single syllable words hàːm ("water"), and ʃíŋ ("mix"). Ideophones Certain verbs of Goemai can be modified by a special class of approximately 80 ideophones. Each modifies only a single other verb in the language, and can modify no other verb. The effect of this modification is to emphasize the result of the verb, as in the following example (ideophone in bold): Syntax Basic Word Order Transitive Clauses The basic word order of Goemai is strictly subject-verb-object in transitive clauses, as shown in the following example sentences. Intransitive Clauses In intransitive sentences, there is a strict SV basic word order, as shown below: Argument Omission In cases where arguments are redundant, or can be inferred from the surrounding context, they are usually omitted. In particular, the subject may be omitted entirely if it is third person singular, so long as it is clear which entity is being referenced. In addition, direct objects may be omitted, but only if they refer to inanimate objects or lower animals. In the following example, the subject "rabbit" is omitted after being introduced once: Bibliography Hellwig, Birgit (2011) A Grammar of Goemai. 596 p., Mouton De Gruyter. , . Hellwig, Birgit (2003) Fieldwork among the Goemai in Nigeria: discovering the grammar of property expressions. STUF Hellwig, Birgit (2003) The grammatical coding of postural semantics in Goemai (a West Chadic language of Nigeria). MPI Series in Psycholinguistics [dissertation Nijmegen]. [the introduction contains info about the geography, demography, and sociolinguistics of Goemai; chapter 2 is a grammatical sketch of Goemai] Hoffman, Carl (1970) 'Towards a comoparative phonology of the languages of the Angas–Goemai group.' Unpublished manuscript. Kraft, Charles H. (1981) Chadic wordlists. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer (Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde, Serie A: Afrika, 23, 24, 25). [contains a phonological sketch of Goemai and also a Goemai word list] Wolff, Hans (1959) 'Subsystem typologies and area linguistics.' Anthropological Linguistics, 1, 7, 1–88. [phonological inventory of Goemai (Duut dialect)]'' Notes External links ELAR archive of Goemai texts, including open access materials Goemai DoReCo corpus compiled by Birgit Hellwig. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations. Further reading References Languages of Nigeria West Chadic languages Subject–verb–object languages Isolating languages