DOCSLIB.ORG

A Comprehensive Comparison of Lexemes in the Major Languages of Tanna, Vanuatu

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Comprehensive Comparison of Lexemes in the Major Languages of Tanna, Vanuatu DigitalResources SIL eBook 34 ® A Comprehensive Comparison of Lexemes in the Major Languages of Tanna, Vanuatu Kenneth Nehrbass A Comprehensive Comparison of Lexemes in the Major Languages of Tanna, Vanuatu Kenneth Nehrbass SIL International® 2012 SIL e-Books 34 ©2012 SIL International® ISBN: 978-1-55671-276-0 ISSN: 1934-2470 Fair-Use Policy: Books published in the SIL e-Books (SILEB) series are intended for scholarly research and educational use. You may make copies of these publications for research or instructional purposes free of charge (within fair-use guidelines) and without further permission. Republication or commercial use of SILEB or the documents contained therein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder(s). Series Editor Mike Cahill Volume Editors Dirk Kievit George Huttar Managing Editor Bonnie Brown Composition Dennis Felkner Contents Acknowledgments Abstract List of map, tables, and figure Section A. Background Chapter 1. Introduction to the study 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Purpose of the study 1.2 Data collection 1.3 Methodology 1.3.1 The advantage of dictionaries over Swadesh wordlists 1.3.1.1 Discovering idiosyncrasies of a language 1.3.1.2 Potential for errors in a Swadesh wordlist Chapter 2. Some preliminary results from the comparative analysis 2.0 Introduction 2.1 Determining cognates 2.1.1 Phonological reasons for dissimilarity of cognate lexemes 2.1.1.1 Consonant correspondence 2.1.1.2 Vowel correspondence 2.1.2 Non-phonological reasons for dissimilarity of cognate lexemes 2.1.2.1 Historical synonyms 2.1.2.2 Idioms and abstract ideas with different base words 2.2 Applications of a comparative analysis 2.2.1 Determining degree of similarity between languages 2.2.2 Finding identical lexemes in languages 2.2.3 Doing semantic comparison between languages 2.2.3.1 Semantic correlation in languages 2.2.3.2 Semantic non-correlation in languages 2.2.4 Differentiating between homonyms and polysemous lexemes Chapter 3. Using the multi-language lexicon 3.0 Introduction 3.1 Orthography 3.1.1 Influence of mission history on orthography 3.1.2 Influence of unique phonologies on orthography 3.1.3 Modern orthography 3.2 Layout iii Section B. Lexicon Appendix A.Nearly identical lexemes in Tanna’s languages Appendix B. Birds of Vanuatu included in the lexicon Appendix C. Plants and trees of Vanuatu included in the lexicon Abbreviations References About the author and data contributors iv Acknowledgments Dozens of people helped with the data and analysis of this lexicon and with the preparation of the manuscript. Specifically, Ruben Aiyoh, Pastor Joshua Jimmy Ioanavir, Eliud Kapan and his wife Miriam, Tom Napikou, Jymi Nokout and his wife Anita, Pastor Peter Rei, Jacob Willie, Daniel Yahi, and Kilion Yo assisted as informants. In addition, Greg and Beth Ann Carlson, Erik and Michele Stapleton, and Tim Zylstra provided their dictionaries, expertise, and opinions on the lexical entries and analysis of North Tanna, Kwamera, and Lenakel respectively, while John Lynch provided guidance on Proto South Vanuatu. My wife Mendy helped me tremendously with the compilation of the SW Tanna dictionary. Chuck Grimes, David Healey, and Ross and Lyndal Webb gave valuable feedback on the analysis section of the lexicon. Finally, Dirk Kievit spent countless hours editing the manuscript. I take full responsibility for any errors remaining. v Abstract Tanna Island in Vanuatu has five major languages and perhaps as many as two dozen dialects. However, only a few grammar sketches and dictionaries have been published on the languages of Tanna. In this document, more than 1,700 of the commonly used lexemes in all of the five major languages as well as a dialect spoken on Tanna are presented in one volume. Rather than eliciting the data from wordlists based on the lingua franca, the lexemes have been gleaned from full- length dictionaries compiled by three linguists who have worked for a combined experience of 34 years on Tanna Island. A comparative analysis based on this lexical data has made it possible to determine degrees of similarity between all of the island’s languages. The dissimilarity in lexemes across languages has also been revealing, as it has shown idiosyncrasies of each of the languages. The comparative analysis at times has helped determine whether a particular lexeme is polysemous (i.e., having a range of related meanings) or whether the different meanings are homophones (i.e., different lexemes that are identical in form). It has also helped in establishing patterns of phonological changes and intra-island migration paths. Finally, while the languages of Tanna vary slightly in terms of their phonologies, this study has established a phonemic, island-wide orthography based on the lexical data. vi List of map, tables, and figure Map 1. Map of Tanna: Language areas and villages where data was elicited. ........ 