Kokota (also known as Ooe Kokota) is spoken on Santa Isabel Island, which is located in the Solomon Island chain in the Pacific Ocean. Santa Isabel is one of the larger islands in the chain, but it has a very low population density. Kokota is the main language of three villages: Goveo and Sisigā on the North coast, and Hurepelo on the South coast, though there are a few speakers who reside in the capital, Honiara, and elsewhere. The language is classified as a 6b (threatened) on the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS). To contextualize '6b', the language is not in immediate danger of extinction since children in the villages are still taught Kokota and speak it at home despite English being the language of the school system. However, Kokota is threatened by another language, Cheke Holo, as speakers of this language move from the west of the island closer to the Kokota-speaking villages. Kokota is one of 37 languages in the Northwestern Solomon Group, and as with other Oceanic languages, it has limited morphological complexity.
Kokota uses little affixation and instead relies heavily on cliticization, full and partial reduplication, and compounding. Phonologically, Kokota has a diverse array of vowels and consonants and makes interesting use of stress assignment. Regarding its basic syntax, Kokota is consistently head-initial. The sections below expand on each of these topics to give an overview of the Kokota language.
Phonology The phonemic inventory of Kokota consists of 22 consonants and 5 vowels.
Vowels Kokota has five vowel phonemes as shown in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) chart below and uses no phonemic diphthongs. There are two front vowels, and , one central vowel, , and two back vowels: a maximally rounded and a slightly rounded .
+ Vowel phonemes Front Central Back High i u Mid e o Low a
Kokota does not contain any phonemic diphthongs; however, they do occur in normal speech. Only certain vowel sequences are eligible for diphthongisation. Sequences may only diphthongise if the second vowel present is higher than the first. Front-back and back-front movements are not eligible to become diphthongs. This leaves six diphthongs able to occur : , , , , and . Diphthongisation is also not restricted by morpheme boundaries. Thus, any sequence of eligible vowels may diphthongise.
Consonants Kokota orthography is heavily influenced by that of Cheke Holo. For instance, glottal stops are not phonemic in Kokota but are often written with an apostrophe (as in Cheke Holo) when they occur in certain nondistinctive environments, such as to mark morpheme boundaries between neighboring vowels. Similarly, Cheke Holo distinguishes j and z but Kokota does not. Nevertheless, Kokota speakers tend to use either letter to write phonemic . The macron is used to write the voiced velar plosive and the velar nasal .
Most consonants distinguish voiceless and voiced versions (left and right respectively in each cell in the table). Kokota presents a rather uncommon set of consonant phonemes in that each and every phoneme exists in a pair with its voiced or voiceless opposite. There are 22 consonant phonemes in total – 11 place and manner pairs of voiced and voiceless and five contrastive manners. Two are obstruent classes which are fricative and plosive and three are sonorant classes which are lateral, nasal, and rhotic. Its six fricative phonemes make Kokota a relative outlier in Oceanic, where 2–3 fricatives are usual. The amount of voiced and voiceless consonants and vowels is nearly equal with the percentage being 52% voiced and 48% voiceless.
+ Consonant phonemes Labial Alveolar Velar Glottal Nasal mh nh n̄h m n n̄ Plosive p t k b d ḡ Fricative f s h v z g Rhotic (Tap) rh r Lateral lh l
Syllable structure
Kokota uses three types of syllable structure for the most part: V, CV, and CCV. Most (88% of 746 syllables examined) are CV (V and CCV each represent 6%). However, there are also rare cases where a CCVV or CVV syllable may occur. Thus, Kokota structure is: (C)(C)V(V). Final consonant codas usually occur only in words borrowed from another language. The CCVV structure is extremely rare as Kokota does not use phonemic 'diphthongs' and the term simply refers to two vowels occurring in sequence in a single syllable. In CC initial syllables, the first consonant (C1) must be an obstruent or fricative, specifically: the labial plosives , , velar plosives , , labial fricatives , , or coronal fricatives , . The second consonant (C2) must be a voiced coronal sonorant (, , or ). The table below illustrates the possible CC onset cluster pairings.
p b k g f v s z ɾ pɾ bɾ kɾ gɾ fɾ vɾ ?sɾ zɾ l pl bl kl gl fl - - - n - bn kn - fn - sn zn
The table below contains representations of the basic, productive syllable structures in Kokota.
+TemplateInstantiationTranslationV'the' singularCV'sea urchin'CCV'allow'CVV'be.big'
Stress Kokota uses trochaic stress patterns (stressed-unstressed in sequence, counting from the left edge of a word). Stress in the language varies widely among speakers, but there are patterns to the variation. Three main factors contribute to this variability: the limited morphology of Kokota, the fact some words are irregular by nature, and finally because of the present transition in stress assignment. The language is currently in a period of transition as it moves from relying on stress assignment based on moras and moves to stress assignment by syllable. The age of the speaker is a defining factor in stress use as members of older generations assign stress based on weight while younger generations assign stress based on syllables, placing main stress on the leftmost syllable of the word.
