Ughele is an Oceanic language spoken by about 1200 people on Rendova Island, located in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands.
There is no internal dialect differentiation.
Phonology The following information is gathered from Benedicte Haraldstad Frostad. A Grammar of Ughele: A Language of The Solomon Islands. 2012. Pages 35–48
Vowel inventory Ughele contains a five-vowel inventory that is typical of most Oceanic languages. These are differentiated by changes in the place of articulation and the degree of stricture required to produce the sound. Lip rounding only accounts for the differentiation of two segments. These are the close-mid back vowel and the close back vowel .
This inventory consists of three front vowels: , , ; two back , and no central phonemes.
There is no variation in vowel length.
Minimal pairs
Distinguished by place of articulation and - 'flying fox' and 'bald' and - 'we/us' and 'you'
Distinguished by level of stricture and - 'stone' and 'mangrove' and - 'thousand' and 'body' and - 'slippery cabbage' and 'fire' and - 'lake' and 'to pick'
Consonant inventory Ughele has 18 consonants and no consonant clusters, unless produced during fast, informal speech.
Stops Ughele contains bilabial, alveolar and velar stops. These are , and respectively, as well as voiced and unvoiced pairs for all plosives. and and ('four' and 'die/dead') and ('to make pudding/pudding' and 'nail') All voiced stops are pre-nasalised, however the degree of this varies between speakers. Pronunciation of this runs from barely audible nasalisation to almost fully nasalised segments. E.g. → , → , →
Nasal and oral pairs for all voiced stops e.g. → , → , → Voiced bilabial nasals and non-nasals e.g. and , and Voiced velar nasals and non-nasals e.g. 'open' → 'a fish species' Voiced bilabial, alveolar and velar stops e.g. 'tired' → 'happy' → 'spirit, devil' Unvoiced stops (negation indicator), (location phrase indicator), (possession indicator) Voiced bilabial/alveolar/velar nasals e.g. 'obey', 'sagopalm pudding', 'sharp, long'
Alveolar trill There is only one found in Ughele; this is in the lexeme ('rope').
Fricatives Labiodental, alveolar, velar and glottal , , , and Labiodental and velar are voiced and → 'you' and 'to put' Glottal fricatives are unvoiced 'to wipe' and 'to tie' Voiced and unvoiced alveolars 'hot drink' and 'penis'
The affricate This post-alveolar affricate is sometimes realised as a palatal nasal stop , although this is relatively rare in spoken language and therefore is speaker-dependent.
→ ~
Thus ('angry') may be pronounced or .
Approximants Ughele contains one alveolar lateral approximant and one labial velar . However, only occurs in a small set of loanwords from English and Roviana (another Solomon Island language originally developed for trade). 'Window' – 'Week' – 'Win' – 'Year' –
Minimal pairs based on manner of articulation Voiced alveolar plosive 'to let', and fricative, 'flesh' Unvoiced alveolar plosive 'holy', and fricative 'hunt' Voiced velar plosive '1st/p possessive', and fricative 'just'
Written language Prior to the efforts of Frostad et al. Ughele had no documented history or written language standard. After these efforts Ughele is now written in Latin script as shown in these notes.
Morphology
Pronouns and person marking Ughele, like many other Oceanic languages, possesses a complex pronominal system that includes personal, relative and interrogative pronouns.Frostad, 2012, pp. 100
Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns predominate in terms of quantity; there are six types of pronoun forms: independent pronouns, preverbal subject partial clitics, postverbal subject pronouns, object clitics, preposed possessive pronouns and attributive suffixes. Personal pronouns are marked for number and clusivity. In each of these types, distinctions are made between singular and plural forms, as well as first, second, and third person.Frostad, 2012, p. 81 Inclusive and exclusive forms for first-person plural are separated; the inclusive form extends to include the addressee whereas the addressee is then excluded from the extension of the exclusive form. There are partial formal similarities, and in some cases a complete overlap of forms between the types. The table below is an overview of the various types of personal pronouns.
+ Ughele personal pronounsPerson and numberIndependent pronounsPreverbal subject partial cliticsPostverbal subject pronounsObject cliticsPreposed possessive pronounsAttributive suffixes1 SG2 SG3 SG1 PL INCL1 PL EXCL2 PL3 PL
Personal pronouns in Ughele can occupy various positions throughout the clause, with some types being more restricted in their use than others.
Independent pronouns Independent pronouns may act as the head of a noun phrase, taking on the forms of subject, direct object, or indirect object as a complement to prepositions. They may also appear in possessive constructions.
Above is an example of the third-person plural pronoun and first-person plural exclusive pronoun in noun phrases headed by pronouns. The numeral modifier follows the pronoun head, whereas it would typically precede a noun head.
Ughele has object marking clitics and two different sets of subject markers, and these occur in specific fixed positions relative to the verb.Frostad, 2012, p. 169
Object clitics Object clitics are pronominal forms, which only occur with verb stems and only mark direct object.Frostad, 2012, p. 85
Transitive verbs rarely occur without object marking clitics, and are either attached directly to the verb stem (2), or follow the transitive suffix, either (3) or (4).
