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38-532: It is a simplified version of Motu , from the Austronesian language family. Although it is strictly neither a pidgin nor a creole , it possesses some features from both language types. Phonological and grammatical differences make Hiri Motu not mutually intelligible with Motu. The languages are lexically very similar, and retain a common, albeit simplified, Austronesian syntactical basis. It has also been influenced to some degree by Tok Pisin . Even in

76-486: A passive voice , a transitive verb in the active voice becomes intransitive in the passive voice. For example, consider the following sentence: In this sentence, "hugged" is a transitive verb with "Mary" as its object. The sentence can be made passive with the direct object "Mary" as the grammatical subject as follows: This shift is called promotion of the object. The passive-voice construction does not indicate an object. The passivized sentence could be continued with

114-525: A big pig' or 'A big pig killed this boy'. To solve this, a subject marker can be used. In Hiri Motu, the subject marker is ese , which is placed immediately after the subject of the sentence. With it, the sentence reads: Inai mero ese boroma badana ia alaia (literally, 'This boy <subject marker>, a big pig he killed.') - 'This boy killed a big pig.' The subject marker should only be used in cases where ambiguity occurs. Subject markers are never used in sentences with intransitive verbs . Edana

152-590: A class apart from modal verbs and defective verbs . In the following sentences, verbs are used without a direct object : The following sentences contain transitive verbs (they entail one or more objects): Some verbs, called ambitransitive verbs , may entail objects but do not always require one. Such a verb may be used as intransitive in one sentence, and as transitive in another. In general, intransitive verbs often involve weather terms, involuntary processes, states, bodily functions, motion, action processes, cognition, sensation, and emotion. The valency of

190-532: A continuum from the original "pure" language, through the established creoles, to what some writers have suggested constitutes a form of "Hiri Motu–based pidgin" used as a contact language with people who had not fully acquired Hiri Motu, such as the Eleman and Koriki. In the Hiri Motu language, the distinction between "inclusive" and "exclusive" forms of 'we' is very important. In the former case, 'we' applies to

228-447: A dog with the phrase Lau na mai egu sisia for 'I have a dog', (literally, 'I with my dog'.) There are no standards for these expressions in Hiri Motu. The numbers 1–5 in Hiri Motu are, respectively, ta , rua , toi , hani , ima . The number system in Hiri Motu goes up to 100,000. Many of the numbers in Hiri Motu are polysyllabic . For example, 99 in Hiri Motu is taurahanita ahui taurahanita . Most Papuans know

266-428: A magazine , and this magazine reads easily . Some languages like Japanese have different forms of certain verbs to show transitivity. For example, there are two forms of the verb "to start": In Japanese, the form of the verb indicates the number of arguments the sentence needs to have. Especially in some languages, it makes sense to classify intransitive verbs as: This distinction may in some cases be reflected in

304-424: A prepositional phrase be passive. In German , a sentence such as "The children sleep" can be made passive to remove the subject and becomes, "They are slept." However, no addition like "... by the children" is possible in such cases. In languages with ergative–absolutive alignment , the passive voice (where the object of a transitive verb becomes the subject of an intransitive verb) does not make sense, because

342-488: A single basic sound) or diphthongs (consisting of more than one basic sound). There are only five vowel sounds /a, e, i, o, u/ ; Motu diphthongs are written and pronounced as combinations of two vowels. The sounds oi and oe , ai and ae , au and ao (approximately like English boy , high , cow ), and r and l are distinguished in Motu but not in Hiri Motu. There is no letter f ; when it occurs in loan words, it

380-471: A verb from intransitive to transitive or vice versa. In some ambitransitive verbs are ergative verbs for which the alignment of the syntactic arguments to the semantic roles is exchanged. An example of this is the verb break in English. In (1), the verb is transitive, and the subject is the agent of the action, i.e. the performer of the action of breaking the cup. In (2), the verb is intransitive and

418-406: A verb is related to transitivity. Where the transitivity of a verb only considers the objects, the valency of a verb considers all the arguments that correspond to a verb, including both the subject of the verb and all of the objects. It is possible to change the contextually indicated sense of a verb from transitive to intransitive, and in so doing to change the valency . In languages that have

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456-557: Is ai , which can mean 'in', 'on', or 'at'. For example, maua ai means 'in the box', pata ai means 'on the table', and Konedobu ai means 'at Konedobu (a location in Papua)'. Because Hiri Motu does not allow double vowels, ai will often fuse with the word. Some examples: There are two word orders in Hiri Motu: subject–object–verb (SOV) and object-subject-verb (OSV), both of which can be used interchangeably (OSV