Example 1 Words can be divided into syllables (σ) and feet (φ) and syllables may be divided further into moras (μ). Two moras grouped together comprise a foot. An important restriction on foot formation in Kokota is that their construction cannot split moras of the same syllable. For example, a word that has three syllables CV.CV.CVV has four moras, CV, CV, CV, V. These moras are split into two feet: [CV.CV] and [CVV].
Assigning stress based on mora uses bimoraic feet to determine where a word receives stress. In CVV.CV words like ('shark') the syllables are split as and . The word subdivides into three moras: , , . The first two moras, and , become Foot 1 and is a 'left-over' mora. The first mora is stressed (), though in speech the whole syllable receives stress so is stressed in this word (see below where the stressed syllable is bolded).
φ: , - σ: , μ: , ,
In contrast, a younger speaker of Kokota would assign stress based on bisyllabic feet. Following the syllable structure above, is again the stressed syllable but this is simply coincidental as stress is assigned to the first syllable (of the two: ). This coincidence will not always be the case as demonstrated in the next example, below.
Example 2 CV.CVV words like ('reef') show more complex stress assignment. has three moras: , , and two syllables: , . For older speakers, the feet are assigned differently than in because ordinary foot assignment would take the first two moras and thus would split the syllable. Since this is impossible, foot assignment begins with the second mora and thus the first foot is and stress falls on the first mora of that foot (and the rest of the syllable).
φ: - , σ: , μ: , ,
A younger speaker uses the simpler, syllable-based foot parsing: stress thus falls on the first syllable while the second syllable is unstressed.
Verb complex In the Kokota language there are two layers to the verb complex: an inner layer and an outer layer. The inner layer is the verb core which is transparent to any sentence modifiers. The outer layer can alter the verb core altogether. Constituent modifiers can modify the verb complex in a sentence in addition to the inner and outer layers of verb complexes.
Verb compounding Compound verbs stem from multiple verbs. The left-hand root is the verb and the right-hand can be a noun, verb, or adjective. The phrase all together acts as a verb phrase.
Reduplication Kokota shows full and partial reduplication of disyllabic roots.
Partial reduplication In some cases partial reduplication shows the change of a noun to a verb; nouns from verbs; slight noun from noun differentiation; slight verb from verb differentiation; derived form of a habitual, ongoing, or diminutive event.
Verb from noun
Noun from verb
Slight noun from noun differentiation
Slight verb from verb differentiation
Habitual, ongoing, or diminutive event
Full reduplication There is only a small number of full reduplication of disyllabic roots in the Kokota language. Below are examples of full reduplication where the relationship is idiosyncratic:
One example shows full reduplication deriving verbs from transitive roots, and nouns from verbs:
Clause structure (syntax) Syntax in Kokota follows the basic sequential order: subject → verb → object.
An example is shown below.
Subject: Verb: Object:
Equative clauses Equative clauses represent a characteristic of the subject in the sentence. In the Kokota language moods are unmarked. In equatives, the subject agreement component in verb clauses are excluded.
Telling time When telling the time; time is the subject. Telling time in units less than an hour is expressed by a NP that expresses the minutes numerically attached to a possessor that expresses the hour. Terms like 'half past' or 'quarter to' cannot be expressed in Kokota.
Topicalization Topicalized subjects in Kokota are in the preverbal position. Any subject can be topicalized but rarely in natural conversation.
Below is a table of the breakdown position occurrence of the first 100 verbal clauses in a normal text:
+ Preverbal topicalized argumentsFocused argumentsArguments in unmarked positionTotalA2 (28.5%)05 (71.5%)7 (100%)S8 (15.5%) 2 (4.0%)41 (80.5%)51 (100%)O1 (5.5%)017 (94.5%)18 (100%)
Morphology
Nouns Cliticization By adding two clitics on to the root noun , Kokota specifies who possesses it as well as its proximity, as shown in the gloss below.
The gloss of is:
is the root meaning 'blood'; indicates first-person singular possessive ('my').
A more complex form of cliticization occurs in the example sentence below:
(Notes: the standing stones () have spiritual significance; NT is the indicator of neutral modality; CNT is continuous; NV refers to something that is not visible.)
Compounding (nouns) Both endocentric and exocentric compounding occur.
Endocentric compounding Endocentric compounding in Kokota results in words that serve the grammatical purpose that one of its constituent words does. There are three examples below.
Exocentric compounding Exocentric compounding in Kokota results in words that do not serve the grammatical purpose that any of the constituent words do. There are two examples below.
Pronouns There exist four sets of pronominal forms: preverbal subject indexed auxiliaries, post verbal object indexing, possessor indexing and independent pronouns . Complying with typical Oceanic features, Kokota distinguishes between four person categories: first-person inclusive, first-person exclusive, second person, and third person. The preverbal subject indexing auxiliaries do not differentiate between singular and plural, whereas possessor and postverbal object indexing do – except in first-person inclusive, where no singular is possible .
Non-independent: subject pronouns The preverbal subject-indexing pronouns do not distinguish number .
Singular=Plural 1st person exclusive inclusive 2nd person 3rd person
Non-independent: object pronouns The object-indexing pronouns are postverbal clitics .
Singular Plural 1st person exclusive =(n)au = inclusive = 2nd person = = 3rd person = ~ Ø (null) = ~
Non-independent: possessor pronouns