Tîrî
Méa, Grand Couli[1]
Region	La Foa, New Caledonia
Native speakers	600 (2009 census)[2]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic New Caledonian – Loyalties New Caledonian Southern South Southern Zire–Tiri Tîrî
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cir
Glottolog	tiri1258
ELP	Mea
Tîrî is classified as Definitely Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Tiri (Ciri, Tĩrĩ), orMea (Ha Mea), is anOceanic language ofNew Caledonia.

Tîrî has two types ofpronouns: personal pronouns, which make reference toperson,number andcase, and impersonal pronouns, which only have one respective form and are more restricted in their use (Osumi, 1995, p. 38).

Like all othernominals in Tîrî, pronouns can occupy various positions throughout theclause (Osumi, 1995, p. 37). They may appear as the nominalsubject of the verb, marked by the subject markernrâ andagreeing in person and number with the subject pronoun in thepredicate; theobject of a verb; the object of a preposition; or thehead of a predicate (Osumi, 1995, pp. 37–38).

When they appear within the verbphrase, personal pronouns show agreement in person and number with the nominal subject that optionally follows the predicate (Osumi, 1995, p. 38).

Personal pronouns in Tîrî also mark listenerclusivity in the first person non-singular, and are generally used for human referents (Osumi, 1995, p. 39). The below example shows appropriate usage of the third person singularnrâ (not to be confused with the latternrâ, which is acting as a subject marker for the optional nominal subjecttoni).

Although the third person pronoun can be used for non-human entities (while the first and second person pronouns generally only refer to humans), speakers tend to use it in its singular form even when there is more than one referent, as seen below (Osumi, 1995, p. 39).

As indicated in the table above, Tîrî pronouns change form depending on whether they are being used as subjective, objective or free forms, the latter encompassing a variety of other pronoun usages, such as pronouns that have beentopicalized and occur sentence-initially, as seen below (Osumi, 1995, pp. 39–40).

While they are classified as pronouns as they fill the subject pronoun slot, Tîrî's two impersonal pronouns show less flexibility than personal pronouns. They do not show any distinction for person or number and occur only in their respective forms ofhêrrê andva, are unable to appear anywhere other than the subject pronoun position (the first element in the verb phrase), and are never followed by a nominal subject (Osumi, 1995, p. 41).

Speakers usehêrrê to refer to any number of unspecified entities when they do not wish to or are not concerned with specifying a referent as theagent of an action (Osumi, 1995, p. 41), as in the example below.

This contrasts with the below example, which is more likely to be used by a speaker who wishes to imply that a particular person has committed the same act (Osumi, 1995, p. 42).

Whilehêrrê is typically used to refer to humans, the impersonal pronounva is used similarly to refer to non-human referents, though this is not always the case (Osumi, 1995, p. 43).Va behaves much as the English pronounsit andthat insofar as they can refer to both particular things (e.g.Did it bite you?;What's that over there?) as well as propositions (e.g.It's the truth.;That's a lie.), as demonstrated below (Osumi, 1995, p. 43).

Subject pronouns may be used in conjunction with thetense-aspect markersei 'future' anda 'perfect, actual, definite', in which case a number of pronouns may change their phonological form (see the below example, in which the second person singularke has been combined witha) (Osumi, 1995, p. 170).

Tîrî, like mostOceanic languages, exhibits many types ofpossessive constructions, including possessiveprepositions, possessiveclassifiers andbound-formnouns (Osumi, 1995, pp. 144). Classic possessive constructions involve twonominals that indicate thereferent of one is possessed by the other. Tîrî has two types of possessive relationships,inalienable possession andalienable possession (Osumi, 1995, pp. 145). Inalienable possession describes an inherent relationship between two referents such askinship, while alienable possession describes a non-inherent relationship such as temporary ownership or voluntary association (Osumi, 1995, pp. 145).

In Tîrî, alienable possession can occur in two ways. The first is when the noun possessed is followed by a possessive preposition and then by apronominal or nominal processor (Osumi, 1995, pp. 145). The second is when thenoun possessed occurs inapposition with a possessive classifier (Osumi, 1995, pp. 145).

Prepositions are included in a closed set of grammatical words that are placed immediately before anoun phrase and express asyntactic relationship between the noun phrase and a predicate or another noun phrase (Osumi, 1995, pp. 145).

There are three possessive prepositional markers in Tiri:nrâ,rre/rrê, andò and they occur between two nominals in the following structure.

