Äiwoo language

• Voiced stops are prenasalized by default, but can be realized plain oral: e.g. /ᵐbʷ/ is realized [ᵐbʷ] ~ [bʷ].
• The voiced labio-dental approximant /ʋ/ may also be realized as a fricative [v].
• /s/ can also be heard as an affricate [t͡s].
• /t/ can also be heard as rhotic sounds [ɾ, r] within words.[3]

Nouns are used to describe a person, place or thing. Nouns in Äiwoo can be paired with a suffix to show a possessive case. An example of this is tumo 'my father'. Other nouns in Äiwoo can be followed by a possessive particle, as in kuli nou 'my dog'.

One subtype of nouns is the bound nouns. Bound nouns act like nouns but they cannot be used by themselves but need to be paired with a verb, possessive case, or another noun instead.

Another subtype of nouns is called local nouns. Local nouns are not like regular nouns because they can be used to indicate a location without the preposition. Example: ngä: ikuwä ngââgu ‘I’m going to the bush.’

Verbs in Äiwoo are divided into three different classes: intransitive verbs, A-verbs, and O-verbs.

These combine only with one noun or pronoun to form a sentence but also take a prefix to indicate an action.

Example: ikuwä ‘I go’

Similarly to intransitive verbs, A-verbs take a prefix to indicate an action; however, they combine with another noun or pronoun.

Example: ikiläke näte ‘I’m chopping firewood.’

Different from intransitive verbs, O-verbs take suffixes to say who is performing the action with the noun and pronoun.

Example: nyenaa eângâ kiläkino ‘I chop down the tree.’

There are no verbs that start with the sounds a, ä, â, or o. The majority of verbs in Äiwoo begin with the phoneme /e/ followed by a vowel, as e.g. eâmoli ‘to look’.

Verbs beginning with the phonemes /v/ and /w/ are defined as causative verbs. Causative verbs are made by combining a causative prefix to the letters /v/ and /w/. In the Äiwoo language, the two causative prefixes are wâ- and vä-.

Example: wânubo ‘kill'

In the Äiwoo language, ngä and go are two important prepositions. ngä translates to 'in, at, on, to, from', while go corresponds to 'for, with, because of'.

Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns. An example of a pronoun is iu ‘I’.

Possessive markers are used after a noun to show the possessor of a person, place or thing. Example: nenu numo ‘my coconut’.

Similarly to possessive markers, relational markers are used to show relations between a noun and something else. Example: sime lä nuumä ‘a person from the village’.

Äiwoo demonstrative can cover several syntactic functions, but all share the property of distinguishing between a ‘here, close by’ and a ‘there, far away’ form.

Conjunctions are used to link together phrases or clauses. Example: eä ‘and’.

Quantifiers are words that are used to show quantity. Example: du ‘all’.

Interjections are adjectives that are used by themselves without the need of other descriptives words. Example: sikäi 'Oh!'

In the Äiwoo language, lu- and li- are closely related to the verb stem and are thus the oldest subject prefixes still used. The other subject prefixes that follow after lu- and li- are newer, created other syntactic roles. However, one exclusion to the list of new subject prefixes are with i.

Transitive subject forms are suffixed. In addition, transitive subject forms have possessive-like forms.

There are eight different nominalizing prefixes that are combined with a verb to create a noun which describes a person, thing, or place. These prefixes are:

In the Äiwoo language, class prefixes are combined with a noun or verb.

Äiwoo gender marking prefixes can be traced back to their Oceanic origin. To create a gender marking prefix, gi- and si- from the nominalizing prefixes are combined with nouns.

In Äiwoo, three different verbal clauses are distinguished: intransitive, transitive, and semitransitive. The main difference between these three verbal clauses is that intransitives concern only one person while transitives and semitransitives concern more than one person.

In Oceanic languages, intransitive clauses follow the subject and verb format. Transitive clauses follow the order object, verb, subject. Semitransitive clauses use intransitive verbs with subject and object, resulting in a structured phrase order of subject, verb, object.