Semelai language

Semelai has 32 consonants and 20 vowels. • Stops are heard as word-final position. • Palatal sounds are slightly affricated as when in word-initial position. • may occur as or within free variation. • Nasals can occur as prestopped when in word-final position. • can be heard as when in word-final position. When preceded by a nasal it is heard as . • are heard as off-glides when in word-final position. After nasal vowels, they are then heard as nasalized . Vowels are also distinguished with nasal counterparts: • is phonetically noted as . • can be heard as in closed syllables • /ə/ can be heard as in stressed word-final syllables ==Morphosyntax==

Semelai has many inchoative verbs such as rmɔl "to be male", hitam "be black", which at the first glance may hint a flexible language like nearby Austronesian languages. However, the vast majority of Semelai lemmas can be identified unproblematically to a particular word category. Verbs and nouns must undergo derivation via infixation or prefixation in order to function as other lexical categories, eg. rlmɔl "male" → rmɔl "to be male", yɔk "take" → nk-yɔk "taking INF". Loan words from Malay and Austronesian are mostly precategorial, eg. tuŋkɒt "a stick, to prop up". The language recognizes several distinct parts of speech that are morphologically and syntactically distinguished: the superclass nominal (which includes nouns as an open word class); verb; expressive; preposition; adverb; auxiliary; existential and ascriptive predicators; negator; connective; interjection. Nominal morphology Free pronouns Pronominal clitics These pronominal clitics are used to mark agreement with the ergative argument of transitive verbs and highly volitional argument of intransitive, human activity-denoting verbs. ==Notes==