Baluan-Pam is an Oceanic language of Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. It is spoken on Baluan Island and on nearby Pam Island. The number of speakers, according to the latest estimate based on the 2000 Census, is 2,000. Speakers on Baluan Island prefer to refer to their language with its native name Paluai.

The language is of the agglutinating type with comparatively little productive morphology. Basic constituent order is subject–verb–object (SVO).

The Baluan Island and Pam Island varieties of the language are practically similar, apart from a number of lexical differences. The language is closely related to Lou, spoken on Lou Island. Lou forms a dialect chain, with the varieties spoken on the far side of the island, facing Manus mainland, differing the most from Paluai and the ones on the side facing Baluan Island being the closest.

In Manus Province, about 32 languages are spoken, all of which belong to the Admiralties branch, a higher-order subgroup of Oceanic, which belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian. Most of the languages of Manus Province are scarcely documented. A reference grammar of Loniu was published in 1994.^[2]

There is a minority of Titan speakers on Baluan, relatively recent immigrants living in Mouk village. The Titan people have become well known through the work of Margaret Mead. Many speakers have at least a passive command of Titan and Lou. In addition, the creole language Tok Pisin is widely spoken on the island, and most people have at least a basic command of English.

The table below shows the consonant phonemes in the language.

In contrast to many of the Manus languages, there are no bilabial trill or prenasalised consonants. The consonant inventory is rather simple, with a labialised nasal and plosive in addition to bilabial, apico-alveolar and dorso-velar stops and nasals. There is just one fricative, /s/, with /h/ being a very marginal phoneme. /t/ has a tap or trill as a variant. The glides [j] and [w] are analysed as non-syllabic variants of /i/ and /u/, respectively.^[3]

The vowels of Baluan-Pam are /i, e, ɛ, ɐ, ɔ, o, u/.

The vowel inventory consists of the standard five vowels most common in Oceanic languages,^[4] with two additional segments: open-mid /ɛ/ and /ɔ/, which are much more frequently occurring. For younger speakers, /e/ appears to be merging with /ɛ/ and /o/ appears to be merging with /u/.

The syllable template is (C)V(C). Not many syllables start with a vowel. Due to loss of word-final consonants and consequently vowels, which is a feature of eastern Admiralties languages,^[5] the language allows consonants in the syllable coda and has many monosyllabic words with CVC form.

The two major open word classes are noun and verb (with a major subclass of stative verbs), with adjectives and adverbs as minor classes distinguished from both noun and verb and from each other. Verb to noun and verb to adjective derivations are very common, but not vice versa. Most predicates are headed by a verb complex, but nouns, adjectives, numerals and some prepositions can also function as predicate head. Only verbs, however, can take bound pronouns and be modified by tense–aspect–mood (TAM) particles.

The major closed classes in the language, containing function words, are pronouns, demonstratives, prepositions, numerals, quantifiers, and interrogative words. The pronominal system distinguishes singular, dual, paucal and plural number and first, second and third person, but not gender. The range of adpositional forms is limited, since most spatial relations are expressed either by a directly possessed spatial noun, or by a serial verb construction containing a directional.

The language does not have case or number marking on nouns. The only nominal morphology in the language functions to indicate possession. A distinction is made within nominal possessive constructions between direct and indirect possession. This correlates with, but does not coincide completely with, a semantic distinction between inalienable and alienable possession. With direct possession, a suffix indicating person and number of the possessor is added directly to the noun stem. With indirect possession, this suffix is added to a postposed possessive particle ta-. Most kinship terms and body part terms either can or must be used in a direct possessive construction. In addition, spatial nouns, referring to concepts such as "inside", "on top of" and "behind", are obligatorily used in a direct possessive construction.

Verbal derivational morphology is limited to the causative prefix pe-, the applicative suffix -ek, and reduplication.

The causative pe- makes transitive an intransitive verb. Causatives can be productively formed, but only with stative verbs. A causative adds an extra "causer" A argument, demoting the original S argument of the intransitive verb to O position. Examples are mat 'die, be dead' → pemat 'kill'.

The applicative in this language is a valency-rearranging rather than a valency-increasing device. It promotes an instrumental Oblique constituent of a verb to O position. The original O is not demoted, but rather follows the promoted constituent as a second object. The applicative is typically encountered in one specific discourse/information structure context. It is used as an anaphorical device to refer back to an item mentioned just before, usually in the previous clause, as in the example below:

With transitive verbs, full or partial reduplication can be used as an intransitivising device. With intransitive verbs, reduplication adds aspectual meanings such as continuous aspect. A second function of reduplication within the verb class is to derive nominalizations.

