Cheke Holo language

Cheke Holo
Native to	Central Solomon Islands
Region	Santa Isabel Island
Native speakers	(10,800 cited 1999) 1,500 monolinguals (1999?)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Northwest Solomonic New Georgia – Ysabel Ysabel East Isabel Cheke Holo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mrn
Glottolog	chek1238

Cheke Holo (also called Maringe or Marine, A’ara, Holo, Kubonitu) is an Oceanic language spoken in the Solomon Islands. Its speakers live on Santa Isabel Island.

Phonology

The phonology of Cheke Holo shows some peculiarities, shared with other Santa Isabel languages, like the aspirated stops and the voiceless sonorants. The five-vowel system instead conforms to the prototypical system of the Oceanic area (White, Kokhonigita & Pulomana 1988).

Consonant phonemes

		Labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m̥	m	n̥	n	ɲ̊	ɲ	ŋ̊	ŋ
Stop	plain	p	b	t	d	t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ	k	g	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ		tʰ				kʰ
Fricative	plain	f	v	s	z				ɣ	h
	aspirated								ɣʱ
Leteral				l̥	l
Trill				r̥	r

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Morphosyntax

Verbs in Cheke Holo are not marked by tense nor person, although they can be prefixed with fa- (a causative marker) and they take enclitics. Among the possible clitics are the direct object pronouns, the completive aspect markers hi and hila, and the continuative aspect marker u (Boswell 2018).

References

• Boswell, Fredrick Alvin (2018). A grammar of Cheke Holo. LOT Publications. ISBN 978-94-6093-301-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• White, Geoffrey; Kokhonigita, Francis; Pulomana, Hugh (1988). Cheke Holo (Maringe/Hograno) dictionary. Pacific Linguistics. Australian National University. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Palmer, Bill (2009). "Clause order and information structure in Cheke Holo". Oceanic Linguistics. 48 (1): 213–249. doi:10.1353/ol.0.0038. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Keha Tarai Mala Lao Legu Narone Anglican devotional material in Cheke Holo (1934)
• Buka Tharai Ka Cheke Marine Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Cheke Holo (1973) digitized by Richard Mammana