Iwá'a Tui

Iwá'a Tui [iˈwa.ʔa ˈtu.i] is a language spoken by a seafaring culture known as the Tui people. The name Iwá'a Tui comes from the phrase iwáák-a tui [iˈwaːk̚.a ˈtu.i] (or, colloquially, iwáág'a toi [iˈwaː.ɠa ˈto.i]) meaning "voice of the people".

Iwá'a Tui is a mainly analytic language with few non-interacting affixes.

Phonology

A comprehensive phonological analysis of Iwá'a Tui has not been conducted, so the information present in this article is subject to change as more research is done.

Consonants

/m n ɲ p p̚ b tʰ t t̚ t͡ɕ kʰ k k̚ ɡ ʔ ɸ f z ʃ x h w l j ɾ/

Consonants of all manners except tap have been observed to be long.

/n̩/ is the only consonant observed to be syllabic, having occured in both standard and honorific forms of the word for "cloud" (man-u and phan-u, respectively) in which it had secondary stress.

Vowels

Monophthongs

/i y u e ə o ɜ æ ɐ a/

Only /i u e o a/ have been observed to be long.

Diphthongs

/ei ou ɜi ai/

Only /ei/ and /ai/ have been observed to be lengthened, with only the i-component having increased length.

Stress

Iwá'a Tui has phonemic primary and secondary stress.

Grammar

Honorific Speech

Many of Iwá'a Tui's words have 2 or 3 forms reflecting respect toward their referent and give a literary implication. Formal registers include more honorific word forms than informal registers, but still can occur often in informal registers.

When words have two honorific forms, one is the standard word and the other is the honorific word. When they have three, the third is often used by children and is honor-neutral, but viewed in concept as lesser than the standard form.

In honorific forms and formal registers, the phoneme /ɾ/ is always changed to /l/ because it is not seen as elegant.

Head Order

Iwá'a Tui is mainly head-final, but head-initiality can occur when giving emphasis or importance to a word.

For non-verb phrases, this only occurs for one phrase in a sentence, if any, in typical registers. However, in very formal speech, a sentence will often contain many head-initial phrases, particularly for anything related to the addressee, people, nations, symbols, culturally important objects, and personally respected nouns or qualities.

For verb-phrases, head-initiality is used much more often in all formality registers. It is more commonly used to convey significance to the event in question. Head-initiality is mandatory when the head and/or dependent are a clause or if the head is respected (in which case, it also is used in its respectful form).