Cheke Holo language

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Cheke Holo
Native toCentral Solomon Islands
RegionSanta Isabel Island
Native speakers
10,800 (1999)[1]
1,500 monolinguals (1999?)[2]
Language family
Austronesian
  • Malayo-Polynesian
    • Oceanic
      • Northwest Solomonic
        • New Georgia – Ysabel
          • Ysabel
            • East Isabel
              • Cheke Holo
Language codes
ISO 639-3mrn
Glottologchek1238

Cheke Holo (also called Maringe or Mariŋe, A’ara, Holo, Kubonitu) is an Oceanic language spoken in the Solomon Islands. Its speakers live on Santa Isabel Island.

Phonology[]

The phonology of Cheke Holo shows some peculiarities, shared with other Santa Isabel languages, like the aspirated stops and the voiceless sonorants. The five-vowel system instead conforms to the prototypical system of the Oceanic area (White, Kokhonigita & Pulomana 1988). Boswell (2018:16) has /x/ rather than /ɣʰ/.

Consonant phonemes
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m̥ m n̥ n ɲ̊ ɲ ŋ̊ ŋ
Stop plain p b t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ k ɡ ʔ
aspirated pʰ tʰ kʰ
Fricative plain f v s z ɣ h
aspirated ɣʰ
Leteral l̥ l
Trill r̥ r
Vowel phonemes
Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e o
Low a

Morphosyntax[]

Verbs in Cheke Holo are marked neither for tense nor for person, although they can be prefixed with fa- (a causative marker) and they take enclitics. Among the possible clitics are the direct object pronouns, the completive aspect markers hi and hila, and the continuative aspect marker u (Boswell 2018).

Reduplication is commonly employed with verb roots to express iteration or intensification and as a valency changing device (from intransitive to transitive), although there are attested cases of adjective and (less so) noun reduplication (Boswell 2018). Different types of reduplications are possible in Cheke Holo:

  • Full reduplication
    • /vra/ 'jump up' > /vravra/ 'be quick to act'
  • Partial (or White's rule) reduplication
    • /bela/ 'wooden platform' > /beabela/ 'stack up firewood'
  • Syllable reduplication
    • /nolo/ 'to walk' > /nonolo/ 'go walking about'
    • /kmokhu/ 'stop' > /kmokmohu/ 'continue to cease'
    • /fruni/ 'cover' > /fufruni/ 'cover completely' (when the second consonant of a cluster is /r/, this is dropped in the reduplicated syllable)

Notes[]

  1. ^ Cheke Holo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ^ Cheke Holo language at Ethnologue (15th ed., 2005)

References[]

  • Boswell, Fredrick Alvin (2018). A grammar of Cheke Holo (Doctoral thesis). LOT Publications (Leiden University). hdl:1887/67082. ISBN 978-94-6093-301-1.
  • White, Geoffrey; Kokhonigita, Francis; Pulomana, Hugh (1988). Cheke Holo (Maringe/Hograno) dictionary. Pacific Linguistics Series C - No. 97. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi:10.15144/pl-c97. hdl:1885/145429. ISBN 0-85883-368-9.
  • Palmer, Bill (2009). "Clause order and information structure in Cheke Holo". Oceanic Linguistics. 48 (1): 213–249. doi:10.1353/ol.0.0038. S2CID 145092013.

External links[]


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