Search: Start Page ➙ Language: Chamorro (cha)
Alternative Names Tjamoro
Family/Group Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian
Area SE Asia and Oceania
General Data spoken in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands
Typological Information • vowel harmony
• VSO
• concerning parts of speech it is often difficult to put Chamorro words into a single category since often one and the same word can function as a verb, noun or modifier (cf. Topping 1973: 101)
Reduplication Form-Function • initial CV-: word class derivation, pluralization
• final -CV: intensification
Relationship Form-Function various forms - various functions
Reduplication System Chamorro has many types of affixes, their ordering in relation to reduplication can approximately be summarized as follows (see Topping 1973: 172-173, 258):
1. suffixation
2. indefinite object prefix man-/fan-, passive prefix ma-
3. reduplication
4. infixation
5. plural subject prefix man-/fan-
Stylistic Information the number of times a syllable can be repeated depends partly on one's own speaking style when intensifying a modifier (adjective) in Chamorro through reduplication (cf. Topping 1973: 216)
Forms 
  Functions 
Patterns 
Semantics 
  Word Classes  Word Class of Simplex Form — Word Class of Reduplicant
  All Examples 
⊞ References
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© by Reduplication Project, Institute of Linguistics, University of Graz