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. Boswell (2018) has /x/ rather than /ɣʰ/.

Consonant phonemes
LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Nasalm̥mn̥nɲ̊ɲŋ̊ŋ
Stopplainpbtdt͡ʃd͡ʒkɡʔ
aspiratedpʰtʰkʰ
Fricativeplainfvszɣh
aspiratedɣʰ
Laterall̥l
Trillr̥r
Vowel phonemes
FrontCentralBack
Highiu
Mideo
Lowa

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.

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. 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

  • Palmer, Bill (2009). "Clause Order and Information Structure in Cheke Holo". Oceanic Linguistics. 48 (1): 213–249. doi:. hdl:. S2CID .

External links

  • Anglican devotional material in Cheke Holo (1934)
  • Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Cheke Holo (1973) digitized by Richard Mammana