Mono-Alu language

Mono
Mono-Alu
Region	Solomon Islands
Native speakers	(2,900 cited 1999)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Meso-Melanesian Northwest Solomonic Mono–Uruavan Mono
Dialects	Mono Alu Fauro
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mte
Glottolog	mono1273
ELP	Mono (Solomon Islands)

Mono, or Alu, is an Oceanic language of Solomon Islands reported in 1999 to be spoken by 660 people on Treasury Island (Mono proper), 2,270 on Shortland Island (Alu dialect), and 14 on Fauro Island.^[1]

Phonology

Mono-Alu language has been studied extensively by Joel L. Fagan,^[2] a researcher for the Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies at Australian National University. Their publication, "A Grammatical Analysis of Mono-Alu (Bougainville Straits, Solomon Islands),"^[3] is one of the first and only translations and analysis of Mono-Alu language.

Fagan identified the Mono-Alu language as having twenty-eight phonemes. They are made up of nine diphthongs, and five vowels and fourteen consonants that make up the alphabet.

The Alu alphabet

1. The Alu alphabet has 19 letters: A B D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V.
2. Of these letters, D was seldom used instead of R for euphony's sake, but is used now in new foreign words or names introduced in the language. H generally (not always) is or can be replaced by F.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation of vowels

• 'a' is usually pronounced as in flat
  • a sometimes pronounced as in fast
• 'e' is always pronounced as in ten
• 'i' is always pronounced as in tin
• 'o' is always pronounced as in not
• 'u' is always pronounced as in put

Pronunciation of diphthongs

• ai is pronounced "aye" - e.g. Galeai.
  • sometimes the letters are pronounced separately
• ei has no equivalent sound in English.
• oi is pronounced "oy" - e.g. ba-oi ('shark').
  • sometimes the letters are pronounced separately. - e.g. o-i-sa ('echo').
• ui used as a diphthong - e.g. sui-o ('swallow')
  • used separately - e.g. ku-i ('baby') with the exception^{[clarification needed]}

Pronunciation of consonants

• g is always pronounced as in Glas, giddy. Q is not used as is done elsewhere.^{[clarification needed]} Here also, the words are written as they are pronounced – e.g. ang (instead of ag), ing, ong, ung. When, exceptionally, the n is after g as in gnora, owing to the nasal pronunciation, the accentuated n can be used as in Choiseul.
• ng is pronounced as in English with the exception of uhg, the sound of u always being that of Latin.
  • ang is pronounced as in gang
  • ing is pronounced as in 'ring'
  • eng is pronounced as in 'length'
  • ong is pronounced as in 'wrong'

The other consonants have the same sounds as in English.

	Labial	Coronal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Plosive	p b	t	k g	ʔ
Fricative		s		h
Tap		ɾ
Approximant	(w)	l	(j)

• /b/ can also be heard as fricatives [β, v] under certain conditions.
• /ɡ/ can be heard as [ɣ] in free variation,
• /ɾ/ can also be heard as [d] in free variation within word-initial position, or as [dɾ] when following a nasal.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		ɐ

• /u, i/ are heard as glides [w, j] within vowel environments.^[4][3]

Numerals

The number system of Mono-Alu is very similar to other Austronesian languages.^[5] For example, Mono-Alu shares the numbers 'two' (elua) and 'five' (lima) with the Hawaiian Polynesian language. A number for 'zero' was available in the language, but it was under the same use as the word 'nothing.' Fagan identified numbers from one to ten-thousand in Mono-Alu.

Cardinal	English
Menna	nothing
Kala (or elea)	one
Elua	two
Episa	three
Ehati	four
Lima	five
Onomo	six
Hitu	seven
Alu	eight
Ulia	nine
Lafulu	ten
Lafulu rohona elea	eleven
Lafulu rohona elua	twelve
Lafulu rohona episa	thirteen
Lafulu rohona efati	fourteen
Lafulu rohona lima	fifteen
Lafulu rohona onomo	sixteen
Lafulu rohona hitu	seventeen
Lafulu rohona alu	eighteen
Lafulu rohona ulia	nineteen
Elua lafulu (or Tanaoge)	twenty
Episa lafulu (or Pisafulu)	thirty
Efati lafulu (or Fatiafulu)	forty
Lima lafulu (or limafulu)	fifty
Onomo lafulu	sixty
Fitu lafulu	seventy
Alu lafulu	eighty
Ulia lafulu (or Siafulu)	ninety
Ea latuu	one-hundred
Elua latuu	two-hundred
Ea kokolei	one-thousand
Elua kokolei	two-thousand
Lafulu kokolei	ten-thousand

^[3]

Mono-Alu also made^{[clarification needed]} use of ordinal numbers. However, only 'first' (famma) is an actual word, where all other successive numbers are a grammatical construct.