First-person singular exclusive object clitic attached to verb stem
Third-person singular object clitic attached to transitive suffix –i
Third-person singular object clitic attached to transitive suffix
Object clitics may be the only referent to the object in the clause (5) or they may occur with a coreferential noun phrase (6).
Second-person singular
Second-person singular object clitic with coreferential noun phrase second-person singular independent pronoun :
Preverbal subject partial clitics Preverbal subject marking pronouns in Ughele can appear in the form of partial clitics. These clitics precede the verb complex, but only in very specific constructions. They cliticize to two particles, the homophonous imperative mood marker (7), and conjunction 'then' (8), and they occur as independent forms indicating pivots in complex clauses (9).Frostad, 2012, p. 171 This aspect of Ughele's grammar bears resemblance to that of three of its nearest neighbouring languages, Hoava, Roviana and Marovo, with that of Marovo being the most similar.
First-person plural inclusive preverbal subject clitic attached to mood marker
Second-person singular preverbal subject clitic attached to conjunction
Third-person plural preverbal subject independent form
Postverbal subject pronouns In Ughele, postverbal subject pronouns overlap completely with preposed possessive pronouns.Frostad, 2012, p. 84 Postverbal subject pronouns mark various types of foci, where the pronouns would refer to the focused constituent. Below is an example of the third-person plural postverbal subject pronoun used in a sentence.
Demonstratives Demonstrative particles are a grammatical function that indicate specific entities as well as addressing deixis. Demonstratives in Ughele are separated into three categories based on deictic distance and further identified as singular or plural.Frostad, 2012, pp. 62, 88, 102, 282 Within Ughele morphology, these particles appear after the head noun within the noun phrase, taking the final position. Ughele follows linguistic trends in Oceanic languages with regards to sentence construction with demonstratives. Within the language families of the Solomon Islands, there is a linguistic trend of separating definite articles and root nouns. The common word order throughout the languages of the Solomon Islands is noun-demonstrative, as noted in nearby Oceanic languages Hoava and Roviana. This trend is universal to the region. +Demonstrative particlesDeictic DistanceSingularPluralNearIntermediateDistant Included are the glosses for some noun phrases in Ughele to demonstrate the function of demonstratives. These glosses are translated to English below. The examples showcase the word order of Ughele noun phrases as well as the function of the distance particles when compared to English.
Demonstratives functioning as interrogatives Intermediate distance particles are often found to be used the least, with an implied distance, a common occurrence in Oceanic languages identified by Lynch, Ross and Crowley. As a result of this implied meaning, these particles can often take other grammatical functions. Frostad describes the common phoneme between the intermediate singular particle and the interrogative 'what' in Ughele, . The following example is from Frostad's grammar of Ughele, demonstrating the aforementioned dual function.
It is demonstrated in this example that , when paired with other articles, endures a function adjustment. The article signifies a noun and when paired with , indicates an unknown noun, therefore becoming 'what' in the English translation. This is a similar process for , a morpheme signifying a locative function. When used in conjunction with , it functions as a temporal interrogative. These are not the only forms of the interrogatives [what] and [where]; there are grammatical words that occupy the same meaning in interrogative clauses.
Interrogatives In order to construct an interrogative clause, without pretext; there are a series of grammatical function words with corresponding meanings given below. Additionally, there are other means to construct an interrogative clause in Ughele, the function of this is context dependent, relying on situational anaphora. Ughele generally follows the linguistic trends relating to interrogative clause construction for the region, confirmed by the nature of Roviana and Hoava to exclusively use intonation as a question marker. However, Ughele also occasionally uses a question particle in interrogative construction; the conditions for this are outlined below. EnglishUghelewhatwherewhowhenwhyhow manyhow
Question particle In Ughele, there is a single question particle, . This marker has a purely grammatical function denoting the sentence as a question. It is usually paired with one of the above interrogatives. This marker is not used exclusively; rather, it is a marker denoting conversational foci used in specific sentence types outlined below.
Simple interrogatives A locative interrogative clause in Ughele generally follows the pattern: NP [] [], fronted by the noun phrase, then using the preposition locative . This kind of question is used within brief exchanges, attempting to gain new knowledge quickly.
Context-dependent interrogatives Without a preposition, gains the affix , becoming and it appears before the noun phrase: NP. This occurs when the question is influenced by pragmatic focus, a newly understood meaning based on what a speaker has informed a hearer. This kind of sentence would be used during an extended conversation either as a response or a concurrent idea, in contrast to the former as a simple interrogative or a conversation starter.
As evidenced above, there is a clear connection between demonstratives in Ughele and the morphology of interrogatives, signified by the common phonology of 'what' and 3SG as . This is exclusive to the anaphoric pretext of the conversation. Therefore, ('what') is a reference to a specific question from conversational context. This applies to ('where') too.
Articles There are three articles occurring with nouns in Ughele, each used in different contexts. They all precede the noun that they occur with.
The first is e, the personal article: