the most common differentiation between alienable and inalienable possession, Manam uses a particular morphological processes to describe belongings that are edible or associated with eating. Possessive pronouns Inalienable possession In this class are 'belongings' that are involuntary, such as body parts, family members and different kinds of necessary 'parts of a whole'. This class is characterized by simply a possessive suffix attached to the word in question: Edible possession In this class are things that are edible and 'used to obtain, prepare or store food'. This class is characterized by the word , which is placed after the possessed thing and to which the possessive suffix is attached: Alienable possession In this class are belongings that are voluntary; things that one can cease to own, unlike body parts or family. This class is characterized by the word , which is placed after the possessed thing and to which the possessive suffix is attached: Cross-class possession One notable aspect is that the same word can occur in all three possession classes, and then of course its meaning will differ. Here are two examples: Demonstratives Manam has two kinds of demonstratives. This two-way system distinguishes between proximal demonstratives, which indicate proximity to a speaker, and distal demonstratives, which indicate distance from a speaker. Both demonstratives occur after the noun phrase. They are formed from the demonstrative marker , followed by either the proximal suffix or the distal marker , followed by either the third-person singular marker -∅ or the third-person plural marker as shown in the table below: Data from WALS suggests that both the Austronesian and Papuan languages, which are geographically close to the Manam language community, show an approximately even distribution of two-way and three-way distinction systems for demonstratives. In fact, despite Ross's observation that "Schouten family members are … much more closely related to each other than to any other members of the [North New Guinea] Linkage", Kairiru, which like Manam is a member of the Schouten family, shows a three-way distinction in its demonstratives. The reconstructed proto language Proto-Oceanic (POc), from which the Schouten family is descended, was determined to have a three-way distinction system. POc's system is believed to have included an additional demonstrative compared to Manam, the medial demonstrative which indicates an intermediate distance, or proximity to the listener rather than the speaker. However, Manam does show the same noun-demonstrative word order which was reconstructed for