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Tolomako is a language of the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian languages. It is spoken on Santo island in Vanuatu. It distinguishes four numbers for its personal pronouns: singular, dual, trial, plural. Its verbs have no tense or aspect marking, but two moods, realis and irrealis. Substantives and numerals also have the same two moods. E.g.
Someone is missing
There is nobody. Tolomako is characterized by having dentals where the mother language had labials before front vowels. It shares this feature with Sakao, but not with its very close dialect Tsureviu. Thus:
When labials do occur preceding front vowels they seem to be reflexes of older labiovelars:
Compare with Fijian Ε‹ata "snake" (spelt gata). It has been speculated that Tolomako is a very simplified daughter-language or pidgin of the neighboring language Sakao. But whoever speculated that knows no Sakao, no Tolomako, no Austronesian, and nothing of comparative linguistics. Tolomako is a sister language of Sakao, and not a pidgin at all. It cannot be phonologically derived from Sakao, whereas Sakao can be from Tolomako to some extent. Comparing Tolomako with its close dialect of Tsureviu allows to reconstruct an earlier state, from which most of Sakao can be regularly derived. This earlier state is very close to what can be reconstructed of Proto-Vanuatu. Thus Tolomako is a very conservative language, whereas Sakao has undergone drastic innovations in its phonology and grammar, both in the direction of increased complexity.
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