / n /. This gap in the sound system is explained by the sound change from PAN / * n / to Palaui / l /. The few existing examples for [n] are, according to Flora (1974), allophones of the underlying / ŋ /.

Allophones

The lateral , the tap , the fricative and the glottal plosive have no allophones in Palau . With the other phonemes, too, there is only slight allophonic variation. The dental plosive / d / has the allophones d, ð , t, θ ], which occur depending on the surrounding sounds at the beginning and end of a word and depending on the speed of speech. The velar plosive / k / becomes voiced between two vowels (e.g. ngikei [ngigəi] 'fish'). At the end of the word the dental and velar plosives are aspirated: dakt [ðaktʰ] 'fear'. The nasal / ŋ / becomes dental when it comes before t, d, s, r as well as loan words from Japanese or English. In all other contexts it is articulated velar .

Sound clusters

Palauian allows for some unusual clusters of consonants (combinations of consonants). In part, these clusters have formed through the historical elimination of vowels. For example, the word initial has the following clusters: / kp, θp, pk, km, pŋ /; Word-final clusters can look like this: / tp, kp, pθ, md, bl /, z. B. kbokb [kpokp] 'wall'. Impossible consonant clusters are combinations of dentals and / l / as well as any combination with the glottal plosive / ʔ /. Vowel clusters are also common in Palau. In vowel clusters, one of the vowels in the cluster is given the word accent, although in some cases both vowels may be left unstressed, e.g. B. eanged [yaŋəð] 'heaven', sixelei [sə ʔ əlεy] 'friend'

Reduplication

There are two types of reduplication that are particularly productive in Palau. Type I is a stem duplication that omits the segment on the right edge. Type II is a Ca reduplication that copies the initial consonant of the word stem and adds an / e / as a standard vowel. Type II reduplication can also operate on strains that have already been duplicated by type I, whereas type I reduplication can only be used on unreduplicated strains. The repeated reduplication does not change the meaning any further. The duplicated forms are also subject to a number of phonological processes, including a. Vowel reduction or shifting the word accent. Flora (1974) provides a detailed analysis of this.

Reduplication can operate on nouns and verbs in Palau, but it is only productive on verbs in contemporary language. In principle, both state and action verbs can be duplicated. However, it is not predictable whether a trunk will be duplicated or not.

Nominal reduplication: chatu 'smoke'> chetechat 'fog'

Verbal reduplication:

Type I:

medakt 'to be afraid'> medekdakt 'to be somehow afraid'

meduch 'gifted'> medecheduch 'very gifted'

Type II:

dekimes 'being wet'> dedekimes 'being kind of wet'

smecher 'be sick'> sesmecher 'be kind of sick'

Type II & Type I:

medakt> mededekdakt

meduch> mededecheduch

Changing the meaning of the word through reduplication : In general, the reduplication causes a weakening of the meaning of the word, and if there are a few words, it also reinforces the meaning. There is a group of state verbs that contain the resulting state infix -e- and the anticipatory state suffix -e and which change their meaning in a rather unusual way: the duplicated verbs refer to states that are caused by incomplete or inadequate performance of a task, z. B. ngeltachel 'cleaned' is reduplicated to ngengelachel 'superficially cleaned'. Reduplication is optional for reciprocal verbs and does not change the meaning for the majority of speakers (cf. kedakt or kadekdakt 'fear each other').

Other phonological processes

The liquids can form sequences in different word positions. / r / then becomes a vibrant . Furthermore, / m, ŋ , l, r / become syllabic consonants if they come before other consonants at the beginning of the word. The only exception to this is the cluster / ml / (see mlai [mlay] 'Kanu'). In general, metathesis and various vowel changes are common processes.

grammar

Palaui is one of the agglutinating languages, i.e. that is, words are mainly formed by adding affixes . The most important word classes in Palaui are nouns (including pronouns) and verbs, which take on many adjective functions. The particle a introduces all noun and verb phrases (but no pronouns and demonstratives). Regardless of the syntactic function of the phrase, it is placed directly in front of the phrase to be introduced.

morphology

noun

Palaui makes a clear distinction between human and non-human nouns. This comes into play in person marking: human nouns form the plural with the prefix re or r- , with non-human nouns there is no morphologically visible plural.