Ordinal	English
famma	first
Fa-elua-naang	second
Fa-epis-naana	third
Fa-ehati-naana	fourth
Fa-lima-naana	fifth
Fa-onomo-naana	sixth
Fa-hitu-naana	seventh
Fa-alu-naana	eighth
Fa-ulia-naana	ninth
Fa-lafulu-naana	tenth

^[3]

Grammar

Mono-Alu, like many other Austronesian languages, uses two separate pronouns for the first-person plural. One is inclusive, including the listener, and the other is exclusive, not including the listener. There are also no third-person pronouns available in the language. Fagan translated pronouns and their possessives.

^[3]

			Pronoun	Obj	Suffix	Other
1st person	singular		mafa	-afa	-gu	sagu
	plural	exclusive	mani	-ami	-mang, -ma	samang/sama
		inclusive	maita	-ita	-ra	sara
2nd person	singular		maito	-o	-ng	sang
	plural		maang	-ang	-mia	samia
3rd person	singular		---	-i, -ng	-na	sana
	plural		---	-ri, -iri	-ria	saria

Mono-Alu is very specific regarding adverbs and other verb affixes. Verbs can be altered with a prefix, infix, and a suffix.

Prefixes		Infixes		Suffixes
ang	relative prefix, alternate forms an, ai, a'nta	fa	infix denoting completion	ai	there, away
fa	causative prefix, fa becomes f before a, alternate form ha	fang	one another (reciprocal infix), alternate form fan	ma	hither, thither, alternate form ama
ta	infix or prefix showing action or state.	fero	elsewhere, to somewhere else
		isa	together, at the same time, alternate sa
		male	again (also occurs independently)
		mea	makes a plural
		meka	till[spelling?] tired, for a very long time, alternate form meko

^[3]

a	place where or whither,[clarification needed] alternate form ang occurs after a
ng	added to the first of two names gives the meaning 'and', alternate form m
ua	denotes addition, 'and', 'with'

-a	'of', especially before -ang, alternate forms an, ang, aan
afa-	'what?'
-ata	often found after verbs and other words, alternate forms eta, ita, ota, uta
ga	particle, most often after the first word in a sentence, untranslatable; 'so, therefore' at the beginning of a sentence, also used with pronoun forms to emphasise them: gafa, gami, gai, gaina, gang, etc.
-nana	equivalent to copula, alternate form nina
-titi	strengthens the idea of repetition or duration

Mono-Alu grammar also follows rules of gender.

Nouns

Gender of nouns

There are two ways of indicating differences of gender:

1. by different words: - e.g.
   • Tiong 'man' – Betafa 'woman'
   • Fanua 'men' – Talaiva 'women'
   • Lalaafa 'headman' – Mamaefa 'headwoman'
   • Tua-na 'his grandfather' – Tete-na 'his grandmother'
   • Kanega 'old man' (husband) – Magota 'old woman' (wife)
2. by using an ord^[spelling?] indicative of sex: – e.g.
   • Kui manuale 'baby' (male) – Kui batafa 'baby' (female)
   • Boo sule 'boar' – Boo tuaru 'sow' (sule and tuaru are used for animals only)

In other cases, there is no distinction between masculine, feminine and neuter.

Some exceptions within the rules of Mono-Alu have been discovered.^[6]

Two adverbs of place, instead of being written with a double consonant, are written with one only accentuated.

• e.g. Nai (instead of NNai) – 'here'
• 'Nao (instead of NNao) – 'there'

Instead of the aspirate h, the letter f can be used:

1. in verbs preceded by the causative ha (or fa)
   • e.g. fasoku (or hasoku) – 'let come'
2. in verbs preceded by the prefix han (or fan) meaning reciprocity or duality
   • e.g. fanua (or hanua) - 'mon'^[spelling?]
   • mafa (or maha) - 'I, no' ^[3]

There is no word for 'the' in the language.

Articles

There is no definite article in Alu.

There is no indefinite article such as 'a, an'; it is replaced by the indefinite number elea ('one').^[3]

References