494-418: Is subject-verb . However, verb-subject is used if the verb is unaccusative or by discourse pragmatics. In Tokelauan , the noun phrases used with verbs are required when verbs are placed in groups. Verbs are divided into two major groups. Every verbal sentence must have that structure, which contains a singular noun phrase, without a preposition, called an unmarked noun phrase. Only if a ko -phrase precedes

532-466: Is classified as one of the Malayo-Polynesian languages and bears some linguistic similarities to Polynesian and Micronesian languages . Motu is a typical Austronesian language in that it is heavily vowel-based. Every Motu syllable ends in a vowel sound — this may be preceded by a single consonant (there are no "consonant clusters"). Vowel sounds may be either monophthongs (consisting of

570-496: Is more common in Hiri Motu). These sentence structures either start with a subject which is followed by an object, or vice versa start with an object which is followed by a subject, and both end with a verb. The sentence always ends with a verb regardless of the word order. As word order can be arbitrarily chosen, ambiguity may arise in some cases. For example, Inai mero boroma badana ia alaia can either mean 'This boy killed

608-472: Is not performed by the subject; it just happens to it. Therefore, this is not the same as passive voice , where an intransitive verb phrase appears, but there is an implicit agent (which can be made explicit using a complement phrase): Other ambitransitive verbs (like eat ) are not of the alternating type; the subject is always the agent of the action, and the object is simply optional. A few verbs are of both types at once, like read : compare I read , I read

646-410: Is sometimes spelt and pronounced edena . Hida always follows the noun it is referring to, while edana always follows it. Questions should be asked affirmatively, as otherwise some of the answers received can be confusing. For example, receiving the reply oibe ('yes') to the question la mai lasi? ('hasn't he come?') can mean 'Yes, he hasn't come yet'. If the person has arrived,

684-457: Is usually represented as p . Motu Braille has the usual letter assignments apart from ḡ, which is ⠿ . Intransitive verb In grammar , an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb , whose context does not entail a transitive object . That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs , which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are typically considered within

722-565: The agent : It cannot be continued with a direct object to be taken by "was hugged". For example, it would be ungrammatical to write "Mary was hugged her daughter" to show that Mary and her daughter shared a hug. Intransitive verbs can be rephrased as passive constructs in some languages. In English, intransitive verbs can be used in the passive voice when a prepositional phrase is included, as in, "The houses were lived in by millions of people." Some languages, such as Dutch , have an impersonal passive voice that lets an intransitive verb without

760-472: The "parent language" ( Motu proper) tend to be unfamiliar with Hiri Motu, and few of them understand or speak it well. Motu language Motu (sometimes called Pure Motu or True Motu to distinguish it from Hiri Motu ) is a Central Papuan Tip language that is spoken by the Motuans , an indigenous ethnic group of Papua New Guinea . It is commonly used today in the region, particularly around

798-599: The English number system and use that instead. The language has a history pre-dating European contact; it developed among members of the Hiri trade cycle (mainly in sago and clay pots ) between the Motu people and their neighbours on the southeast coast of the island of New Guinea . In early European colonial days, the use of Hiri Motu was spread due to its adoption by the Royal Papuan Constabulary (hence

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836-537: The agent in the absolutive). In many languages, there are "ambitransitive" verbs, which can occur either in a transitive or intransitive sense. For example, English play is ambitransitive, since it is grammatical to say His son plays , and it is also grammatical to say His son plays guitar . English is rather flexible as regards verb valency, and so it has a high number of ambitransitive verbs; other languages are more rigid and require explicit valency changing operations ( voice , causative morphology, etc.) to transform

874-412: The answer would be: Lasi, ia mai ('No, he has come'). Examples: When 'to be' is used as a connecting word, the particles na and be can be used and are interchangeable. For example: Ia be mero namona or la na mero namona both mean 'he is a good boy'. There is no Hiri Motu verb form of 'to have' in the sense of possession. In true Hiri Motu, a local would express that they have

912-438: The areas where it was once well established as a lingua franca , the use of Hiri Motu has been declining in favour of Tok Pisin and English for many years. The language has some statutory recognition. The term hiri is the name for the traditional trade voyages that created a culture and style of living for the Motu people . Hiri Motu became a common language for a police force known as Police Motu. The name Hiri Motu

950-529: The capital, Port Moresby . A simplified form of Motu developed as a trade language in the Papuan region, in the southeast of the main island of New Guinea , originally known as Police Motu, and today known as Hiri Motu . After Tok Pisin and English , Hiri Motu was at the time of independence the third most commonly spoken of the more than 800 languages of Papua New Guinea , although its use has been declining for some years, mainly in favour of Tok Pisin. Motu