Definiteness is assigned to nouns in Palaui by introducing the specifier er . In connection with human nouns, the specifier is mandatory, there is no indefinite interpretation. If the specifier is missing, then the sentence is only understood as indefinite with imperfect verbs, perfective verbs always imply a specific object. In nonhuman makes it a singular-plural distinction. If the specifier is used, the noun is interpreted as specific and in the singular; if it is omitted, the meaning is ambiguous: it can be a non-specific noun in the singular or a specific noun in the plural.

Examples:

A neglekek	a medakt	a derumk.
Child POSS (1st P Sg)	to fear	Thunder.
'My child is afraid of thunder.'

A neglekek	a medakt	he	a derumk.
Child POSS (1st P Sg)	to fear	SPEC	Thunder.
'My child is afraid of the thunder.'

Ak	ousbech	he	a bilas	he	a klukluk.
I	need	SPEC	boat	SPEC	tomorrow.
'I need the boat tomorrow.'

Ak	ousbech	a bilas	he	a klukluk.
I	need	boat	SPEC	tomorrow.
'I need a boat / the boats tomorrow.'

Possessive forms are the only suffixes that can be attached to nominal stems. The possessive nouns are divided into three groups: inalienabel, i. H. inseparable possessive nouns, alienabel possessive nouns and nouns that never appear as a possessive form, but rather express the possession via a possessive phrase.

Inalienabel possessive nouns : This group includes body parts of humans and animals, kinship relationships, part-whole relationships and some other possessive relationships ( ultil 'his imprint'). However, not all words in these categories are automatically possessive. Possessive noun phrases can be possivated again: bkul a chimak 'my elbow'.
- The part-whole relationship and other possessive relationships usually only work with the 3rd person singular. They are usually followed by a specifying or identifying noun (e.g. ultil a oach 'footprint').
- The possessive noun uchul 'his trunk (tree), his reason' has been reinterpreted as an independent, non-possessive noun, which in turn has a possessive form with a modified meaning: uchulel 'beginning, origin, ancestors'.
- A small group of nouns relating to likes, dislikes, abilities, and obligations are not classified as inalienabel possessive; however, these nouns appear only as possessive forms, e.g. B. soak 'my preference':

Ng	soak	a bit.
PRON	Preference POSS (1st P Sg)	Beer.
'I like beer.' (literally: 'My preference is beer.')

Alienabel possessive nouns form the largest group. This also includes some loanwords that have adapted so much to the structure of Palau that they also allow possessive suffixes:

chim 'hand'> chimal 'her / his hand'

katuu 'cat'> katungel 'her / his cat'

The last group are the nouns that do not use possessive suffixes. These are primarily loan words of English, Japanese or other origin (e.g. sidosia 'car', rrat 'bicycle') as well as words of Palau origin that denote animals, plants and parts of nature ( lbolb 'wolf', chelechol 'beach') . In order to be able to be associated with a possessor, these nouns are integrated into a possessive phrase that contains the specifier er : sidosia er a Siabal 'Japanese car'.

Morphologically, the possessive suffixes correspond to the full forms of the pronouns. As with pronouns, the 3rd person plural can only be used with human nouns, so the 3rd person singular also functions as a singular and plural form for non-human nouns in the case of suffixes.

