Muna language


Muna is an Austronesian language spoken principally on the island of Muna and the adjacent part of Buton Island, off the southeast coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia. The language is well-documented, publications in English include a grammar and a dictionary by René van den Berg.

Classification

Muna belongs to the Muna–Buton subgroup, which is a branch of the larger Celebic subgroup. Within the Muna–Buton languages, Muna is the largest member of the Munic subbranch, which also includes smaller languages such as Pancana, Kioko, Liabuku, Kaimbulawa, and Busoa.

Dialects

Muna has three dialects:
Differences between these dialects are mostly lexical, but also phonological.

Phonology

Consonants

Muna has the following consonant phonemes.
Notes:
The vowel inventory comprises five vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/. They can freely combine into sequences of two or three vowels. Sequences of two like vowels are pronounced as a long vowel, e.g. tuu 'knee'. In sequences of three vowels, there is an optional non-phonemic glottal stop after the first vowel, e.g. nokoue 'it has veins'.

Syllable structure

Like many other languages on Sulawesi, Muna only has open syllables of the types CV and V, e.g. kaindea /ka.i.ⁿde.a/ 'plantation', padamalala /pa.da.ma.la.la/ 'citronella', akumadiuandae /a.ku.ma.di.u.a.ⁿda.e/ 'I will wash them with it'. Loanwords from Malay/Indonesian and other source languages are adapted to the syllable structure of Muna: karadhaa /karad̪aa/ < Malay kerja 'work', kantori /kaⁿtori/ < Malay kantor 'office', wakutuu /wakutuu/ < Malay waktu 'time'.

Grammar

Verbs

Verbs are inflected for mood and person. Person marking is strictly nominative–accusative: person marking prefixes indicate the subject of transitive and intransitive verbs, while person marking suffixes are used to mark the direct and indirect object.
There are three verb classes, which have slightly different forms for the subject prefix. The classes are named after the first person singular prefix.
For ae-class and ao-class verbs, mood is only distinguished by the use of the respective subject prefix:
With a-class verbs, irrealis mood is additionally marked by the infix :
Intransitive verbs mostly employ a-class or ao-class prefixes. As a general rule, a-class verbs are dynamic intransitive verbs, while ao-class verbs are stative intransitive verbs. With a few exceptions, transitive verbs use ae-class prefixes with an indefinite object, but a-class prefixes with a definite object.
There are two sets of object suffixes, marking direct and indirect objects.
directindirect
1.sg.-kanau-kanau
2.sg.fam.-ko-angko
2.sg.hon.-kaeta-kaeta
3.sg.-e-ane
1.du./pl.incl.------
1.pl.excl.-kasami-kasami
2.pl.fam.-koomu-angkoomu
2.pl.hon.-kaetaamu-kaetaamu
3.pl.-da-anda

Combinations of two suffixes are restricted to indirect object suffixes + the third person singular direct object suffix -e: