128 10. Rotokasipa Irara Vo Pitupituroaro. Printed by SIL, Ukarumpa, E.H.P., 1974a. 108 pp. paperback.
Contains nine different sections on Rotokas customs, i.e., Initiation, Making Salt, Magic, etc. 11. Rotokas Reo Vo Kokovaero. Printed by SIL, Ukarumpa, E.H.P., 1974b. 109 pp. paperback. Contains
38 Rotokas songs with notated music and explanations of texts. 12. Rotokasipa Irara Vo Siposiporoaro. Printed by SIL, Ukarumpa, E.H.P. paperback. Contains traditional
stories about the distant past and about the present. 13. Assorted booklets for use as early reading materials include the following titles translated from
English: Flies Are Our Enemies, Houses of the World, How the Jews Lived, People of Papua New Guinea, Animals of the Bible.
By I. and J. Firchow and cotranslators: 14. Airepa Vao Reo Ovoi. Printed in Hong Kong, 1120 pp. The complete New Testament with
introductory remarks for each book and short dictionary of Biblical terms at the end. 15. Siposipoara Vao lava Tuariripa Reo Ovoi. Printed in Hong Kong, 205 pp. A book of stories and
character studies following texts from the Old Testament. 16. Editions of the Gospels of Mark and John, The Three Epistles of John, The Acts of the Apostles, and an
abridgment of Genesis were printed at Ukarumpa and distributed as trial publications prior to the completed New Testament.
17. A Vocabulary of Rotokas, Pidgin and English. Printed at Ukarumpa, E.H.P., 1973. 393 pp. A triglot listing of words. No explanations are included. About 3200 Rotokas words are compared with Pidgin and
English in the first section. The second and third sections are Pidgin to Rotokas and English to Rotokas respectively.
18. A Dictionary of Rotokas and English yet to be printed. This revision of the Vocabulary 17 will contain about 2,300 words, in addition to the 3,200 words initially collected. Nearly all the verbs are illustrated
by sentences. Grammatical information and classifications of nominals are also included. Subclassification of animals, archaic words, body parts, etc. are made. The manuscript is prepared and needs only financing before
becoming available in print [as of January 1985].
By I. Firchow: 19. Form and Function of Rotokas Words, M.A. Thesis, University of California, Davis. Ts. vii + 157 pp.
20. Rotokas Referentials, Kivung 43:175–186. 21. Rotokas. In K.A. McElhanon ed. Legends from Papua New Guinea, pp. 161–172.
22. Some Functions of Rotokas Referentials, Workpapers in Papua New Guinea Languages 20:133–142.
By I. and J. Firchow: 23. An Abbreviated Phoneme Inventory, Anthropological Linguistics 119:271–276, 1969.
24. Rotokas Language Studies, An unpublished manuscript describing the syntax and deep structure. 25. The Rotokas People of Bougainville Island. An unpublished manuscript.
10.4.1 Brief overview of the Rotokas Proper dialect
The Rotokas language is spoken by about four thousand, two hundred people living in the Kieta Sub- District. As already explained, there are three dialects and one sublanguage which have been designated:
Rotokas Proper, Pipipaia dialect 82 features shared with Rotokas Proper, Aita dialect 81, and Atsilima sublanguage 73. One Rotokas Proper speaker described these differences as, “The Aita talk with their
noses, the Pipipaia and Ibu village talk with their tongues, and the villages above Wakunai talk with their necks.” The orthography used in printed Rotokas materials is based upon the Rotokas Proper dialect.
The Rotokas Stock of Non-Austronesian Papuan languages includes Rotokas, Eivo 35 cognates shared with Rotokas, Keriaka 30, and Kunua or Konua 22. All three languages show a marked
phonological similarity: however, none of them has as small a phoneme count as Rotokas. For many years, the phonology of Rotokas Proper has been exceptional to the degree that this language is
included in the Guinness Book of World Records. To date, the phonemic inventory contains fewer consonants six than any other language recorded. Two other features of the phonology are exceptions to universals of
languages. 1 There are no nasal phonemes; this is an exception to the statement made by Ferguson that every language has at least one primary nasal consonant in its inventory. 2 The allophones of t, b, r, and g
129 demonstrate an exception to the statement made by Hockett that every phonological system contrasts
phonemes that are typically stops with phonemes that are never stops Firchow and Firchow 1969:271–276. The following sounds are heard in the Rotokas Proper dialect: a, e, i, o, u, g, k, p, r, t, and v. The
pronunciation of these sounds is as follows:
Vowels a as in father
e as in bed i as in machine
o as in pole u as in pool
The long vowels: aa, ee, ii, oo, and uu are pronounced as single vowels but are held over a longer period of time.