Overview of the possessive suffixes :

	Singular	Plural
1st person	-ek; -uk; -ik; -ak	-ed; -ud; - id; -ad (incl.) / -am (excl.)
2nd person	-em; -around; -in the; -at the	-iu
3rd person	-el; -ul; - il; - al	-ir

Depending on the stem of the noun, there are four different paradigms , each of which is distinguished by the vowel of the suffix. This vowel alternation appears in all singular forms as well as in the 1st person plural (inclusive). Flora (1974) divides the paradigms depending on the source of the vowel: the vowel can be thematic ( paradigm 1 ) or, more rarely, a stem-final vowel ( paradigm 2-4 ) that only appears with suffixes and is otherwise omitted at the end of the word. The emergence of the thematic vowel / e / is precisely predictable compared to the vowels from the other paradigms. The paradigm one follow some loanwords as tebel 'table'.

Using the example of dakt 'Angst':

	Singular	Plural
1st person	dekt ek	dekt ed / dektam
2nd person	dekt em	dektiu
3rd person	dekt el	dektir

For the nouns of paradigms 2–4 , according to Flora (1974), there are underlying final word vowels whose articulation is suppressed by phonetic restrictions. This analysis shows Flora that verbs have an analogous behavior in this regard. Examples of these paradigms:

Paradigm 2 : bad 'stone'> beduk 'my stone' etc.

Paradigm 3 : ker 'question'> kerik 'my question' etc.

Paradigm 4 : mad 'eyes'> medak 'my eyes' etc.

Which tribes will follow which of these paradigms cannot be predicted. There are examples of homophones who have different possessive forms:

chur 'laugh'> cherik 'my laugh'

chur 'tongue'> churak 'my tongue'

chur 'rib of a coconut frond ' > churul 'his rib of a coconut frond '

Possessive forms are subject to a number of vowel alternations . A common process is vowel reduction that occurs in unstressed syllables. As the word accent shifts to the suffix, the syllables of the stem are unstressed and many vowels are thereby reduced. The exception are mainly nouns that contain the vowel [i] and belong to body parts. In extreme cases, vowel erasure can occur. Other phenomena are the shortening of vowels and the shortening of vowel clusters.

pronoun

Full forms

Pronouns occur as independent full forms as well as suffixes . In the case of the full forms, a distinction is made between emphatic and non-emphatic pronouns:

	Non-Emphatic	Empathic
1st person singular	ak	ngak
2nd person singular	ke	chew
3rd person singular	ng	ngii
1st person plural inclusive	kede	kid
1st person plural exclusive	aki	keman
2nd person plural	com	kemiu
3rd person plural	te	tir

Emphatic pronouns are always stressed, whereas the non-emphatic pronouns are never. Which pronouns are used is context-bound and u. a. depends on whether the information reproduced is new or already known. Emphatic pronouns in subject position require that the verb phrase begin with the word a. Only emphatic pronouns can be used in coordinating noun phrases.

When shifting the subject, the non-emphatic pronouns act as a trace, i.e. that is, they are in the position in which the subject was before the displacement. In general, there is no change in meaning due to the subject shift. In general, however, a sentence without a shifted subject can be understood in such a way that new and unexpected information is conveyed, while sentences with a subject shift communicate expected information.

Pronominal affixes

Pronouns can be attached to verbs as suffixes , they then operate as object pronouns, e.g. B. cholebedak 'beats me'. This form is made up of cholebed- , the perfect stem of the verb mengelebed 'to beat', and the pronoun added to it.

	Singular	Plural
1st person	-ak	-id (incl) / -emam (excl)
2nd person	-au	-emiu
3rd person	-ii	-terir

Hypothetical pronouns are used in contexts where actions are not real but assumed, e.g. B. Requests or suggestions. Hypothetical verb forms are composed of a pronominal prefix and the verb stem. The 2nd and 3rd persons singular and plural coincide in hypothetical pronouns. Depending on the verb, each pronoun has three to seven different variants.

	melim 'drink'
1st person Sg	ku lim
2nd person Sg / Pl	chomo lim
3rd person Sg / Pl	lo lim
1st person pl incl	do lim
1st person Pl excl	kimo lim

Verbs

Tempus : Palauian has the three tense forms present, past and future. Verbs always have to tie a verb marker with a few exceptions. Georgopoulous classifies this verb marker as a realism marker, as it does not occur in hypothetical verb forms, for example. The verb marker can be a prefix , for example me- in mesuub 'to learn', or an infix like -m- in smecher 'to be sick'. If the verb stembeginswith b , dissimilated me- to o- , some other verbs also use o-, for example oker 'to ask'.