3 Table 1.1. Demographic information on the languages of Tanna. ........................... 3 Table 1.2. Some idiosyncratic lexemes in the languages of Tanna. ......................... 4 Table 1.3. Some Tanna lexemes with idiosyncratic secondary meanings. ............... 5 Table 1.4. Potential errors when performing a cursory survey. .............................. 7 Table 2.1. Consonant correspondence. .................................................................... 9 Table 2.2. Vowel correspondence. .........................................................................11 Table 2.3. Degree of correspondence between the languages of Tanna. ...............16 Table 2.4. (Nearly) identical kastom lexemes in the languages of Tanna. .............17 Table 2.5. Idiosyncratic lexemes in the languages of Tanna. ................................19 Table 3.1. Minimal pairs for [ɨ], [ə], and [a]. .......................................................24 Figure 3.1. Lexicon layout. ....................................................................................26 vii 1 Section A. Background Chapter 1. Introduction to the study 1.0 Introduction When people greet each other in Lenakel, Tanna, they say rawɨt lakapnəpɨn. In Whitesands, they say tawɨr laplapen. In the southern mountains they say rhuvə namsuk. In Kwamera, on the southern tip, it’s ramasan nəpnəpɨn. A small number of people by Mount Yasur Volcano in the southeast say thuvə yenpengenpeng. In the north, they say tawɨr loulaugɨn. Tanna’s folklore says that the ancestors in the mythical days argued with each other about how to talk, so one said, “Fine, I’ll say ‘I do it’ my way,” and another said, “Fine, I’ll say ‘I do it’ my way.” Thus, the argument was settled. They spread out and each began speaking his own way. 1.1 Purpose of the study Inhabitants of Tanna have counted as many as 25 different dialects, but linguists recognize five major languages spoken on Tanna: Kwamera (a.k.a. South Tanna, hereafter S Tanna), Lenakel, North Tanna (hereafter N Tanna), Southwest Tanna (hereafter SW Tanna), and Whitesands (Gordon 2005:303; Lynch 1982:2). It has been difficult to establish the language boundaries and language group sizes on Tanna and to determine whether a particular variety is a dialect or a different language. The reason for this is the lack of adequate language data to verify the degree to which the languages vary from one another. Most of the languages and dialects have had minimal analysis. Only three have dictionaries or grammar sketches. For others, comprehensive lexical data has not been published previously, making such data unavailable to linguists and speakers of Tanna’s vernaculars. In light of the underrepresentation of Tanna’s languages, the purpose of this book is to supply a substantial portion of the previously unpublished lexical data and to begin some comparative analysis. Here, I compare more than 1,700 lexemes in the five major languages of Tanna listed above as well as a dialect of SW Tanna called Vaha, which is spoken between the Whitesands and SW Tanna language boundary.1 The language data here presented can prove helpful for historical linguists to determine how the languages of Tanna have evolved. Or, to continue the legend mentioned above, this data can help us discover just what the ancestors did when they settled their argument, spread out, and began talking in their own ways. Which of the ancestors won that mythical argument—that is, which lexemes seem to have been most resistant over time? What ‘paths’ did those 1I held lexicography workshops in the Vaha area in order to determine whether Vaha and SW Tanna differed enough to be considered distinct languages. The results showed Vaha to be 90 percent lexically similar to SW Tanna. For this reason, and since their grammars are nearly identical, I consider Vaha to be a dialect of SW Tanna. Nevertheless, I have included Vaha in this study for the sake of comparison and refer to it as one of the languages of Tanna. 2 ancestors follow as they began settling and speaking in their own ways—that is, can we determine a geographic pattern of language change based on changes in the lexicons? Such questions are not fully answered here, but sufficient data is provided to begin answering them. Charpentier’s (1982) monumental atlas of lexemes in the languages of the southern half of Malekula (Vanuatu) inspired me to create a comprehensive ‘map’ of the Tannese lexemes. South Malekula experienced drastic migration in the past one hundred years, as those who lived inland moved to the coast. The migration patterns are evident in the language changes. While Tanna has not undergone the same sort of migration, the lexical changes still enlighten us about migration patterns and the relationships between languages. On a more popular level, the data of this study can be used by speakers of one Tanna language to ascertain how their words are expressed in other areas on Tanna. As more works in the Tanna vernaculars are published, readers will encounter words in languages with which they are less familiar. This book thus helps to familiarize speakers of Tanna languages with the other languages spoken on the island.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Paamese Language of Vanuatu
