Fijian/Grammar
From LING073
Contents
Main Part of Speech
The main parts of speech in Fijian include 3 open lexical classes, 2 semi-open classes, and 10 closed classes, which are further categorised into shifters and grammatical systems.
Open Classes
Open classes include Verb, tagged as <v>, Adjective, tagged as <adj>, and Noun, tagged as <n>. Furthermore, nouns have several subclasses: Personal Name, Place Name, and Common Noun, which is further divided into free and bound nouns).
- Verb <v> (including a subset of semi-auxiliary verbs)
- -la’o<v> ↔ la’o ("go")
- -dree<v> ↔ dree ("pull")
- Semi-auxiliaries <vaux>
- -sega<vaux> ↔ sega ("not")
- -rawa<vaux> ↔ rawa ("can")
- Adjective <adj>
- -lo’alo’a<adj> ↔ lo’alo’a ("purple")
- -levu<adj> ↔ levu ("big")
- Noun <n>
- Common Noun: (article used: a~na)
- -ose<n> ↔ ose ("horse")
- -nu’u<n> ↔ nu’u ("garment")
- Personal Name: (article used: "o"; prepositions used: "(mai)vei")
- -Jone<n> ↔ Jone ("John")
- -Sepo<n> ↔ Sepo ("Sepo")
- Place Name: (article used: "o"; prepositions used: "i/mai")
- -Viti<n> ↔ Viti ("Fiji")
- -Na’auvadra<n> ↔ Na’auvadra ("Na’auvadra mountain")
- Common Noun: (article used: a~na)