Maisin (or Maisan) is a language of Papua New Guinea with both Austronesian and Papuan features. The Austronesian elements are those of the Nuclear Papuan Tip languages. The Papuan element is Binanderean or Dagan. It is spoken by the Maisin people of Oro Province. Maisin displays significant lexical copying from Korafe, a neighboring Papuan language. Other languages with disputed affiliation between either Austronesian or Papuan are Magori, the Reefs-Santa Cruz languages, the Lower Mamberamo languages, and the Pasismanua languages. Phonology Vowels Monophthongs Diphthongs Consonants and are not phonemic, but are distinguished in the orthography. Phonotactics Syllables can begin and end with up to one consonant each. I.e., English wrong would be an acceptable word, but strength would not. Words can only end in either a vowel or . The vowels and never occur word-initially. never occurs before or . Writing system Literacy varies from 20% to 80% in different areas. Morphosyntax Negation Negation in Maisin Negation in Maisin is achieved predominantly by morphology. In the Marua communalect, negation is marked by , while in the Sinapa communalect, negation is marked by . The negation marking is discontinuous. is a morpheme located prior to the predicate of the sentence, and can be roughly glossed as 'not' in English. Morphologically, it is classified as a separate word. is an enclitic that is found attached to a verb's tense- or aspect-marking enclitic. Alternatively, when there is no tense- or aspect-marking enclitic in the sentence, it attaches to the predicate's last item. Negation through can be seen in the following examples. In Example 1, the verb stem 'swim' takes both the progressive marker (created through partial reduplication of the verb stem and the negative enclitic , as well as the male second-person singular pronominal enclitic. The enclitic attaches to the progressive marker . The combination of and in the sentence negates the action of swimming. Here negation is also shown through . In this case, is attached directly to the end of the predicate, as there is no tense- or aspect-marking present. The first in the sentence (in ) is not a negative marker; rather, it is a homophonous morpheme that functions as a topic marker. In Example 3, is found attached to the enclitic , which marks future tense. Again, negation is achieved through the combination of and . Negation with only In the presence of the conjunction or the demonstrative , the