Samoan language can said to be a deleting or a separating language. It uses various supplementary morphemes in tenses and sentence constructions. For example, to denote present continuous tense – ‘olo’o is used.
Although Samoan language uses the isolation rule, the morphological process of reduplication is also used to repeat whole or section of a word. This is where the accented form of a verb root is used to specify a plural number. For instance, in singular ‘to be sick’ is ‘ma’i’ and in plural the word is repeated to form the plural form to be ‘ma’ma’i’. The first part of the word ‘ma’ is repeated to form ‘ma’mai’. The word formed contains an identical ‘ma’ as a prefix or a modifier, which is identical to the main stem of the word ‘ma’i’. When ‘ma’ is repeated and forms the word ‘ma’ma’i’ the word is an imitative word or a reduplicate, which makes the word to be somehow informal. Generally, it forms a linguistic form of prototype that is inclusive and connected together with prearranged lexeme.
The punctuation is limited to the use of the comma. However, there are many words that do not use the comma. The Samoan language uses the Verb Subject Order agreement, for sentence pattern structure, unlike English which use the Subject Verb Order.
The main morphological rule for Samoan depends on the combination of several morphemes. Traditionally, the morphological rule dictates how the Morphemes should be combined to bring a grammatically correct word or sentence pattern.
Take for example, the morphological rule for word-formation in English language uses prefix and suffix. The suffix –fy when inserted to words such as terror, person, test, simple and pure, it forms terrify, personify, testify, simplify, and purify respectively. In addition, -able when suffixed, it forms adjectives with various verbs which retain both sense of the verbs suffixed and the true meaning of the suffix –able, i.e., breakable, believable, workable, and attainable to mean something is ‘able to be done’. Therefore, the morphological rule for such derived words from suffixes will be: Verb + suffix –able = ‘able to be done’ e.g., believe + able= ‘able to be believed’. When using the prefix the same combination of morphemes is applied. For instance, ‘an’ is a morpheme with the meaning of ‘not’. It can be successfully prefixed with adjectives to form words in the negative form. The rule is ‘un + Adjective’ = not + adjective for example the word uneasy was formed when ‘un’ + easy (adjective) = not easy’.
The following example of words use reduplication rule to form words. For example, ‘manao’ = “he wishes” inclusive with the pronoun ‘he’ becomes ‘mananao’ = “they wish”. Notably ‘mana’ has been reduplicated to form the plural form “they wish”. In Samoan “they” is ‘o t Idtou’ but the reduplication rule uses the main stem of word ‘nao’ and ‘ma’ to form the reduplicate ‘mananao’.
The words Samoan illustrations:
- ‘matua’ = “he is old” in plural it becomes ‘matutua’ = “they are old” (matu + tua),
- malosi = “he is strong” in plural it becomes ‘malolosi’ = “they are strong” (malo + losi), punou = “he bends” in plural it becomes punonou = “they bend” (puno + nou),
- atamaki = “he is wise” in plural it becomes atamamaki = “they are wise” (atama + maki).
Therefore, the Samoan for:
- Plural form “they weave” is ‘lalaga’ (la + laga),
- Plural form “they travel” is ‘savavali’ (sava+ vali),
- Singular form “he sings” is ‘pese’ deleted from the plural form ‘pepese’.
Hence, the pronoun morphemes ‘la’, ‘sava’, and ‘pepe’ are reduplicated from the mains stem of the singular forms ‘laga’, ‘vali’ and ‘pese’. The morphological rule evident is ‘pronoun’ + Verb = reduplicate’. It is important to note how the singular verb is selected, cut and then reduplicated. For example, ‘matua’ in singular becomes ‘matutua’ in plural. ‘matu’ is cut and reduplicate ‘tu’ to form ‘matutua’ – (ma + tu + tua). Thus, the rule shows, ‘pronoun + morpheme + Verb’.