Mekeo language

Mekeo is a language spoken in Papua New Guinea and had 19,000 speakers in 2003. It is an Oceanic language of the Papuan Tip Linkage.^[2] The two major villages that the language is spoken in are located in the Central Province of Papua New Guinea. These are named Ongofoina and Inauaisa.^[3] The language is also broken up into four dialects: East Mekeo; North West Mekeo; West Mekeo and North Mekeo. The standard dialect is East Mekeo.^[4] This main dialect is addressed throughout the article. In addition, there are at least two Mekeo-based pidgins.

Mekeo employs a relatively simple system of phonology which consists of ten consonants and five vowels. The following tables identify both the consonants and vowels present in Mekeo.

Note that the table above displays the range of consonants used in East Mekeo which is classified as the standard dialect. North West Mekeo, West Mekeo and North Mekeo each have slightly different consonants included in their dialects.^{[5]: 559 [4]: 9}

Mekeo has five vowels, shown on the table below:

In Mekeo, personal pronouns primarily refer to humans; however, the third-person forms can also be used for animals and other objects as well. Mekeo uses a range of different pronouns for different situations. The following table shows all the main personal pronouns for East Mekeo. This includes unmarked, emphatic and reflexive personal pronouns. Note that the emphatic pronouns are not common in East Mekeo as they compete with another more common topicaliser, au-ŋa. For example, the preferred form for the first person singular would be lau- au-ŋa.^[5]: 148 In the following table, 1, 2 and 3 indicate the person, SG and PL indicate whether the example is singular or plural and I and E stand for inclusive and exclusive.

The following examples demonstrate the use of some of the above personal pronouns in context.^{[5]: 149, 155}

Possession in Mekeo has two morpho-syntactic distinctions: direct or indirect constructions. Direct possession concerns kinship relations and 'part of a whole relations' and these kind of relations are cultural in origin. Indirect possession covers a more general possession of alienable property.

Direct possession relies on relational terms that often form closed subsystems such as kinship terms. In Mekeo, the two relation terms involved in each equation are joined by another term that operates like a transitive verb. The third term is the 'relator' and must be marked for agreement with one of the other terms in the equation. The relator follows the subject and/or the object. The relator is marked for the person and number of the second term or the object.^[5]: 195

Expressing alienable possession in Mekeo requires the prefix E- and its various realisations (including zero). This morpheme is then optionally preceded by a free or bound pronoun and then the compulsory suffixed by a pronominal suffix which indicates the person and number of the possessor.^{[5]: 208-210}

The negative is expressed with negators maini, aibaia and laa'i:

The following is an example of an alternation of the cliticisation process:

Another morpheme to express possession is the location pronoun KE- (realised as ke or ʔe). This pronoun expresses location or place:

Mekeo expresses negation in three ways:^{[5]: 219, 234}

• through the negative particle aʼi, which negates nominal predicates;
• through existential negators, which differ between dialects; and
• through a negative verb prefix, which negates verbal predicates.

This three-way functional distinction between different types of negation is typical of Oceanic languages.^[6]: 17

Nominal predicates (which consist of one or more nominals) are negated in two ways — through either the negative particle or proclitic aʼi, or through existential negator particles.

The negative particle aʼi is found in all dialects of Mekeo, with ⟨ʼ⟩ pronounced as either a weak glottal stop or slight pause most dialects, or even not at all (/ai/) in East Mekeo.^{[5]: 175 [note 1]} Aʼi negates a nominal predicate as seen in examples 10 and 11:

Aʼi also occurs as a proclitic particle before nominals, as seen in examples 12 and 13. In this case is functions similar to the English prefixes 'non-' or 'un-'.^[5]: 175

All four dialects of Mekeo have existential negators: maini in North-West Mekeo, aibaia or aibaida in West Mekeo, aibaia or aibaiza in North Mekeo, and laaʼi in East Mekeo. The existential negators are sentence-final predicates — where a verb would otherwise be — and express denial of the existence, presence or identity of the preceding nominal predicate.^{[note 2]} Examples 14 to 17 show the existential negator of each dialect.^{[5]: 175,220}

In both West Mekeo and Northern Mekeo, aibaia can be analyzed as a compound of a'i 'not' and baia 'mere'. These two dialects also have an intrusive consonant, so aibaia is often realised as /aibaida/ in West Mekeo and /aibaiza/ in North Mekeo.^[5]: 175

The existential negators can also function similarly to aʼi, so examples 14 and 16 above could alternatively be read as 'She is not his wife' (or 'He is not her husband') and 'This is not sugar' respectively.^[5]: 176

Verbal predicates (which consist of a verb word^{[note 3]} and its arguments) in Mekeo are negated by a negator prefix attached to the predicate's verb word. Within the verb word, the negator prefix is found between tense-aspect-mood prefixes and the subject marker, with an intrusive consonant before the subject marker in some dialects. This negator prefix negates the entire verbal predicate.^{[5]: 225-226,234-235} The position of the negator prefix between the tense-aspect-mood prefixes and the verb base is generally common in Oceanic languages.^[7]: 51