    PACIFIC LINGUISTICS Series B - No. 87 THE PAAMESE LANGUAGE OF VANUATU by Terry Crowley Department of Linguistics Research School of Pacific Studies THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Crowley, T. The Paamese language of Vanuatu. B-87, xii + 280 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1982. DOI:10.15144/PL-B87.cover ©1982 Pacific Linguistics and/or the author(s). Online edition licensed 2015 CC BY-SA 4.0, with permission of PL. A sealang.net/CRCL initiative. PACIFIC LINGUISTICS is issued through the Linguistic Circle of Canberra and consists of four series: SERIES A - Occasional Papers SERIES B - Monographs SERIES C - Books SERIES D - Special Publications EDITOR: S.A. Wurm ASSOCIATE EDITORS: D.C. Laycock, C.L. Voorhoeve, D.T. Tryon, T.E. Dutton EDITORIAL ADVISERS: B.W. Bender John Lynch University of Hawaii University of Papua New Guinea David Bradley K.A. McElhanon La Trobe University University of Texas A. Capell H.P. McKaughan University of Sydney University of Hawaii Michael G. Clyne P. MUhlhliusler Monash University Linacre College, Oxford S.H. Elbert G.N. O'Grady University of Hawaii University of Victoria, B.C. K.J. Franklin A.K. Pawley Summer Institute of Linguistics University of Auckland W.W. Glover K.L. Pike University of Michigan; Summer Institute of Linguistics Summer Institute of Linguistics G.W. Grace E.C. Polome University of Hawaii University of Texas M.A.K. Halliday Gillian Sankoff University of Sydney University of Pennsylvania E. Haugen W.A.L. Stokhof National Center for Harvard University Language Development, Jakarta; A. Healey University of Leiden Summer Institute of Linguistics E.
    [Show full text]
  • The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity Alexandre François, Sébastien Lacrampe, Michael Franjieh, Stefan Schnell
    The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity Alexandre François, Sébastien Lacrampe, Michael Franjieh, Stefan Schnell To cite this version: Alexandre François, Sébastien Lacrampe, Michael Franjieh, Stefan Schnell. The Languages of Vanu- atu: Unity and Diversity. Alexandre François; Sébastien Lacrampe; Michael Franjieh; Stefan Schnell. France. 5, Asia Pacific Linguistics Open Access, 2015, Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, 9781922185235. halshs-01186004 HAL Id: halshs-01186004 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01186004 Submitted on 23 Aug 2015 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives| 4.0 International License THE LANGUAGES OF VANUATU UNITY AND DIVERSITY Edited by Alexandre François Sébastien Lacrampe Michael Franjieh Stefan Schnell uages o ang f Is L la e nd h t M in e l a Asia-Pacific Linguistics s e n i e ng ge of I d a u a s l L s and the M ni e l a s e s n i e d i u s t a S ~ ~ A s es ia- c P A c u acfi n i i c O pe L n s i g ius itc a
    [Show full text]
  • Possession in Lelepa, a Language of Central Vanuatu
    POSSESSION IN LELEPA, A LANGUAGE OF CENTRAL VANUATU by Sébastien Lacrampe A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics School of Language, Arts and Media Pacific Languages Unit The University of the South Pacific March, 2009 DECLARATION I, Sebastien Lacrampe, declare that this thesis is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge, it contains no material previously published, or substantially overlapping with material submitted for the award of any other degree at any institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. The research in this thesis was performed under my supervision and to my knowledge is the sola work of Mr. Sebastien Lacrampe. ABSTRACT This thesis studies possession in Lelepa, a language from the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian, spoken in Central Vanuatu. Investigating this particular feature of the language was achieved by collecting original data from Lelepa speakers. Language data is presented in the form of interlinearised examples taken from a corpus of texts and elicitation notes. Data was collected between 2006 and 2008 during fieldtrips to Lelepa and Mangaliliu. The core of the study is devoted to the possessive system of Lelepa. Like many other Oceanic languages, Lelepa has direct and indirect possessive constructions. This thesis shows that the direct possessive construction formally consists of a possessed noun to which a possessor suffix attaches. It encodes possession of semantic domains such as body parts, body products, reference kinship terms, items closely associated to the possessor and parts of wholes. Indirect possession is expressed by two distinct subtypes: the free and construct indirect constructions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Language Situation in Vanuatu Terry Crowley Published Online: 26 Mar 2010