In the present tense , verbs are only given the verb marker and possibly an aspect marker. The past tense is expressed differently depending on the verb type: Action verbs connect an additional affix , the form of which depends on the verb marker; State verbs form the past by placing the auxiliary verb mle 'war' in front of the main verb. This also applies to action verbs, which are loanwords and thus structurally differ greatly from Palauian verbs. The future tense is formed by placing the auxiliary mo 'geht' in front of the main verb.

Aspect : A perfective-imperfective distinction is only made for transitive verbs. Imperfect verbs consist of three morphemes: the verb marker, the imperfect marker and the verb stem. Perfective verbs are made up of the verb marker, the verb stem and the object pronoun.

Person : The person seems to be tagged only on verbs that tie affixed pronouns (e.g. perfective verbs).

Nominal derivation : The prefix kl (e) - is usually linked to simple verbs of state, but can also operate on more complex verbs, for example reciprocal verbs, kasoes 'see each other' is linked to klasoes 'have a relationship with each other' . The prefix can also be attached to nouns, which then have a more abstract meaning: klengalek 'childhood' from ngalek 'child'.

Verb types : Palaui has a variety of verb types, the largest and most important of which is the group of transitive action verbs .
- Causative verbs have the prefixes ome (k) - and ol (e) - . The verb resulting from the causative prefixes is always transitive . Causative verbs have imperfective, perfective, and hypothetical forms. Some causative verbs with ome (k) - can be derived from nouns, they then designate an action in which the noun is included: bar 'ceiling' becomes omekbar ' to cover something / somebody with a blanket'. There are a small number of verb stems that can be tied with both causative prefixes. This leads to a differentiated meaning, which often also includes the intentionality of an action.

syntax

Word order

The linguists disagree on the question of the word order in Palaui. Josephs (1975) advocates the sequence subject-verb-object; the disadvantage of his theory is that almost every sentence only corresponds to the actual output after many movements of the sentence segment. In addition, Josephs cannot explain many phenomena with the word order he suggested. Waters (1980) therefore suggests the underlying verb-object-subject position and argues that Joseph's (1975) passive structure is actually a topicalization . This structure is ultimately also responsible for the frequent creation of the subject.

Principle types

Equal sentences do not need a verb.

A droteo	a sensei.
Droteo	Teacher.
'Droteo is a teacher.'

Transitive and intransitive sentences :

A toki	a mo	he	a skuul.
Toki	go	SPEC	School.
'Toki is going to school.' (intransitive)

A droteo	a mla mengat	a ngicle.
Droteo	was smoking	Fish.
'Droteo smoked the fish.' (transitive)

Imperfective and perfective sentences :

A ngalek	a milenga	a ngicle.
child	eat (IMPF) - VGH	Fish.
'The child ate the fish.'

A ngalek	a killii	a ngicle.
child	eat (PERF) - VGH	Fish.
'The child ate the fish.'

Questions :

Since the word order in question and affirmative sentences is identical, they can only be distinguished by the intonation or by interrogative words (e.g. tenga 'who').

Ng	techa	a mlo	he	a skuul?
PRON (3rd P Sg)	who	go-VGH	SPEC	School?
'Who went to school?'

If the question is asked about the object, the question word occupies the object position. If the question relates to more than one person, the question word also occurs twice and is connected by me 'and'.

Ke	milsa	a techa	me	a techa	he	a party?
PRON (2nd P Sg)	see-VGH	who	and	who	SPEC	Party?
'Who (plural) did you see at the party?'

Negation :

Almost all negated sentences are formed with the negating verb diak 'is not, does not exist', an intransitive state verb . The past tense of diak is dimlak . It arises from the metathesis of mle and diak .

