Kokota language

Kokota
Ooe Kokota
Native to	Solomon Islands
Region	3 villages on the island of Santa Isabel: Goveo, Sisiḡa, Honiara
Ethnicity	Kokota
Native speakers	1,200 (2009)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Oceanic languages Meso-Melanesian New Ireland network South New Ireland/ Northwest Solomonic network Santa Isabel Central Santa Isabel Kokota
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kkk
Glottolog	koko1269
ELP	Kokota
Kokota is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Santa Isabel

class=notpageimage|

Location of Santa Isabel in Solomon Island Chain

Kokota (also known as Ooe Kokota) is spoken on Santa Isabel Island, which is located in the Solomon Island chain in the Pacific Ocean. Santa Isabel is one of the larger islands in the chain, but it has a very low population density. Kokota is the main language of three villages: Goveo and Sisigā on the North coast, and Hurepelo on the South coast, though there are a few speakers who reside in the capital, Honiara, and elsewhere. The language is classified as a 6b (threatened) on the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS). To contextualize '6b', the language is not in immediate danger of extinction since children in the villages are still taught Kokota and speak it at home despite English being the language of the school system. However, Kokota is threatened by another language, Cheke Holo, as speakers of this language move from the west of the island closer to the Kokota-speaking villages. Kokota is one of 37 languages in the Northwestern Solomon Group, and as with other Oceanic languages, it has limited morphological complexity.^[1]: 3

Kokota uses little affixation and instead relies heavily on cliticization, full and partial reduplication, and compounding. Phonologically, Kokota has a diverse array of vowels and consonants and makes interesting use of stress assignment. Regarding its basic syntax, Kokota is consistently head-initial. The sections below expand on each of these topics to give an overview of the Kokota language.