The Kwaio language, or Koio, is spoken in the centre of Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands. It is spoken by about 13,000 people. Phonology The phonology of the Kwaio language includes 5 vowels and 18 consonants (including the glottal stop), which are shown below. The labialised velars (gw, kw, and ŋw) only occur when preceding vowels a, e, and i. The phoneme /l/ is pronounced [l] when preceding low vowels (a, o, and e) but [r] when preceding high vowels (i, and u). For example, lu'u is pronounced "ru'u". Syllables In the Kwaio language the bases are usually formed using stings of CVCV, but CVV, VCV, and VV appear because the consonants are sometimes dropped. There are no consonant clusters (CC), and all syllables are open, so they end in a vowel. Stress When the same vowel appears twice in a row (in the form CVV or VV), the vowels act as separate syllables. Within morphemes, the stress is typically placed on the second-to-last vowel. When suffixes are attached to bases, the stress shifts to the second-to-last vowel according to this rule. One exception is when a verb is in the form CVV and a monosyllabic pronoun is attached to it as a suffix, in which case the stress does not move. For example, the verb fai 'scratch' is stressed on the [a], but in the suffixed form fai-a 'scratch it' the stress remains with the first [a] and does not move to the [i]. Reduplication In Kwaio, full and partial reduplication commonly occurs. It happens when showing the passage of time; to emphasize the meaning of an adjective (siisika 'very small'); to show continuous, prolonged, or repeated action in verbs (bonobono 'completely closed'); or to indicate plurality in nouns (rua niinimana 'two arms'). Glottal stop deletion The glottal stop is often omitted in the Kwaio language when there are successive syllables that use the glottal stop. This happens across the word boundary if one word ends in -V'V and the next starts 'V-, which will then be pronounced as VV'V (instead of V'V'V), i.e. one of the glottal stops is dropped. An example of this is te'e + 'ola → tee'ola. Morphology Similar to other Melanesian languages, Kwaio uses two morphological classes: bases and particles. More complex forms can be made by modifying bases by adding affixes (prefixes, suffixes, or infixes) or by conjoining bases. Particles attach to