Consonants g as in go in the middle of the word it is very soft.
k as in rocker p as in pepper
r is made by a quick tap of the tongue on the roof of the mouth, similar to a quick d. s as in seal It often sounds like ts and is always followed by the i sound.
Although the symbol s is included in the list, it is technically unnecessary, since it is an allophone of t. t as in still
v as in bat The lips are not closed. Syntax
Rotokas sentences may be long and complicated, but one can also adequately express himself with short simple sentences. A very brief description of a simple verb and a few illustrations of short sentences may be
helpful here.
A simple verb
The main part of the Rotokas sentence is the verb. Within this single word, all of the following may be expressed: the type of action or state of being, the nature of this action or state, the attitude of the subject, the
subject, and the time of the action or state of being. However, a common form of the verb includes only the type of action or state of being the root, -pa for continuing action, the subject marker, and the time marker, in
that order.
root continuing action subject time pau-pa-ra-vere
sit - continuing - I - near future “I will be sitting”
The continuing action marker, -pa, is optional and without it in the above example, the meaning would be: “I will sit.”
It will be noted that there are two sets of subject and time markers. Class 1 is used when there is no object affected, e.g., “He was talking.” Class 2 is used when the action of the verb affects an object, e.g., “I hit the
ball” ball is the object.
There are also two handy markers that may occur suffixed to the verb root. When they do, however, neither the subject nor the time markers occur. They are -sa and -oro. Their use approximates the English
infinitive and gerund forms of the verb, e.g., pau-sa “to sit” as in ruipa-pa-ra-ei pau-sa “I am wanting to sit”, and pau-oro “sitting” as in reo-pa-ra-ei pau-oro “I am speaking sitting down.”
130
Simple sentence
Although the order of words in a Rotokas sentence may change greatly, there is a predominant pattern which can be followed for the construction of simple sentences. These patterns are illustrated below any word
occurring in parentheses is optional:
Sentence without an object intransitive
Time Subject Location Verb Adverb Verb a ovokivu-ia ragai Ibu iare ava-ra-epa ogoevira ikau-oro
on another day I Ibu to I went hungrily running “On another day I went running hungrily to Ibu.”
b Rut kare-o-vere varavira Ruth she will return downward
“Ruth will go back down.” c aruvea upia-ra-erao
yesterday I was sick “Yesterday I was sick.”
Sentences with an object transitive
Time Subject Object Verb Adverb Verb Location d rera kaakau tapa-re-vora voari
he dog he hit back there “He hit the dog back there.”
In some instances, the transitive sentence may be complicated by the inclusion of an indirect object. The next example shows how the indirect object receives the action directed towards the direct object:
Sentences with both object and indirect object
Time Subject Indirect-object Object Verb Adverb Location e rera iare perapaisi viki-pa-ta-voi garutuvira
him to soccerball you are throwing slowly “You are throwing the soccerball to him slowly.”
Negative sentences
To make a sentence negative, the word viapau is used initially in the order of words. To make a sentence d negative, the Rotokas would read:
f viapau rera kaakau tapa-re-vora voari no he dog he hit back there
“He didn’t hit the dog back there.”
Questions
To make an interrogative sentence from the types illustrated above, introduce the sentence with the proper question word, i.e., when, where, who, etc. When “who” irou is used, one must be careful that the subject
marker of the verb agrees in gender and number with the interrogative as illustrated here [see sentence b]:
g irou-va kare-o-vere varavira
who f she will return downward “Who will go back down?” or
“Which female will go back down?” [see sentence f]
131 h eakepa viapau rera kaakau tapa-re-vora voari
why no he dog he hit back there “Why didn’t he hit the dog back there?”
Prepositions
It will be seen above that prepositions always follow noun, location, and time words. See sentence a
ovokivu-ia “on another day” and Ibu iare “to Ibu”; and see sentence e rera iare “to him.” The preposition -ia in the first instance is very much like the Tok Pisin preposition long, which approximates most of the
prepositions of English.
Possession
There are at least three ways to express possession. They are illustrated here using the possession marker - aro, and the possessive pronouns [see Appendix]:
ragai va-aro aioa
ragai aioa-aro
I it-poss. food I food-poss.
“my food” “my food”
aioa oaa
food mine “my food”
Noun phrases
Demonstrative pronouns and adjectives are combined with nouns in various types of phrases. The order in which the words occur in a phrase is illustrated here:
Demonstrative pronouns
The demonstrative pronouns always immediately precede the nouns they designate:
ro oirato evara kepaara
this m man those n houses
“this man” “those houses”
Adjectives
Adjectives always immediately precede the noun which they modify: vearo aio
riro kaekae raiva good food
big long road “good food”
“very long road”
10.4.2 Figures of speech
