Fijian/Grammar
Contents
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")
- Common Noun <n>: (article used: a~na)
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")
- Unit of Time:
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>