    This article was downloaded by: [Monterey Inst of International Studies] On: 16 December 2013, At: 22:46 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Current Issues in Language Planning Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rclp20 The Language Situation in Vanuatu Terry Crowley Published online: 26 Mar 2010. To cite this article: Terry Crowley (2000) The Language Situation in Vanuatu, Current Issues in Language Planning, 1:1, 47-132, DOI: 10.1080/14664200008668005 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14664200008668005 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
    [Show full text]
  • VESP View Issue 1
    VESP View VANUATU EDUCATION SUPPORT PROGRAM VESP July 2017 Issue 1: Yusum fulap lanwis blong lan (Developing a multilingual language approach in education for Vanuatu) With 113 vernacular languages, one national and two official languages, Bislama, English and French, Vanuatu has the world’s highest concentration of different languages per head of population (270,400). the language and content teaching approach, and the kind of The following language profiles in two year 1 support materials and training needed. This is very early days classes illustrate this complexity. and a great deal more follow-up work is required. This new dual language + multilingual approach for years 1-6 Class A language profile: is being developed through collaborative classroom research, supported by international and other local research. 33 students L1 (Mother tongue): 12 languages: Tanna, Using classroom research to design the approach Ifira, Nguna, Tongoa, Ambae, Paama, Tongariki, Banks, Ambrym, Pentecost, Collaboration across agencies Futuna, Epi This initiative is coordinated by the Curriculum L2 (2nd language): Bislama x 33 sts Development Unit (CDU), working in collaboration with key stakeholders – schools, teachers, students, Vanuatu L3 (3rd language): English x 3 sts Institute of Teacher Education (VITE) and the School Improvement Unit of the Ministry. Class B language profile: 25 students International Contrastive Curriculum L1: 3 languages: Nakanamanga x 23 sts; research Analysis Analysis Namakura x 1 sts; Bislama x 1 sts Bilingual + Vernaculars, Language + multilingual Bislama, English literacy across education and French subjects A challenge and an opportunity Vanuatu’s National Language Policy 2015 supports the use of all the languages of Vanuatu in education.
    [Show full text]
  • Vatlongos, Southeast Ambrym (Vanuatu)
    Language Documentation and Description ISSN 1740-6234 ___________________________________________ This article appears in: Language Documentation and Description, vol 15. Editors: Peter K. Austin & Lauren Gawne Language Contexts: Vatlongos, Southeast Ambrym (Vanuatu) ELEANOR RIDGE Cite this article: Eleanor Ridge (2018). Language Contexts: Vatlongos, Southeast Ambrym (Vanuatu). In Peter K. Austin & Lauren Gawne (eds) Language Documentation and Description, vol 15. London: EL Publishing. pp. 87-122 Link to this article: http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/162 This electronic version first published: July 2018 __________________________________________________ This article is published under a Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). The licence permits users to use, reproduce, disseminate or display the article provided that the author is attributed as the original creator and that the reuse is restricted to non-commercial purposes i.e. research or educational use. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ______________________________________________________ EL Publishing For more EL Publishing articles and services: Website: http://www.elpublishing.org Submissions: http://www.elpublishing.org/submissions Language Contexts: Vatlongos, Southeast Ambrym (Vanuatu) Eleanor Ridge SOAS, University of London Language Name: Vatlongos (also Southeast Ambrym) Language Family: Central Vanuatu, Oceanic, Austronesian ISO 639-3 Code: TVK Glottolog Code: sout2859, endu1237 Population: ~2500-3700 Location: -16.30, 168.21 Vitality rating: EGIDs 6b-5 Abstract Vatlongos, known as Southeast Ambrym in previous literature, is an Oceanic language spoken by somewhere between 2500 and 3700 speakers in Vanuatu. As well as being spoken in the Southeast region of Ambrym island, it is spoken by a relocated community outside the capital of Vanuatu, Port Vila, on Efate island.
