howaimbawai - This week's language of the week: Mende!

Mendeis a Sepik language spoken in Papua New Guinea. In 1994, it was spoken by roughly 6,000 people who live in 15 villiages in the Nuku District, Sandaun Province.

Linguistics

As a Sepik language, Mende is related to other languages of Papua New Guinea, such as Itamül, Abelam and Boiken. It is perhaps most closely related to the Kwanga language.

Classification

Mende's full classification is as follows:

Sepik > Middle Sepik > Nukuma > Mende

Phonology and Phonotactics

Mende has a five vowel, /i e a o u/ and an eighteen consonant phonological system.

Mende syllables can consist of an onset, a nucleus and a coda. Only the nucleus is required. A consonant cluster can appear in the onset of a syllable, but not in the coda. Thus consonants can be (C)(C)V(C).

Most words have stress on the first syllable. However, four syllable words, which are generally compound words, but secondary stress on the first syllable of the first word, giving primary stress on the first syllable of the second word.

Morphology and Syntax

Mende nouns comprise an open class of words in which the names of persons, places and things are members. Abstract nouns do exist, but their usage is rare. Nouns are inflected for accusative, genitive and locative but do not decline for number or gender. Gender is marked by forming a compound word, giving forms like asa hula and asa noko for male dog and female dog (lit. 'dog male', 'dog female'). Plurality is not marked overtly, and thus can be understood through context or by the pronoun/demonstrative used to refer to it; likewise, the pronoun/demonstrative reveals the gender of the noun.

Semantic features of nouns are marked in suffixes. These suffixes are summarized in the table below. If multiple occur, the possessive always occurs first; the topic marker cannot occur with any other suffix.

suffix	meaning
-n/-in	object marker
-hi	possession marker
-k/-ik	instrumental/locative
-mu	topic marker
-a	intensifier

Mende pronouns decline for three numbers - singular, dual and plural. Furthermore, the second and third persons both distinguish gender, though first person does not. Several person-gender-number combinations have several choices for the pronouns. As of 1994, what determines the choice wasn't clear, though it seems to be mostly motivated by semantic and phonological choices. The pronouns can be seen in the table below. The pronouns can be inflected by the suffixes mentioned above.

Person	Singular	Dual	Plural
1	an, na, a, nir, anir	shir	nir
2 masc	mir	shir, osh	jir, oj/ok
2 fem	nyir	shir, osh	jir, oj/ok
3 masc	or, nor, ri, ori	frir, bri, op	lir, ol
3 fem	sir, os	frir, bri, op	lir, ol

Demonstratives are the most complex pronomial system in the language, however. They encome number, gender and spatial proximity to the speaker. The detailed function of all the demonstrative pronouns isn't fully known (as of 1994), but what is known can be seen in the table below. The demonstrative pronouns and other deictics seem to have an important role in clarifying subject.

spatial proximity | masculine | feminine | dual | plural ---|---|---|--- touched | kato | kaso | kabro | kando further away | roto/toto | roso/toso | tobro | rondo/tondo distance not relevant | oto/orto | oso | obro | ondo

Likewise, Mende has indefinite pronouns that also reflect masculine, feminine, dual and plural indefinite referents. There are two sets of these, one used for countable nouns and the other for mass nouns.

Mende adjectives are divided into three classes based on their distribution within the adjective phrase.

Mende has an interesting numeral system, with ones for one through five. Numerals higher than five exist, but are often not used; instead musha, 'many', is used. A table of numerals and their literal meanings can be seen below. No ordinal numerals exist, instead adjectives are ued.

Number	Word	Literal meaning
namdar/namdas	one	-
frijip	two	-
nalmingrip	three	-
tovro kavro	four	this two - that two
tostava	five	this hand
tostava tava yok namdar	six	this hand and one from the other hand
tostava kastava	ten	This hand - that hand
tostava kastava kumba yok namdar	eleven	this hand - than hand and one from the foot
toskumba kasumba	twenty	this foot - that foot

Particles are used in Mende to express a range of things. These are: conjunction particles, roughly representing 'and'; purpose/negative purpose particles, represetning 'lest, so that not' and 'so that'; conditional particles, representing conditional on the verb, or wish; reason-result particles, roughly to 'therefore'; alteration particle, corresponding to 'or'; intensifier particles, representing 'very'; dubitive particle, expressing the speaker's uncertainty of an event; specifier particle, used to specify and limit the noun it modifies; similarity particle, used to express similarity between two things being compared; benefactive particle, used to denote that something is done for somebody.

Tense, aspect and mood is expressed on Mende verbs by suffixes, though there is no concord between the subject and the verb. Mende has aspect suffixes that mark the completion of an action, that mark that something happens quickly and takes only a short time, mark the gathering together of something, mark that something almost happened, ones that mark habitual actions, one that marks the order in which an action takes place, a volitional one which encodes future/past/far past intention without an emphasis, and a futility aspect, which marks when the speakers wishes were not fulfilled.

Aspect suffixes must occur before the tense suffix. There exist five tense suffixes, a far past tense, a near past tense, a narrative past, a present tense (which covers the progressive), and a future tense. The near past tense is used to talk about an event that happened recently, specifically during the same day. The narrative past is used in a narrative context on the event line.

There is also a medial verb marker, which are verbs that occur i the middle of the sentence and mark that something else is going to follow. These do not get any tense endings, but can have the aspect markers.

There are several mood suffixes, used to indicate subjunctive, hortative or imperative moods.

Mende frequently uses serial verb constructions, which are used to describe actions in high detail. Serial verbs can be formed in multiple ways, such as making a compound verb with several stems. Verbs can also be reduplicated to describe the duration of the event or for sake of emphasis; up to five repetitions have been observed in oral speech.

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