Totoli language

Totoli (also known as Tolitoli) is a Sulawesi language of the Austronesian language family spoken by 25,000 people of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Totoli
Native to	parts of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia
Native speakers	25,000 (2001)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Celebic Tomini–Tolitoli ? Tolitoli Totoli
Language codes
ISO 639-3	txe
Glottolog	toto1304
ELP	Totoli

Grammar

Voice

Totoli has a symmetrical voice system. In the examples below, i Winarno mongusut kunji motorna is an actor voice construction, while kunji itu kusuti i Winarno is an undergoer voice construction.

I

HON

Winaro

PN

moN-kusut

AV-look.for

kunji

key

motor=na

scooter=3S.GEN

I Winaro moN-kusut kunji motor=na

HON PN AV-look.for key scooter=3S.GEN

'Winarno is looking for the keys of his scooter.'

kunji

key

itu

DIST

kusut-i

look.for-

i

HON

Winaro

PN

kunji itu kusut-i i Winaro

key DIST look.for-UV2 HON PN

'The keys are being looked for by Winarno.'

The syntactic pivot can be placed before the predicate, as shown:

gaukan

king

no-gutu

AV.RLS-make

ponguman

story

itu

DIST

gaukan no-gutu ponguman itu

king AV.RLS-make story DIST

'The king made this announcement.'

kopi

coffee

ia

PRX

ni-pogutu

RLS(UG)-make

i

PN

Andris

Andrew

kopi ia ni-pogutu i Andris

coffee PRX RLS(UG)-make PN Andrew

'Andrew made this coffee.'

References

• Bracks C (2024). Compound Intonation Units in Totoli Postlexical prosody and the prosody-syntax interface (pdf). Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.10559070. ISBN 9783961104369.