Saliba is an Oceanic language spoken on the islets off the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea.
Currently there are only elders that speak it and a few young children who have learned in the early years of their life.
[4] Vowels Listed above are the consonants for Saliba in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).
On the other hand, words used mostly for grammatical functions, such as conjunctions, pronouns, particles, etc.
Another important formational affix for verbs is the causative prefix he-, e.g. kita, 'see' becomes he-kita, 'show', or, 'cause to see'.
For example, in the sentence ...nige koya-i se pai-paisoa which means '(they) did not work in the garden'.
For example, mwaedo, which in Saliba means 'eel', is a simple noun phrase.
A noun phrase is typically broken up into two parts, the nucleus and possibly multiple modifiers.
Modifiers can include things like possessors and demonstratives (words that give location), which would go before the head noun.
An example of a sentence using an independent pronoun could go as follows: Kai-wa ka matausi, which means 'We were scared'.
One example using both types of pronouns could be Wawaya-o-wa kwa hanoi-di, which means 'Wake up the children'.
Another example could be Sina-gu yo tama-gu se hanoi-gai, meaning 'My mother and my father woke us up'.
The category of body parts refers to things like hands, feet, etc.
Parts of inanimate objects includes things such as the root of a coconut or the core of an apple.
Container and content can mean things like a cup of water or a bowl of food.
[4] In terms of semantics, linguists can see three different types of relationships based on these constructions.
The basic clause in Saliba is composed of a verb with its subject and object with its affixes.
Any noun phrases preceding or succeeding this core can be thought of as an expansion of this clause.
A simple sentence could be Kai-wa ka matausi palapa, which means 'We were really frightened'.
These types of clauses will have the word temenai ('there') or a post-positional phrase to refer to a location.
An example sentence would be Ka keno-keno na kabo nabu ye talu.
The placement of this particle varies and there do not appear to be any specific rules as to where to exactly put kabo in a sentence.
For example, in the sentence Bena teinamona ku lau maketi, which means 'You must go to the market', the particle can be directly translated as 'must'.
However, in the following sentence Ya henua bena pasta yo-na pwaole ya kaiwahali, meaning 'I want to steal the pastor's rooster', the use of bena here is not as strong as something that has to be done, and is closer to 'want' in this case.
For example, in the sentence Tabu ku mode the speaker is saying 'don't worry'.
An example sentence could be Taba nige ya hedede, which means 'I don't want to tell'.
This particle is definitely stronger than bena and is probably more closely related to the word must in English.
A way this particle could be used in a sentence is Ye wowolina besina se lau mo, which means 'It was stormy but nevertheless they had to go'.
For example, the sentence Lahi nuana sina-gu ye lau maketi, which means 'Perhaps my mother went to the market yesterday'.
As seen in this sentence, nuana is used to express the fact that the speaker does not know for sure if his mother went to the market – it is a guess or assumption.