Puluwat language

Puluwatese has two dialects: Pulapese and Pulusukes, all of which have low intelligibility with Satawalese (64%), Woleaian (40%), and Ulithian (21%).[3] Puluwatese does however have slightly higher lexical similarity with Satawalese and Carolinian (88%), Mortlockese (83%), Woleaian (82%), Chuukese (81%), and Ulithian (72%).[3]

Independent pronouns, subject pronouns, and polite vocatives are the three types of pronouns that occur in differing distributions.[15] Independent pronouns occur alone and in equational sentences, they precede noun or noun phrases, as well as subject pronouns, or the prepositions me, and, and with.[15] Subject pronouns never occur as objects and always precede verbs, normally with intervening particles.[15] The use of polite vocatives are rare in daily life and even rarer in texts.[16] However, the known polite vocatives are included in the table below.[17]

The polite vocatives that occur before a proper name may most closely be translated to Mr, Miss, or Mrs, but there are no accurate translations for the clause-final polite vocatives.[17]

Independent and subject pronouns occur in seven propositions: first person singular (1s, 2s, 3s), first person plural inclusive (1p inc), first person plural exclusive (1p exc, 2p, 3p), and is illustrated in the table below.[5]

For transitive sentences, Puluwatese follows a SVO word order but an SV or VS structure for intransitive sentences.[18]

SVO:

Wuŕumwo ya yákékkél-ee-ŕ yát-e-kkit mákk.

Wuŕumwo 3s teach-SV-3pl.obj child-EV-small writing

'Wuŕumwo taught the children writing.'

SV:

Ye-ray eŕemahán Polowat a fáyi-to.

one-CL manPuluwat perf come-hither

'A Puluwat man has come.'

VS:

Ye pwe le mááló manú-hmwaay we.

3s T(fut) imm.fut die dem-SV-sick dem

'the sick man will soon die.'

Numbers in Puluwatese are confusing because there is such an intricate system of suffixes for counting different objects. In general, the base of the number stays the same and suffixes for different objects are added onto each base of the number. Suffixes that are added onto the base numbers can significantly alter the meaning of the word such as in the example ye-ray woong (a small turtle) and yee-w woong (a large turtle).[5] For counted objects, suffixes can greatly change their meaning such as in ye-fay teŕeec (a spool of thread) and ye-met teŕeec (a piece of thread).[5] The most common counting suffixes are outlined in the following table.[5]

Sequential counting is used for rapid counting and can be combined in order to count two or three numbers without intervention. For example, "one, two" can be counted as yét-é-ŕúúw and "three, four" as yei-u-fáán.[5] This sequential counting can be used as a system for rapid pair counting of objects such as coconuts and breadfruit.[19]

The general suffixes are used for objects that do not have a specified suffix. Suffixes for objects are either drawn upon from the general set or any of the other sets.[5]

The animate suffixes are applied to humans, animals, weapons, tools, musical instruments, and other miscellaneous artifacts. The animate suffixes are the only ones to have two different classifiers: -ray and -man with -man being the Trukese cognate for -mén.[5]

Long object suffixes are used for objects that are long and slender such as rope (yámeey), vehicles (citosa), and cigarettes (suupwa).[5]

Round objects suffixes are used for round objects such as stones (fawú), breadfruit (mááy), eggs (hakúll).[5]

Flat object suffixes are applied to objects such as leaves (éé), clothes (Mégaak: cloth), and mat (hááki).[5]

Ordinals follow the pattern of sequential counting with the prefixes /ya-/, /yó-/, or /yé-/, followed by the base number, and the suffix /an-/ as seen in the following table.[5]

The names of the days of the week for Tuesday through Saturday are the ordinals from 2nd through 6th without the suffix /an-/. Monday is sometimes referred to as ya-ye-w (1st) and Sunday ya-féh-úw (7th), but more commonly known as, hárin fáál (ending sacredness) and ránini pin (sacred day).[20] However, Trukese words for the names of the week are more often heard but with a Puluwat accent.[20]

• Puluwatese lexical database with English glosses archived with Kaipuleohone