Tamambo language

Vowels

/i u/ become [j w] respectively when unstressed and before another vowel. /o/ may also become [w] for some speakers.

Consonants

The prenasalized postalveolar stop /ᶮɟ/ is often affricated and voiceless, i.e. [ᶮtʃ].

Younger speakers often realize /β/ as [f] initially and [v] medially, while /βʷ/ is often replaced by [w].

/x/ is usually realized as [x] initially, but some speakers use [h]. Medially, it may be pronounced as any of [x ɣ h ɦ ɡ].

Writing system

Few speakers of Tamambo are literate, and there is no standard orthography. Spelling conventions used include:

Pronouns and person markers

In Tamambo, personal pronouns distinguish between first, second, and third person. There is an inclusive and exclusive marking on the first-person plural and gender is not marked. There are four classes of pronouns, which is not uncommon in other Austronesian languages:

Independent pronouns

Independent pronouns behave grammatically similarly to other NPs in that they can occur in the same slot as a subject NP, functioning as the head of a NP. However, in regular discourse, they are not used a great deal due the obligatory nature of cross-referencing subject pronouns. Use of independent pronouns is often seen as unnecessary and unusual except in the following situations:

Indicating person and number of conjoint NP

In the instance where two NPs are joined as a single subject, the independent pronoun reflects the number of the conjoint NP:

and

Thus, merging the two above clauses into one, the independent pronoun must change to reflect total number of subjects:

Introducing a new referent

When a new referent is introduced into the discourse, the independent pronoun is used. In this case, kamam:

Reintroduction of referent

In this example, the IP hinda in the second sentence is used to refer back to tahasi in the first sentence.

Emphasis on participation of known subject

According to Jauncey, this is the most common use of the IP. Comparing the two examples, the latter placing the emphasis on the subject:

and

Subject pronouns

Subject pronouns are an obligatory component of a verbal phrase, indicating the person and number of the NP. They can either co-occur with the NP or independent in the subject slot, or exist without if the subject has been deleted through ellipsis or previously known context.

Object pronouns

Object pronouns are very similar looking to independent pronouns, appearing to be abbreviations of the independent pronoun as seen in the pronoun paradigm above. Object pronouns behave similarly to the object NP, occurring in the same syntactic slot, however only one or the other is used, both cannot be used simultaneously as an object argument – which is unusual in Oceanic languages as many languages have obligatory object pronominal cross-referencing on the verb agreeing with NP object.

Possessive pronouns

Possessive pronouns substitute for NP possessor, suffixing to the possessed noun in direct possessive constructions or to one the four possessive classifiers in indirect constructions.