Ura: A disappearing language ofsouthern Vanuatu Crowley, T. Ura: A Disappearing Language of Southern Vanuatu. C-156, x + 226 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1999. DOI:10.15144/PL-C156.cover ©1999 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 FOUNDlNG EDITOR: Stephen A. Wurm EDITORIAL BOARD: Malcolm D. Ross and Darrell T. Tryon (Managing Editors), John Bowden, Thomas E. Dutton, Andrew K. Pawley Pacific Linguistics is a publisher specialising in linguistic descriptions, dictionaries, atlases and other material on languages of the Pacific, the Philippines, Indonesia and Southeast Asia. The authors and editors of Pacific Linguistics publications are drawn from a wide range of institutions around the world. Pacific Linguistics is associated with the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. 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Series C, Volume 156 URA: A DISAPPEARING LANGUAGE OF SOUTHERN VANUATU Terry Crowley PacificLinguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies The Australian National University Canberra Published by PacificLinguistics Research School of Pacificand Asian Studies The Australian National University PO Box 1428 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia Copyright © The author First published 1999 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Terry Crowley, 1953- Ura: A disappearing language of southern Vanuatu. Bibliography. ISBN 0 85883 520 7. ISSN 0078-7558. 1. Eromanga language - Grammar. 2. Austronesian languages. 3. Eromanga (Vanuatu) - Languages. I. Australian National University. Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Dept. of Linguistics. n. Title. (Series: Pacific Linguistics. SeriesC-156). 499.5 Copyedited by Basil Wilson Typeset by Norma Chin Printed by ANU Printing Service, Canberra Bound by F & M Perfect Bookbinding, Canberra Contents overview Tables Xl Maps xiii Acknowledgments xiv Abbreviations xvi Conventions in citing examples xvii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Dictionary 10 Chapter 3 Ura Texts 70 Chapter 4 Phonology 106 Chapter 5 Non-Verbal Morphology 127 Chapter 6 Verb Morphology 148 Chapter 7 Phrase-level Structures 184 Chapter 8 Sentence Structures 198 References 226 Chapter contents in detail 1 Introduction 1.1 Geographical and demographic background 1 1.2 Ura, Sye and 'impurities' in the corpus 3 1.3 Previous work on Ura 5 1.4 The present study 6 1.5 Typological overview 8 2 Dictionary 2. 1 Dictionary entries 10 2. 1.1 Organisation of information 10 2.1.2 Spelling 12 2.2 Ura-English dictionary 12 2.3 English-Ura finderlist 49 3 Ura texts 3.1 Ura texts and Sye equivalents 70 3.1.1 Ura: a disappearing language 70 3.1.2 The devil and the old man 71 3.1.3 The devil and the three goats 71 3.1.4 The devil and the twins 71 3.1.5 The bird and the dog 72 3.1.6 Life in the old days 72 3.1.7 The shark and the lizard 73 3.1.8 The child and the dog 74 3.1.9 A man from Ponamlah 74 3.1.10 The flying fox and the rat 75 3.1.11 The rat and the turtle 75 3.1.12 The woman and the insect 76 3.1.13 The yams and the man 77 3.2 Ura texts with English glosses 79 3.2. 1 Ura: a disappearing language 79 viii Chapter contents in detail 3.2.2 The devil and the old man 81 3.2.3 The devil and the three goats 82 3.2.4 The devil and the twins 83 3.2.5 The bird and the dog 83 3.2.6 Life in the old days 84 3.2.7 The shark and the lizard 87 3.2.8 The child and the dog 89 3.2.9 A man from Ponamlah 90 3.2. 10 The flying fox and the rat 92 3.2.1 1 The rat and the turtle 94 3.2.12 The worm and the insect 98 3.2.13 The yams and the man 100 4 Phonology 4. 1 Phoneme inventory 106 4. 1.1 Consonants 106 4.1.2 Vowels 114 4.2 Word-initial reduction 115 4.3 Stress 115 4.4 Phonotactics 116 4.4. 