Kei linguistic features

Phonology
Keiese knows approximately 16 consonants, 8 vowels and 4 diphthongs. The Keiese people have not yet concluded on an official spelling system.

As is common among Austronesian languages, consonant clusters are usually avoided. Word stress is usually found on the last syllable.

Verbal inflection
Verbal Inflection in Keiese is about agreement marking on the verb, based on the person and number of the subject of a sentence. These subjects may be formed by nouns or by free personal pronouns that know a clusivity distinction as is common in Austronesian languages.

They each correspond to a verbal prefix.

The sentences below (Villa Rikkers, 2014) show how these forms combine.

First person singular jɑʔau	u-	baŋil	umɑt	hoɑrrəbran	 vut-	ru	ma     umɛɑk 1SG	1SG	hit	person husband:3PL.POSS ten	two	ADDR	shy “So I hit twenty shy husbands.”

Second person singular o m- fɪd	i   ni	     wɑrat waid 2SG 2SG sell	3SG 3SG.POSS rope  NEG “You don’t sell his rope.”

Third person singular i ʔn-  ba ʔn-	tun	manut	insjɛn	ʔntɪl 3SG 3SG-  go 3SG	shoot	chicken	lazy	three “He’s going to shoot three lazy chickens again.”

First person plural (addressee excluded) ɑm	bɪsbisa	m-	fɔklɔi	lar	jaʔanuŋ 1PL.EX	all	1PL.EX-	hang	sail	1SG.POSS “So we(excl.) hang my sail.”

First person plural (addressee included) hɛrawɪn	it	tə-	tavɑt	ɑm	 warib Yesterday	1PL.IN	1PL.IN-	stab	1PL.EX younger.sibling:1PL.POSS “Yesterday, we(incl.) stabbed our(excl.) younger siblings.”

Second person plural im	m-	ŋis	bəlabɑ	bərbir	ʔnru 2PL	2PL	pinch	spider	blue	two “You  pinch two blue spiders.”

Third person plural hir	ʔr-	foi	ŋunit	kətkut		ʔntɪl	məhɛ 3PL	3PL	plant	bamboo	short		three	 only “They only plant three small bamboo plants.”

Possession
Keiese discriminates between alienable and unalienable nouns by using different strategies to express possession. Alienable nouns select possessive pronouns.

For example, "my boat" must be translated as "nɪŋ habo", for boats may have different owners at different times. Unalienable nouns select possessive suffixes.

Numerals
The numeral system uses numeral roots (NR) that combine with both numeral classifiers (CLF) and autonomous numerals (NUM). The numeral roots are given below.

The formation of numbers is illustrated in the table below.