NP_(possessed) nrâ, rre/rrê, ò NP_(possessor) (Osumi, 1995, p. 145).

nrâ functions as both asubject and possessive marker when it precedes a noun phrase. As a possessive marker, it links the possessor to the preceding noun phrase, suggesting temporary possession (Osumi, 1995, p. 145). In Tîrî, the majority of nouns can occur withrâ.

The possessive marker variantsrre/rrê are restricted to the nouns,mwâ 'hut',wâ 'boat' andò 'pot' (Osumi, 1995, p. 146).

The possessed noun phrases that can occur with prepositionsò are limited tonre 'fire, firewood' orcompounds withnre:mee-nre 'habitation',pwò-nre 'touch', andmwârrâ-nre 'fire flame' (Osumi, 1995, p. 147). The possessive relationship expressed by ò is related to fire, with the purpose of warming oneself or cooking something.

In these examples, the possessive prepositions,nrâ,rrê andò are between two nominals, as in the structure above.

Another type of alienability is in constructions where the possessed nouns occur in apposition with a possessive classifier. Possessive classifiers are always either bound to pronominal or nominal possessors and they function to determine the nature of possession rather than to classify it (Osumi, 1995, p. 49). In Tîrî, unlike other languages, any noun can occur with a possessive classifier. They consist of the following:e-,ere-,hwee-,odho-,hwiie-,êê- andhêê- (Osumi, 1995, p. 49).

In Tîrî, the possessive classifier can be placed before or after the noun possessed, as seen below (Osumi, 1995, p. 149).

NP_(possessed) POSS.CLASSIFIER NP_(possessor)

OR,

POSS.CLASSIFIER NP_(possessor) NP_(possessed)

Examples of the possessive classifier in between two NPs:

Examples of the possessive classifier preceding two NPs:

Nouns that occur with inalienable possession are generally ones whose referents have no independent existence but are related to an entity (Osumi, 1995, p. 152). In Tiri, inalienable possession is thejuxtaposition of two nouns in the following structure:

NP_(possessed) – NP_(possessor) (Osumi, 1995, p. 152).

There are two types of bound-form nouns, bound nouns and link nouns. This class is inalienable as that the referents of the nouns are possessed in some inextricable way, for example, kinship and body parts. In most cases, the possessor has no control over the possession.

Bound nouns are those that either has possessivepronounsuffixes or are bound to a nominal possessor (Osumi, 1995, p. 59). They include nouns referring to kinship, body or plants or other inanimate parts, secretions or of the body or plant, personal attributes or properties and the effects or origins of human affairs (Osumi, 1995, p. 153).

They can also be bound to anotherroot either noun orverb, in compound constructions (Osumi, 1995, p. 59). For example ofafiraa 'wife', where it is bound to thethird person singular possessivenrî:

An example of the body part mouth with thefirst person singular rò:

Link nouns referents belong to similar categories of bound nouns such as kinship and body or plants or other inanimate parts. They are obligatorily linked to a pronoun or head of a pronominal phrase, where the possessive relationship is demonstrated by a link morpheme-nrâ- (Osumi, 1995, p. 62). The construction has this following form:

NP_(possessed) – nrâ_(link) – NP_(possessor) (Osumi, 1995, p. 154).

When the possessor is the first person singular, the link morpheme-nrâ- is often omitted as seen below.

-nrâ- is also identical in form to the general possessive prepositions. Therefore, link nouns are alike to freecommon nouns that are followed by the possessivenrâ. Both constructions are difficult to differentiate, the link nouns depict inalienable possession and cannot be separated from their possessor by an element (Osumi, 1995, p. 154).

This subclass of nouns includes some from the words in the following list.

There can also be morphological complex link nouns, which involve a bound noun or a location noun in the first position, with the link noun in the second (Osumi, 1995, p. 64).

Although the examples represented are not comprehensive for both bound and link nouns, they show that there is no structural distinction between the two subclasses. Analysis of a Tîrîcorpus by Midori Osumi (1995, p. 65) found that there were 33 bound nouns referring to external body parts compared to only five link nouns. This indicates that there are semantic differences between subclasses. For example, among the five link nouns isao- 'cheek' is the only one that refers to external human body parts while others refer to external animal and insect parts (Osumi, 1995, p. 65). This shows that all external human body parts are bound nouns, except forao- in Tîrî (Osumi, 1995, p. 65).

• Grace, George William (1976).Grand Couli dictionary (New Caledonia). Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
• Osumi, M. (1995).Tinrin Grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

• New Caledonian languages
• Languages of New Caledonia
• Definitely endangered languages

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• Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
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