Cheke Holo language

Cheke Holo (also called Maringe or Mariŋe, A’ara, Holo, Kubonitu) is an Oceanic language spoken in the Solomon Islands. Its speakers live on Santa Isabel Island.

Cheke Holo
Native to	Central Solomon Islands
Region	Santa Isabel Island
Native speakers	(10,800 cited 1999)[1] 1,500 monolinguals[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Northwest Solomonic New Georgia – Ysabel Ysabel East Isabel Cheke Holo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mrn
Glottolog	chek1238

Phonology

The phonology of Cheke Holo shows some peculiarities, shared with other Santa Isabel languages, like the aspirated stops and the voiceless sonorants. The five-vowel system instead conforms to the prototypical system of the Oceanic area (White, Kokhonigita & Pulomana 1988). Boswell (2018:16) has /x/ rather than /ɣʰ/.

Consonant phonemes

		Labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m̥	m	n̥	n	ɲ̊	ɲ	ŋ̊	ŋ
Stop	plain	p	b	t	d	t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ	k	ɡ	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ		tʰ				kʰ
Fricative	plain	f	v	s	z				ɣ	h
	aspirated								ɣʰ
Lateral				l̥	l
Trill				r̥	r

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Morphosyntax

Verbs in Cheke Holo are marked neither for tense nor for person, although they can be prefixed with fa- (a causative marker) and they take enclitics. Among the possible clitics are the direct object pronouns, the completive aspect markers hi and hila, and the continuative aspect marker u (Boswell 2018).

Reduplication is commonly employed with verb roots to express iteration or intensification and as a valency changing device (from intransitive to transitive), although there are attested cases of adjective and (less so) noun reduplication (Boswell 2018). Different types of reduplications are possible in Cheke Holo:

• Full reduplication
  • /vra/ 'jump up' > /vravra/ 'be quick to act'
• Partial (or White's rule) reduplication
  • /bela/ 'wooden platform' > /beabela/ 'stack up firewood'
• Syllable reduplication
  • /nolo/ 'to walk' > /nonolo/ 'go walking about'
  • /kmokhu/ 'stop' > /kmokmohu/ 'continue to cease'
  • /fruni/ 'cover' > /fufruni/ 'cover completely' (when the second consonant of a cluster is /r/, this is dropped in the reduplicated syllable)

Notes

1. Cheke Holo at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)

References

• Boswell, Fredrick Alvin (2018). A Grammar of Cheke Holo (Doctoral thesis). LOT Publications (Leiden University). hdl:1887/67082. ISBN 978-94-6093-301-1.
• White, Geoffrey; Kokhonigita, Francis; Pulomana, Hugh (1988). Cheke Holo (Maringe/Hograno) Dictionary. Pacific Linguistics Series C - No. 97. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi:10.15144/pl-c97. hdl:1885/145429. ISBN 0-85883-368-9.
• Palmer, Bill (2009). "Clause Order and Information Structure in Cheke Holo". Oceanic Linguistics. 48 (1): 213–249. doi:10.1353/ol.0.0038. hdl:1959.13/916448. S2CID 145092013.

External links

• Keha Tarai Mala Lao Legu Narone Anglican devotional material in Cheke Holo (1934)
• Buka Tharai Ka Cheke Marine Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Cheke Holo (1973) digitized by Richard Mammana