page_title: Baluan-Pam language
section_title: Forms in the paradigm
hierarchical_section_title: Baluan-Pam language / Directional system / Forms in the paradigm
caption_attribution_description: English: Navigating the outrigger canoe
context_page_description: Baluan-Pam is an Oceanic language of Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. It is spoken on Baluan Island and on nearby Pam Island. The number of speakers, according to the latest estimate based on the 2000 Census, is 2,000. Speakers on Baluan Island prefer to refer to their language with its native name Paluai.
  The language is of the agglutinating type with comparatively little productive morphology. Basic constituent order is SVO.
context_section_description: The language has a system of directionals composed of ten members, eight of which are specified with regard to an absolute frame of reference (FoR). An absolute FoR is based on fixed bearings, such as where the sun rises or sets or wind directions. In Baluan-Pam the FoR is based on a land-sea axis; a distinction is made between 1) seaward movement, 2) landward movement, and 3) movement parallel to the shore. Therefore, going inland always means going up, and going towards the shore always means going down. In addition, since motion parallel to the shore (i.e. intersecting the land–sea axis) usually means moving on more or less the same level, this has obtained a secondary meaning of ‘moving on a horizontal level’. At sea, the system is extrapolated: thus, for moving towards the shore the same directionals are used as for moving inland, and for moving out to sea the same directionals are used as for moving towards the shore when on land.
  The directionals are organised along two dimensions: absolute FoR and deixis. The table below shows the paradigm.
  The deixis distinction cross-cuts with the FoR distinction, so that five terms are specified for FoR and for deixis, three are specified for FoR only, and two are specified for deixis but not FoR. There is no dedicated term for motion toward the deictic centre parallel to the shore, and no unspecified term that is not deictically anchored (such a term would not add any information to a lexical verb of motion).
caption: Navigating the outrigger canoe
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