    [Show full text]
  • Topics in the Grammar and Documentation of South Efate, an Oceanic Language of Central Vanuatu
    Topics in the grammar and documentation of South Efate, an Oceanic language of Central Vanuatu Nicholas Augustus Thieberger BA (Hons), MA Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2004 Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, University of Melbourne Abstract This thesis presents topics in the grammar of South Efate, an Oceanic language of Central Vanuatu as spoken in Erakor village on the outskirts of Port Vila. There has been no previous grammatical description of the language, which has been classified as the southernmost member of the North- Central Vanuatu subgroup of languages. In this description I show that South Efate shares features with southern Vanuatu languages, including a lack of serial verb constructions of the kind known for its northern neighbours and the use of an echo-subject marker. The phonology of South Efate reflects an ongoing change in progress, with productive medial vowel deletion and consequent complex heterorganic consonant clusters. A key feature of South Efate grammar is the grammaticalisation of a benefactive phrase in pre-verbal position. There is thus a discontinuous verbal complex including a closed class of auxiliary verbs that occur in a fixed order preceding the benefactive phrase and then the verb. Mood-marking is central to any utterance in South Efate and there is no grammatical expression of tense. The interplay between mood and aspect marking is an interesting feature of the language. The present research is set in the context of increasing attention being paid to the state of the world's smaller languages and their prospects for being spoken into the future.
    [Show full text]
  • New Technologies and Language Shifting in Vanuatu
    Pragmatics 23:1.169-179 (2013) International Pragmatics Association DOI: 10.1075/prag.23.1.08van NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND LANGUAGE SHIFTING IN VANUATU Leslie Vandeputte-Tavo Abstract During the last few years, mobile phones and social networks have deeply changed relationships and, insidiously, the use and representations of languages in Vanuatu. In spite of being very recent, it seems that new ways of communication imply changes regarding the various ways of using and adapting languages, amongst which are code-switching and language-shifting. Bislama, the national local lingua franca, is becoming more and more used in phone conversations. Internet and especially social networks (such as Facebook) are revealing new language strategies in social intercourses. This article examines interactions of languages that are mediated through social networks and mobile phone exchanges. More specifically, this paper discusses different language ideologies that are manifest in and deployed over forms of telecommunication. Keywords: Bislama; Pidgin; Ethnolinguistics; Mass media; Telecommunication; Linguistic ideology; Port-Vila; Vanuatu. 1. Introduction As many other small Pacific countries, Vanuatu has recently been the theater of an important telecommunication (mobiles, Internet) “revolution” which is currently still in progress. During the last few years, mobile phones and social networks (an Internet- based media program to make connections), have deeply changed social relationships and, insidiously, the use and representations of languages in Vanuatu. Digicel, the most important international telecommunication operator, arrived in Vanuatu in June 2008, giving Melanesians an easy access to mobile phones while experiencing its facilities and pernicious effects at the same time. The service is now available to over 80 percent of the population and « more and more ni-Vanuatu move to embrace the Digicel age1.
    [Show full text]
  • The Historical Morphology of Personal Pronouns in Northern Vanuatu
    The historical morphology of personal pronouns in northern Vanuatu Alexandre François* 1. LANGUAGE GENEALOGY AND THE MORPHOLOGY OF PRONOUNS 1.1. The Comparative Method and the Tree model The Comparative Method is commonly hailed as a solid methodology for comparing genetically related languages, and for reconstructing the history of their linguistic systems.1 Equally common is the assumption that the results of its analyses are best displayed in the form of a tree, or Stammbaum: starting from a common protolanguage, its linguistic descendants should form neatly separated branches and subgroups, each of which should be defined by a set of exclusively shared innovations. The expectation – or at least the hope – is that the historical innovations reflected in modern members of a family should be distributed in nested patterns, so as to fit a cladistic representation of that family. This belief is reflected in the vast popularity of the tree model in works of historical linguistics up to this day. The present paper aims at separating these two lines of thought, by showing that the strength of the Comparative Method does not necessarily entail the validity of the tree model which has been so often associated with it since the Neogram- marians. In fact, I will even propose that the CM provides precisely the analytical tools necessary to demonstrate the limitations of the tree model. Indeed, the method rests on principles of consistency and regularity of sound change, which allow the linguist to conduct rigorous demonstrations in the identification of innovations for each language, and in the reconstruction of words’ histories.
