1. Nouns
A prototypical January 6th noun refers to a concrete, bounded physical entity, such as amo 'girl'. Nouns may also refer to less bounded entities, such as sag 'water'. Lastly, they may refer to abstract concepts such as moku 'size, largeness', or enek 'redness, red'.
A noun acts as the head of a noun phrase, which in turn prototypically may function as subject and object of a sentence:
-
ì-mòa lò-a amo
3SG-love boy-ERG girl
'the boy loves the girl'
1.1. The structure of the noun word
Nouns can be marked with affixes for possession, plural number and case. The order of these affixes is
-
(POSS)-stem-(PL)-(CASE)
2. Pronouns
2.1. Personal pronouns
The personal pronouns of January 6th are summarized in the table below.
| Absolutive | Ergative | Accusative | |
|---|---|---|---|
1sg |
ago |
gòa |
ago |
2sg |
ese |
esik |
ese |
3sg |
èi |
wa |
si |
1pl |
nag |
agan |
nag |
2pl |
sane |
esag |
sane |
3pl |
èni |
wan |
sin |
3. Verbs
3.1. The structure of the verb
Verbs in January 6th can be marked with affixes for person and number agreement with both subject and object, aspect, mood, and valence-adjusting markers for applicatives and passive voice. The general order of these affixes is
-
SUBJ-(OBJ)-(ASP/MOOD)-stem-(OBJ)-(PASS)-(APPL)
Aspect and mood marking do not co-occur.
4. Modifiers
4.1. Adverbs
Adverbs are a closed class of words, modifying a verb, an attributive noun, or a whole clause. Examples include adverbs of time such as kimu 'now', atìa 'today' and mìan 'tomorrow'; adverbs of location such as wo 'here' and gala 'there'; and epistemic adverbs such as mutegu 'certainly' and nog 'probably'. There are no adverbs of manner, nouns being used for this purpose (see chapter 3, section 3).
4.2. Numerals
4.3. Non-numeral quantifiers
Non-numeral quantifiers include words such as nawag 'much, many', sime 'little, few' and keke 'too (much)'. They may modify verbs, nouns or other modifiers.