988-411: The ergative is promoted to the absolutive, and the agent (i.e., him ), which was formerly marked by the absolutive, is deleted to form the antipassive voice (or is marked in a different way, in the same way that in the English passive voice can still be specified as the agent of the action using by him in I was hugged by him —for example, Dyirbal puts the agent in the dative case , and Basque retains

1026-400: The grammar, where for instance different auxiliary verbs may be used for the two categories. In many languages, including English, some or all intransitive verbs can entail cognate objects —objects formed from the same roots as the verbs themselves; for example, the verb sleep is ordinarily intransitive, but one can say, "He slept a troubled sleep", meaning roughly "He slept, and his sleep

1064-609: The name Police Motu ). By the early 1960s, Hiri Motu was the lingua franca of a large part of the country. It was the first language for many people whose parents came from different language groups (typically the children of policemen and other public servants). Since the early 1970s, if not earlier, the use of Hiri Motu as a day-to-day lingua franca in its old "range" has been gradually declining in favour of English and Tok Pisin. Today its speakers tend to be elderly and concentrated in Central and Gulf provinces. Younger speakers of

1102-434: The noun associated with the intransitive verb is marked as the object, not as the subject. Instead, these often have an antipassive voice . In this context, the subject of a transitive verb is promoted to the "object" of the corresponding intransitive verb. In the context of a nominative–accusative language like English, this promotion is nonsensical because intransitive verbs do not entail objects, they entail subjects. So,

1140-461: The people who live there. Traditional Hiri voyages carried prized treasures to the people of the Gulf of Papua . Hiri Motu has two dialects: " Austronesian " and " Papuan ". Both dialects are Austronesian in both grammar and vocabulary due to their derivation from Motu; the dialect names refer to the first languages spoken by users of this lingua franca . The "Papuan" dialect (also called "non-central")

1178-403: The predicate, that rule may be ignored. The agent is what speakers of the language call the person who is performing the action of the verb. If a noun phrase that starts with the preposition e is able to express the agent, and the receiving person or thing that the agent is performing the action of the verb to is expressed by a singular noun phrase that lack a preposition, or unmarked noun phrase,

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1216-504: The same way as reflexive verbs , using the clitic particle se . Compare the following (in Spanish ): Sentences (3a) and (3b) show Romance pseudo-reflexive phrases, corresponding to English alternating intransitives. As in The cup broke , they are inherently without an agent; their deep structure does not and can not contain one. The action is not reflexive (as in (4a) and (4b)) because it

1254-405: The speaker and listener while in the latter case 'we' does not include the listener. For example, in the table above, lau-egu is placed before the noun, such as lau-egu boroma ('my pig'). The first half of the word ( lau , oi ) may be taken out of the word. For example, lau-egu boroma can be shortened to egu boroma . Hiri Motu uses postpositions. A standard postposition

1292-512: The subject is the patient of the action, i.e. it is the thing affected by the action, not the one that performs it. In fact, the patient is the same in both sentences, and sentence (2) is an example of implicit middle voice . This has also been termed an anticausative . Other alternating intransitive verbs in English are change and sink . In the Romance languages , these verbs are often called pseudo-reflexive , because they are signaled in

1330-437: The subject of a transitive verb ("I" in I hug him ) is also the subject of the intransitive passive construction ( I was hugged by him ). But in an ergative–absolutive language like Dyirbal , "I" in the transitive I hug him would involve the ergative case , but the "I" in I was hugged would involve the absolutive , and so by analogy the antipassive construction more closely resembles *was hugged me . Thus in this example,

1368-496: Was conceptualised in the early 1970s during a conference held by the Department of Information and Extension Services. During the conference, the committee recommended the name Hiri Motu for several reasons. The Motu people are native inhabitants of Papua New Guinea who live along the southern coastal line of their country. They typically live in dry areas, on the leeward side of the mountain, where dry seasons are harsh on

1406-455: Was more widely spoken and was, at least from about 1964, used as the standard for official publications. The "Austronesian" (or "central") dialect is closer to Motu in grammar and phonology, and its vocabulary is both more extensive and closer to the original language. It was the prestige dialect , which was regarded by speakers as being more "correct". The distinction between Motu and its "pidgin" dialects has been described as blurred. They form

1444-431: Was troubled." In Pingelapese , a Micronesian language , intransitive verb sentence structure is often used, with no object attached. There must be a stative or active verb to have an intransitive sentence. A stative verb has a person or an object that is directly influenced by a verb. An active verb has the direct action performed by the subject. The word order that is most commonly associated with intransitive sentences

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