Demonstratives in Paluai utilise a three-way distinction pattern based upon person (near speaker, near addressee or neither) or relative distance (close, intermediate, distant).^[3]

These three distinctions can be defined as

1. position at or very close to the deictic centre, proximate
2. an intermediate position
3. a position considered to be significant distance from the deictic centre^[7]

Here the deictic centre refers to the speaker.

When considering discourse deixis, demonstratives will function as anaphors (referring to previously mentioned information) or cataphors (referring forward).^[8]

Basic forms as well as forms prefixed by te- that are either proximate or distal are usually cataphors. Meanwhile, forms beginning with ta- are often used as anaphors, in addition to all intermediate forms despite prefixes.^[9]

The above three demonstratives are often used to modify pronouns as seen in examples 1–2.

It is unusual for either three of the basic demonstrative forms to modify nouns and it is also uncommon that the distal form lo is used in discourse, rather used to indicate to a distant object.^[10]

Forms tepwo, teyp and telo have the ability to modify both nouns and pronouns and are more common in the Paluai language than basic forms of demonstratives.^[10]

Te- is classed as an emphatic marker and is used in conjunction with the basic demonstrative form.^[10]

Since forms with te- must always modify either a noun or a pronoun, they cannot occur independently.^[12]

Examples 3–5 show use of each demonstrative form with formative te-

Another set of demonstratives is formed by prefixing emplatic particle te- with preposition a- to form a spatial adverbial demonstrative of which has the ability to modify verbs only.

Atepwo, ateyo and atelo refer to the location where the activity described by verb is held.^[12]

This complex demonstrative uses formative ta-, the emphatic particle te- and a basic form of demonstrative. In comparison to the earlier mentioned demonstrative forms, free forms with ta- often have an element of definiteness when referring to a subject/object.^[16] It is the one form of demonstrative that can be used independently and can therefore substitute the place of a noun and be the subject or object to a verb in noun phrases. Three forms with formative ta- include tatepwo, tateyo and tatelo. Here the proximate and distal demonstrative function as verbless clause subject, whilst the intermediate demonstrative functions as a transitive object.^[15]

There are four pronominal paradigms: free subject forms, bound subject forms, object forms and possessive forms. They are formally very similar. Pronouns distinguish singular, dual, paucal and plural number, and have a clusivity distinction. Dual refers to two entities, paucal refers to a few (any number between three and about ten), and plural refers to many. Inclusive pronouns include the addressee ('we, including you'), whereas exclusive ones exclude them ('we, but not you'). Below, the paradigm for the free forms is given.

The language has a system of directionals composed of ten members, eight of which are specified with regard to an absolute frame of reference (FoR).^[18][19] An absolute FoR is based on fixed bearings, such as where the sun rises or sets or wind directions. In Baluan-Pam the FoR is based on a land-sea axis; a distinction is made between:

1. seaward movement
2. landward movement
3. movement parallel to the shore

Therefore, going inland always means going up, and going towards the shore always means going down. In addition, since motion parallel to the shore (i.e. intersecting the land–sea axis) usually means moving on more or less the same level, this has obtained a secondary meaning of 'moving on a horizontal level'. At sea, the system is extrapolated: thus, for moving towards the shore the same directionals are used as for moving inland, and for moving out to sea the same directionals are used as for moving towards the shore when on land.

The directionals are organised along two dimensions: absolute FoR and deixis. The table below shows the paradigm.

The deixis distinction cross-cuts with the FoR distinction, so that five terms are specified for FoR and for deixis, three are specified for FoR only, and two are specified for deixis but not FoR. There is no dedicated term for motion toward the deictic centre parallel to the shore, and no unspecified term that is not deictically anchored (such a term would not add any information to a lexical verb of motion).

The directional paradigm provides a very precise reference structure with ample use in discourse. For virtually all actions that in some sense involve motion (including perception-based actions such as seeing/looking, speaking or listening), the direction of the action has to be specified with a directional. In Paluai, this is done by a serial verb construction (SVC), in which a directional either precedes or follows the main verb. Directional SVCs are a common feature of Oceanic languages.^[20][21]