Manam is a Kairiru–Manam language spoken mainly on the volcanic Manam Island, northeast of New Guinea. Phonology Vowels Consonants Allophony Some vowels become glides in diphthongs, e.g. , > and , > . and are 'weaker' than and , so that the syllable becomes and not According to Turner, is more and more often realized as , while some older speakers have . Syllable structure The Manam syllable is (C)(V1)V(V1)(C1), the only exception is a syllabic . There are some phonotactic restrictions on the prevalent syllable structure. E.g. V1 cannot be , whereas V must be as long as it is not the syllable's sole vowel. C can be any consonant, whereas C1 must be a nasal consonant. Stress Stress is phonemic: 'palm tree', 'seagull'. The stress falls on one of the three last syllables of a word, and stressing the penult syllable is the most common: 'child', 'work'. If the last syllable ends in a nasal consonant, it will be stressed instead: 'your child'. Some inflections and affixes do not alter the stress of the root word: 'he learned' (i- is a 3rd person prefix), 'in the bush' (-lo is a locative suffix). In the orthography, stressed vowels can be underlined in order to avoid ambiguities. Ie. 'palm tree', 'seagull'. Syntax Word order The basic, unmarked word order in Manam is SOV: Predicator Lichtenberk defines the predicator as the primary element within a clause. The predicator of a Manam clause can be realised in a variety of different ways, such as verb phrases Ex. (1), noun phrases Ex. (2), postpositional phrases Ex. (3), numbers Ex. (4), etc. Ex. (1): verb phrase predicator Ex. (2): noun phrase predicator Ex. (3): postpositional phrase predicator Ex. (4): numeral predicator Negation Negation in Manam is primarily expressed using one of two negative markers: and . is used exclusively in direct speech prohibitions; whilst is used for all other cases. Scope of negation The use of is primarily categorised by its scope of negation, which further indicates the focus of the clause. The spectrum of scope runs from negating one or more elements within a single clause, to negating an entire clause. The concept of scope of negation can be demonstrated in English: 'I did not go to the party' is an example of a broad scope of negation, i.e. the verb phrase (VP) is negated; therefore, the act of going to the party