A ngelekek	a smecher.
Child POSS (1st P Sg)	be sick.
'My child is ill.'

A ngelekek	a diak	lsecher.
Child POSS (1st P Sg)	Not be	HYP (3rd P Sg) - to be sick.
'My child is not sick.'

The verb or noun that directly follows the negation verb is given the (reduced) prefix of a hypothetical pronoun . Diak himself also has a hypothetical form: lak , whose past tense is lemlak . Diak also associates with other morphemes , e.g. B. dirkak 'not yet, never':

Ng	dirkak	kunguiu	he	a hong.
PRON (3rd P Sg)	not yet	HYP (1.P Sg) - read	SPEC	Book.
"I haven't read the book yet."

When answering questions, the negation verb with the 3rd person singular of the non-emphatic pronoun ng is used.

A droteo	a mlo	he	a skuul?
Droteo	go-VGH	SPEC	SPEC	School?
'Did Droteo Go to School?'

Ng	dimlak .
PRON (3rd P Sg)	not be-VGH.
'No.'

font

The alphabet includes the letters a, b, ch (the glottal plosive), d, e, i, k, l, m, ng (the velar nasal), o, r, s, t and u. The Japanese katakana are also used.

With the exception of a, long vowels are represented by double letters; the same applies to sequences of r and l.

research

The first grammar of Palau arose during the German rule on Palau. This work by the Roman Catholic Bishop Walleser (1911) used linguists as a reference for their work on Palaui until the 1980s.

Among the more recent works on Palaui, Joseph's reference grammar is the most detailed account of Palaui, although Joseph's analysis of the syntax is too superficial and therefore flawed. There is also a lot of work on phonetic processes in Palau as well as on morphology and syntax. A detailed list of the works on Palaui can be found in the web links.

literature

Marie Jo-Ann Flora: Palauan Phonology and Morphology. Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor 1974.
Carol Georgopoulos: Syntactic Variables - Resumptive Pronouns and A'-binding in Palauan. Kluwer, Dordrecht 1991.
Lewis S. Josephs: Palauan Reference Grammar. University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu 1975.
Richard C. Waters: Topicalization and Passive in Palauan. 1980, ucsc.edu ( Memento of April 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)

Web links

Language report on Palaui. Ethnologue
Bibliography of linguistic works on Palaui ( Memento of September 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
Database with basic Palauian vocabulary (Palauian-English)
Palauian-English Dictionary from Webster's Online Dictionary

Remarks

↑ From the available sources it is not clear whether the class of adjectives in Palau even exists, since the sources deal primarily with nominal and verbal morphology.
↑ This description by Josephs (1975) criticizes Georgopoulos (1991) as being too simple and goes into detail about the special functions of the particle.
↑ The absence of er in the following examples could be explained by the fact that here the phrase a neglekek 'my child' is already definite through the possession, although the possessive can also appear with the specifier.

Individual evidence

↑ ethnologue.com
↑ Carol Georgopoulos: Syntactic Variables - Resumptive Pronouns and A'-binding in Palauan. Kluwer, Dordrecht 1991, p. 21
^ Thomas E. McAuley: Language change in East Asia . Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0-7007-1377-8 , p. 90.

[3] From the available sources it is not clear whether the class of adjectives in Palau even exists, since the sources deal primarily with nominal and verbal morphology.

[4] This description by Josephs (1975) criticizes Georgopoulos (1991) as being too simple and goes into detail about the special functions of the particle.

[5] The absence of er in the following examples could be explained by the fact that here the phrase a neglekek 'my child' is already definite through the possession, although the possessive can also appear with the specifier.

[1] thnologue.com

[2] Carol Georgopoulos: Syntactic Variables - Resumptive Pronouns and A'-binding in Palauan. Kluwer, Dordrecht 1991, p. 21

[6] Thomas E. McAuley: Language change in East Asia . Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0-7007-1377-8 , p. 90.