Tehit language


Tehit is a Papuan language of the Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea. Other spellings are Tahit, Tehid, and other names Kaibus, Teminabuan. Dialects are Tehit Jit, Mbol Fle, Saifi, Imyan, Sfa Riere, Fkar, Sawiat Salmeit. A grammar sketch can be found in Don Flassy's 1991 Leiden University M.A.. thesis.

Morphology

Tehit has four grammatical genders, which are masculine, feminine, plural, and neuter. Examples:
Gender prefixes in Tehit can not only be used to denote gender, but also size, wholeness, and the stability of appearances. Masculine gender is associated with small size, parts of wholes, and changing appearances, while feminine gender is associated with large size, wholeness, and stable appearances. Examples :
;wet ‘child’
;e’ren ‘fish’
;mbol ‘house’
;sika ‘cat’