Mono-Alu language

Mono, also known as Alu, is an Oceanic language of the Solomon Islands, reportedly spoken by a total of 2,944 people with 660 people on Treasury Island (Mono proper), 2,270 on Shortland Island (Alu dialect), and 14 on Fauro Island in 1999.

The Mono-Alu language has been documented by Joel L. Fagan, a researcher at the Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. His publication, "A Grammatical Analysis of Mono-Alu (Bougainville Straits, Solomon Islands)," is the first and only translation and analysis of the Mono-Alu language.

Orthography

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, and 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. It is also used to represent the allophonic variant [d] of the phoneme /ɾ/.
3. The letter V is used to represent the allophonic variant [v] of the phoneme /b/.
4. The letter H is sometimes replaced by F.
5. Length distinctions of vowels and nasals are not represented in the current orthography.
6. Although not in the alphabet, the letters J and Z can be used to represent the marginal phonemes /d͡ʒ/ and /z/, respectively, which only occur in loanwords and appear to be phonologically integrated.

Phonology

Consonants

There are 13 phonemic consonants in Mono-Alu.

	Labial	Coronal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link ⟨ng⟩
Plosive	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Fricative		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Tap		Template:IPA link ⟨r⟩
Approximant	(Template:IPA link) ⟨u⟩	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link) ⟨i⟩

• /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.
• /u, i/ are heard as glides [w, j] within vowel environments.
• Other sounds /z/ and /d͡ʒ/ only occur in loanwords.

Vowels

The Mono-Alu vowel system consists of five phonemic monophthongs and three long vowels.

	Front	Central	Back
High	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link, Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link ⟨e⟩		Template:IPA link, Template:IPA link ⟨o⟩
Low		Template:IPA link, Template:IPA link ⟨a⟩

• /i/ has the allophone [iʲ] and it occurs before other vowels (e.g. [sɐpɐiʲɐ] ‘tuber species’, [mɐniʲɔkɔ] ‘papaya’).
• /u/ can occur as [ʊ] in casual speech when the vowel is short and it does not occur in word-final open syllables. The allophone [uʷ] occurs before /i/ and /ɛ/ (e.g. [kuʷisɐ] ‘basket’, [suʷɛlɛ] ‘sleep’).
• /ɔ/ has the allophonic variant [ɔʷ] and it occurs in the exclamation [kɔʷɛ] and is the only instance where this allophone is attested. Elsewhere it is pronounced as [ɔ].
• /ɐ/ and /ɛ/ do not have allophones.

Syllable structure

The syllable structure can be either (C)V₁(V₂)(N) or (ʔ)N, where C can be any consonant (including nasals), V can be any vowel, and N can be either /n/ or /ŋ/. The sequence V₁V₂ represents a long vowel if both V's are the same phoneme, or a diphthong if they are different. In the syllable pattern (ʔ)N, N is a nasal syllabic nucleus (e.g. [ŋ̩.kɐ] ‘mother’, [ŋ̩.kɔ.tɔ] ‘take, hold’).

Both in coda and nucleic position, N is always realized as velar [ŋ] before /k/, /g/ /ʔ/, and /h/.

Numerals

The number system of Mono-Alu is very similar to other Austronesian languages. For example, Mono-Alu shares the words for the numbers 'two' () and 'five' () with the Hawaiian language. A number for 'zero' exists in the language but is under the same use as the word 'nothing.' Fagan identified numbers from one to ten thousand in Mono-Alu.

Cardinal	English
	zero
(or )	one
	two
	three
	four
	five
	six
	seven
	eight
	nine
	ten
	eleven
	twelve
	thirteen
	fourteen
	fifteen
	sixteen
	seventeen
	eighteen
	nineteen
(or )	twenty
(or )	thirty
(or )	forty
(or )	fifty
	sixty
	seventy
	eighty
(or )	ninety
	one-hundred
	two-hundred
	one-thousand
	two-thousand
	ten-thousand

Mono-Alu also madeTemplate:Clarify use of ordinal numbers. However, only 'first' () is an actual word, where as all other successive numbers are a grammatical construct.

Ordinal	English
	first
	second
	third
	fourth
	fifth
	sixth
	seventh
	eighth
	ninth
	tenth

Grammar

Pronouns

Mono-Alu, like many other Austronesian languages, uses two separate pronouns for the first-person plural in order to express clusivity; that is, one first person plural pronoun is inclusive (including the listener), and the other is exclusive (not including the listener). Mono-Alu does not have third person pronouns. Fagan translated pronouns and their possessives.

			Pronoun	Obj	Suffix	Other
1st person	singular
	plural	exclusive			,
		inclusive
2nd person	singular
	plural
3rd person	singular		---	,
	plural		---	,

Affixes

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
	relative prefix, alternate forms , ,		infix denoting completion		there, away
	causative prefix, becomes before a, alternate form		one another (reciprocal infix), alternate form		hither, thither, alternate form
	infix or prefix showing action or state.		elsewhere, to somewhere else
			together, at the same time, alternate
			again (also occurs independently)
			makes a plural
			until tired, for a very long time, alternate form

	place where or whether,Template:Clarify alternate form occurs after a
	added to the first of two names gives the meaning 'and', alternate form m
	denotes addition, 'and', 'with'

	'of', especially before , alternate forms , ,
	'what?'
	often found after verbs and other words, alternate forms , , ,
	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: , , , , , etc.
	equivalent to copula, alternate form
	strengthens the idea of repetition or duration

Grammatical gender

There are two ways of indicating differences of grammatical gender:

1. By different words: - e.g.
   • 'man' – 'woman'
   • 'men' – 'women'
   • 'headman' – 'headwoman'
   • 'his grandfather' – 'his grandmother'
   • 'old man' (husband) – 'old woman' (wife)
2. By using an ordinal indicative of sex: – e.g.
   • 'baby' (male) – 'baby' (female)
   • 'boar' – 'sow' ( and are used for animals only)

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

Adverbs

Some exceptions within the rules of Mono-Alu have been discovered.

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

• e.g. (instead of ) – 'here'
• (instead of ) – 'there'

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

1. in verbs preceded by the causative (or )
   • e.g. (or ) – 'let come'
2. in verbs preceded by the prefix (or ), meaning reciprocity or duality
   • e.g. (or ) - 'mon'Template:Verify spelling
   • (or ) - 'I, no'

Articles

There is no definite article in Alu. The number ('one') is used as an indefinite article.