Sakao is the name of the language as used by foreigners and linguists. It is named after Sakao Island, an islet off the northeastern shore of Espiritu Santo, almost opposite Port-Olry. The speakers of Sakao refer to their own language using various names, depending on the variety considered.
Dialects
Sakao has undergone considerable phonological change and innovations, which make it utterly unintelligible to its closely related neighbours of Espiritu Santo. Thus for instance, comparing the following words with their cognates in its close relative Tolomako:
The main dialects of Sakao are Northern, or Port-Olry dialect, and Southern, or Hog-Harbour dialect. The Southern dialect is the more conservative one. It is characterized by the loss of most pretonic and posttonic vowels, resulting in consonant clusters unusual for an Oceanic language. The Northern dialect is characterized by its extensive use of epenthetic vowels, which have achieved phonemic status, resulting in what looks superficially like vowel harmony; the loss of the initial *n- of nouns, except in monosyllabic nouns ; and the diphthongization of some word-final vowels. Thus for instance Port-Olry has "fog, mist" where Hog-Harbour has. Unless otherwise indicated, examples given here are in the Northern, Port-Olry, dialect.
Number
Like Tolomako, Sakao distinguishes four numbers for its personal pronouns. However, they are not singular, dual, trial, plural, but singular, dual, paucal, plural. The Sakao paucal derives from the Tolomako trial, thus Tolomako i γire-tolu "they three", Sakao jørðœl "they, from three to ten". One says in Sakao jørðœl løn "the five of them" which is, etymologically, "they three, five." Substantives are not inflected for number, except kinship terms which distinguish singular and plural: "my mother/aunt," "my aunts;" "my child," "my children." Likewise all demonstratives : "this one," "these ones;" "this person," "these persons;" "here," "in several places around here."
Phonology
It is not clear if Sakao even has syllables; that is, whether trying to divide Sakao words into meaningful syllables is even possible. If it is, Sakao syllables would appear to be V surrounded by any number of consonants: V "thou", CCVCCCC "having sung and stopped singing thou kept silent" .
Sakao has a suffix' that increases the valence of a verb : it makes intransitive verbs transitive, and transitive verbsditransitive. It the latter case, one argument may be the direct object and the other an instrument; the word order of the arguments is free, leaving context to disambiguate which is which: This could also be '. The Sakao strategy involves polysyntheticsyntax, as opposed to the isolating syntax of its neighbor Tolomako. For instance, the word 'pig' above could be incorporated into the verb, leaving a single external argument: Sakao polysynthesis can also involve compound verbs, each with its own instrument or object: Here ' "the bow" is the instrumental of ' "to shoot", and ' "the sea" is the direct object of ' "to follow", which since they are combined into a single verb, are marked as ditransitive with the suffix . Because ' "to shoot" has the incorporated object ' "fish", the first consonant geminates for ; , being part of one word, then reduces to .
Tolomako language, for parallels to the above in a closely related but grammatically simpler language