    [Show full text]
  • The Geography and History of *R-Loss in Southern Oceanic Languages Alexandre Fran¸Cois
    Where *R they all? The Geography and History of *R-loss in Southern Oceanic Languages Alexandre Fran¸cois To cite this version: Alexandre Fran¸cois. Where *R they all? The Geography and History of *R-loss in Southern Oceanic Languages. Oceanic Linguistics, 2011, 50 (1), pp.140 - 197. <10.1353/ol.2011.0009>. <hal-01137686> HAL Id: hal-01137686 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01137686 Submitted on 17 Oct 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destin´eeau d´ep^otet `ala diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publi´esou non, lished or not. The documents may come from ´emanant des ´etablissements d'enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche fran¸caisou ´etrangers,des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou priv´es. Where *R they all? The Geography and History of *R-loss in Southern Oceanic Languages Alexandre François LANGUES ET CIVILISATIONS À TRADITION ORALE (CNRS), PARIS, AND AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Some twenty years ago, Paul Geraghty offered a large-scale survey of the retention and loss of Proto-Oceanic *R across Eastern Oceanic languages, and concluded that *R was “lost in proportion to distance from Western Oceanic.” This paper aims at testing Geraghty’s hypothesis based on a larger body of data now available, with a primary focus on a tightly knit set of languages spoken in Vanuatu. By observing the dialectology of individual lexical items in this region, I show that the boundaries between languages retaining vs.
    [Show full text]
  • 'National' and 'Official' Languages Across the Independent Asia-Pacific
    PORTAL Journal of RESEARCH ARTICLE Multidisciplinary ‘National’ and ‘Official’ Languages Across the International Studies Independent Asia-Pacific Vol. 16, No. 1/2 2019 Rowena Ward Corresponding author: Dr Rowena Ward, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong, Northfields Ave Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia. Email: [email protected] DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/portalv16i1/2.6510 Article History: Received 15/03/2019; Revised 02/08/2019; Accepted 16/08/2019; Published 13/11/2019 © 2019 by the author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Abstract (CC BY 4.0) License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ In November 2018 New Caledonians went to the polls to vote on whether the French by/4.0/), allowing third parties territory should become an independent state. In accordance with the terms of the 1998 to copy and redistribute the Noumea Accord between Kanak pro-independence leaders and the French government, New material in any medium or format and to remix, Caledonians will have the opportunity to vote on the same issue again in 2020 and should they transform, and build upon the vote for independence, a new state will emerge. In another part of Melanesia, the people of the material for any purpose, even Autonomous Region of Bougainville (ARB) will vote on 23 November 2019 on whether to commercially, provided the original work is properly cited secede from Papua New Guinea and form an independent state. With the possibility of two and states its license.
    [Show full text]
  • Grammar of Araki
    Araki Ad~appearinglanguage of Vanuatu Also in Pacific Linguistics Terry Crowley, 2000, An Erromangan (Sye) dictionary. John Lynch, 2000, A grammar of Anejoiii. John Bowden, 2001, Taba: Description of a South Halmahera Austronesian language. Catriona Hyslop, 2001, The Lolovoli dialect of the North-East Ambae language, Vanuatu. John Lynch, 2001, The linguistic history of Southern Vanuatu. John Lynch and Terry Crowley, 2001, Languages of Vanuatu: A new survey and bibliography. Catharina Williams-van Klinken, John Hajek and Rachel Nordlinger, 2002, A grammar of Tetun Dili. Pacific Linguistics is a publisher specialising in grammars and linguistic descriptions, dictionaries and other materials on languages of the Pacific, the Philippines, Indonesia, Southeast and South Asia, and Australia. Pacific Linguistics, established in 1963 through an initial grant from the Hunter Douglas Fund, is associated with the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. The Editorial Board of Pacific Linguistics is made up of the academic staff of the School's Department of Linguistics. The authors and editors of Pacific Linguistics publications are drawn from a wide range of institutions around the world. Publications are refereed by scholars with relevant expertise who are usually not members of the editorial board. The 470 publications before Publication 501 were numbered in four series, A, B, C and D, but the series were merged from the beginning of the year 2000 because the rationale for them had gradually disappeared. FOUNDING EDITOR: Stephen A. Wurm EDITORIAL BOARD: John Bowden, Malcolm D. Ross and Darrell T. Tryon (Managing Editors), I Wayan Arka, Andrew Pawley, Paul Sidwell.
    [Show full text]