Example 18 shows the position of the negator prefix in the North Mekeo expression Fázobálifúa! 'Don't spill it!':

Examples 19 to 22 show the negator prefix in all four Mekeo dialects. Jones tentatively reconstructs the negator prefix in Proto-Mekeo as */aʔi/, cognate with Motu asi and both descended from Proto-Central-Papuan */ati/.^{[5]: 234, 235}

In North-West Mekeo, the existential negator maini (see example 14) also occurs before some verbs to negate them in either the past tense or in the prohibitive mood.^[5]: 175 This occurs in addition ae-, creating a double negative, as seen in example 23. Jones suggests that this may be to reduce ambiguity where the prefix ae- has otherwise assimilated with the verb stem; other dialects have an intrusive consonant between the negator prefix and verb stem, as shown in example 24 from West Mekeo.^{[5]: 574, 578}

According to World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) writer Matthew S. Dryer, Mekeo is a mixed language type, meaning it does not follow a demonstrative-noun, or noun-demonstrative sentence structure, but has both.^[8]

Mekeo is spoken in the central province of Papua New Guinea. Kaki Ae is a neighbouring language of Mekeo. It is spoken to the north-east of where Mekeo is spoken. Kaki Ae has a demonstrative-noun sentence structure. Clifton describes Kaki Ae's noun phrase structure as Demonstrative-Place-Noun-Adjective-Numeral-Limiter, where the demonstrative precedes the noun, which is in accordance with the data on WALS.^[9]

According to Maino, Aufo and Bullock, Mekeo follows the following noun phrase structure: Demonstrative-Possessive/Noun/Adjective-Numeral/Quantifier.^[10]: 18

According to Jones, in Mekeo, there are three "degrees of proximity… represented in three of the four dialects".^[5]: 156 These four dialects are NWMek (North West Mekeo), WMek (West Mekeo), NMek (North Mekeo) and EMek (East Mekeo).

^[5]: 158

According to Maino, Aufu and Bullock, there are two demonstratives egaina and inaina/l’ina. "These can refer to singular or plural, near or far", and is represented in the Tentative Grammar Description with the following table.^[10]: 20

These can be represented through the following examples, provided by Jones.

Ike auke NWMek

Inaia auke-ŋa WMek

Naimo auke-ŋa WMek

Inaina amuʔe-ŋa EMek

this dog-3SG.ASS

'This (is a) dog.'^[5]: 213

This noun phrase can be expanded by adding a suffix that marks the person and number of the deictic pronoun.

Inaina has been dropped as the this has been changed to the, and eʔle ('small') has been added.

There can also be a second modifier, attached before the adjective:

^[5]: 76

The demonstrative 'that' (Eŋaina is evident here, along with the third-person singular noun dog and adjective. The second modifier -ŋa has been attached to eʔele ('small').

There also exists deictic particles (DX) in Mekeo, illustrated in the West Mekeo example below:

Mekeo uses both anaphoric and exophoric use of demonstratives, and clear anaphors are rare in Mekeo.^[5]: 531 Anaphoric strategies are not always effective in their identification according to Jones. Jones utilises the phrase "deictic reinforcement" for Mekeos use of personal pronouns or demonstrative pronouns to refer back to what has just been mentioned.^[5]: 532 Demonstrative pronouns are used for four reasons: to announce a new topic, to return to a previously mentioned topic, to announce a new topic specifically so as to not confuse with already established topics, and to "emphasise the presumed accessibility of a referent to the hearer".^[5]: 533

An example of anaphoric demonstrative is shown in East Mekeo:

According to Jones, the comma represents the "actual or potential pause" within the sentence.^[5]: 49

An example of exophoric use of demonstratives is highlighted by Jones:

According to Jones, this sentence "translates to 'As for the bird, its wing!', that is as for the bird, it is its wing that is here important/salient/relevant".

Jones points out that there is an "implicit deictic argument it/that". For exophoric topics, when kin terms are used the topic is always a personal pronoun.^[5]: 123

The personal pronoun isa is used.^[5]: 123

Deictic predicates occur when the reference is not given. For example, the following response would be given to the question "Which dog do you mean?" ^[5]: 212

The demonstrative eŋaʔi-na is used in the example above.

There is variation among the four dialects:

The placement of commas in important in the Mekeo language. Jones highlights that if a comma had been placed after Papie aŋa’o, then the translation would shift to "a woman who was carrying a basket".^[5]: 509

Jones (1996) reports two forms of pidgin Mekeo used for trade: the Imunga Trade Language and the Ioi Trade Jargon.^[11]

• OLAC has a list of resources in and about the Mekeo language
• Paradisec has a number of collections that include Mekeo language materials

• Amala, Arthur; Magaiva, Alphonse; Deelen, Leanie van (2015). Tentative Grammar Description for the Mekeo Language. Papua New Guinea: SIL.