Fijian/Grammar

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Main Parts of Speech

The main parts of speech in Fijian include 3 open lexical classes, 2 semi-open classes, and 10 closed classes, which are categorised into shifters and grammatical systems.

Open Classes

The open classes in Fijian include verbs and a subset of semi-auxiliary verbs, adjectives, and nouns. Furthermore, nouns have several subclasses: personal names, place names, and common nouns, which is further divided into free and bound nouns).

  • Verb <v>
    -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
    • Common Noun <n>: (article used: a~na)
      -ose<n> ↔ ose ("horse")
      -nu’u<n> ↔ nu’u ("garment")
    • Personal Name <np>: (article used: "o"; prepositions used: "(mai)vei")
      -Jone<n> ↔ Jone ("John")
      -Sepo<n> ↔ Sepo ("Sepo")
    • Place Name <np>: (article used: "o"; prepositions used: "i/mai")
      -Viti<n> ↔ Viti ("Fiji")
      -Na’auvadra<n> ↔ Na’auvadra ("Na’auvadra mountain")

Semi-open Classes

The semi-open classes include numbers and time words, which contains several subclasses: unit of time, names of months, shifters, parts of the day, and clock time expression.

  • Number <num>
    -dua<num> ↔ dua ("one")
    -ruasagavulu<num> ↔ ruasagavulu ("twenty")
  • Time Word <time> (There's no corresponding tag on the Apertium tagset, so a new tag "time" is assigned to time words for this project.)
    • Unit of Time:
      -yaba’i<time> ↔ yaba’i ("year")
      -sigava’arauwai<time> ↔ sigava’arauwa ("Saturday")
    • Names of Months:
      -Tiiseba<tim> ↔ Tiiseba ("December")
    • Shifters:
      -saubogi<time> ↔ saubogi ("tomorrow")
      -nanoa<time> ↔ nanoa ("yesterday")
    • Parts of the Day:
      -mata’a<time> ↔ mata’a ("morning")
      -ya’avi<time> ↔ ya’avi ("afternoon, early evening")
    • Clock Time Expression:
      -kaloko<time> ↔ kaloko ("o'clock")

Closed Classes

The closed classes in Fijian are divided into two main subclasses--shifters and grammatical systems. The closed classes of shifters include pronouns and demonstratives; the closed classes of grammatical systems of words include articles, prepositions, tense-aspect markers, discourse markers, predicate modifiers, classifiers, relators, and interjections.

Closed Classes of Shifters

  • Pronoun <prn>
  • Demanstrative <dem>

Closed Grammatical Systems

Pronouns

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

Classifiers

Adjective Reduplication

Word Classes

Tense and Aspect Markers

Articles

Prepositions

Demonstrative

Prefixes

Numbers