1 Syllabicity 116 4.4.2 Vowel and glide sequences 117 4.4.3 Root-initial segments 118 4.4.4 Root-final segments 119 4.4.5 Intervocalic consonant sequences 119 4.5 11orphophonemics 121 4.5.1 Segmental changes 121 4.5.2 Reduplication 123 4.6 110rpheme and word boundaries 124 4.7 Orthography 125 5 Non-verbal morphology 5.1 Nominal morphology 127 5.1.1 Pronouns 127 5.1.2 Nouns 129 5.2 Adjectival morphology 142 5.2.1 Simple and derived adjectives 142 5.2.2 Number on adjectives 145 5.3 Prepositional morphology 145 6 Verbal morphology 6.1 Verb-root mutation 148 Chapter contents in detail ix 6.1.1 Conditioning environments 148 6.1.2 Form of root modification 151 6.2 Inflectional prefixes 156 6.2.1 Overview 156 6.2.2 Prefix sets 157 6.2.3 Uninflected verbs 171 6.3 Object marking 171 6.3.1 Fully suffixed verbs 172 6.3.2 Partly suffixed verbs 174 6.3.3 Unsuffixed verbs 175 6.3.4 Other object constructions 176 6.4 Post-object suffixes 177 6.5 Derivational verb morphology 179 6.5.1 Derivational verbal prefixes 179 6.5.2 Derivational verbal suffixes 180 6.5.3 Reduplication 183 7 Phrase-level structures 7.1 Nominal phrases 184 7.1.1 Pronominal phrases 184 7.1.2 Noun phrases 187 7.1.3 Coordinate noun phrases 194 7.1.4 Apposition 194 7.2 Prepositional phrases 195 7.3 Verbal phrases 196 7.4 Universal modifier 197 8 Sentence structures 8.1 Basic clause types 198 8.1.1 Non-verbal clauses 198 8.1.2 Verbal clauses 199 8.1.3 Non-core arguments 201 8.2 Interrogative clauses 212 8.3 Noun phrase movement rules 214 8.4 Complex sentences 215 8.4.1 Echo subject construction 215 8.4.2 Subordinating prefixes 219 8.4.3 Pre-clausal subordinators 221 8.4.4 Relative clauses 223 8.4.5 Coordination 224 8.5 Discourse patterns 224 Tables Table 4.1 Consonant contrasts 106 Table 4.2 Competing analyses for stops 112 Table 4.3 Vowel contrasts 114 Table 4.4 Contrasting pairs of vowels 114 Table 4.5 Contrasts between mid vowels and falling diphthongs 115 Table 4.6 Syllabicity of roots 117 Table 4.7 Schwa shift in Ura and loss in Sye affecting syllabicity 117 Table 4.8 Permissible vowel-vowel sequences 118 Table 4.9 Permissible glide-vowel sequences 118 Table 4.10 Root-initial segments with verbs 119 Table 4.11 Ura-Sye final consonant correspondences 120 Table 4.12 Two-member intervocalic consonant clusters 120 Table 4.13 Orthographic conventions in Ura 126 Table 5.1 Independent pronouns 127 Table 5.2 Possessive pronouns 128 Table 5.3 Locational pronouns 132 Table 5.4 Irregular compounding forms of nouns 133 Table 5.5 Irregular plurals 136 Table 5.6 Direct possessive paradigms in Ura and Sye 139 Table 5.7 Possessive paradigm for maran 'maternal uncle' 140 Table 5.8 Competing possessive paradigm for maran 'maternal uncle' 140 Table 5.9 Possessive paradigm for leren 'paternal aunt' 141 Table 5.10 Possessive paradigm for nowin 'leg' 141 Table 5.11 Possessive paradigm for nehni 'son, daughter' 141 Table 5.12 Possessive paradigm for vin '(man's) sister' 141 Table 5.13 Possessive paradigm for bocbon 'grandchild' 141 Table 5.14 Possessive paradigm for avin 'friend' 142 Table 5.15 Possessive paradigm for avinsai 'same-sex sibling' 142 Table 5.16 Antonymous pairs of underived adjectives 143 Table 5.17 Underived adjectives without adjectival antonyms 143 Table 5.18 Deverbal adjectives and nouns in n- 143 Table 5.19 Paradigm for spatial preposition aran 145 xii List ofta bles and maps Table 5.20 Paradigm for benefactive preposition san 146 Table 5.21 Paradigm for dative preposition bohgi 146 Table 5.22 Paradigm for comitative preposition qal 147 Table 6.1 Distribution of weak and strong vowel-initial verbs 151 Table 6.2 Unpredictability of distribution between weak and strong vowel-initial verbs 151 Table 6.3 Basic and modified roots of strong verbs 154 Table 6.4 Diachronic derivation of modified roots of strong verbs 155 Table 6.5 Irregular strong verbs with accretive q- in modified roots 156 Table 6.6 Preconsonantal recent past prefixes 158 Table 6.7 Recent past paradigms 159 Table 6.8 Preconsonantal singular distant past prefixes 160 Table 6.9 Singular distant past paradigms 160 Table 6.10 Preconsonantal optative prefixes 160 Table 6.11 Optative paradigms 161 Table 6.12 Future tense prefixes before na- 161 Table 6.13 Future tense prefixes before CV- 162 Table 6.14 Future tense prefixes before a- 162 Table 6.15 Future tense prefixes before e- or i- 162 Table 6.16 lllustration of future tense allomorphic variation 162 Table 6.17 Echo subject prefixes 163 Table 6.18 Verbs carrying echo subject prefixes 164 Table 6.19 Verbs inflected for the negative 165 Table 6.20 Realisations