Buch, Englisch, Band 325, 70 Seiten
Buch, Englisch, Band 325, 70 Seiten
Reihe: Languages of the World, Materials
ISBN: 978-3-89586-932-7
Verlag: LINCOM
The language has little morphological case-marking and relies mainly on a basic SVO word order for the differentiation of nominal arguments, although word order is flexible according to certain rules.
Pileni is clearly a nominative-accusative language, although certain morphosyntactic processes reflect what may be traces of an earlier ergative morphology.
In the basics of its phonology and morphology Pileni resembles other Polynesian languages, although the phonology is considerably more complex than is common in these languages, with phonemic aspiration on stops and a number of phonetically conditioned consonant alternations. The language exhibits characteristic Polynesian features of morphology such as the distinction between "o-type" and "a-type" possession and a complex system of personal pronouns.
Since this is the first systematic description of the Pileni language and based on a relatively limited material, it must be regarded as preliminary and open to correction. It will, however, provide a useful basis for further studies of the Pileni language.