Tawala language
language
Tawala is an Oceanic language of the Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. It is spoken by 20,000 people who live in hamlets and small villages on the East Cape peninsula, on the shores of Milne Bay and on areas of the islands of Sideia and Basilaki. There are approximately 40 main centres of population each speaking the same dialect, although through the process of colonisation some centres have gained more prominence than others.
Phonology
Tawala has a consonant inventory of nineteen consonants, an average vowel quality inventory of five vowels, and an also average consonant-vowel ratio of three.
Consonants
/j/ may have a fricative quality [z] when between low vowels.
Vowels
/a/ can be fronted before /u/ as [æ] in a stressed syllable.
Syntax
Non-verbal clauses
Tawala, like many Austronesian languages, makes frequent use of non-verbal constructions and phrases. This means sentences lacking verbs, not sentences being unspoken. In these situations, the verbs are simply implied by the subject, object, and context. Following are a couple simple examples of non-verbal clauses: in all there is no copula nor verb:
Demonstratives
There are three demonstratives in Tawala.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tawala language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.