Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN Linguistics By James A. Hafford Dissertation Committee: Yuko Otsuka, Chairperson Robert Blust Lyle Campbell Alex Golub Kenneth Rehg ©2014 James A. Hafford ii Dedicated to Jim Hafford iii Acknowledgements I am thankful to the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) for inviting me and my wife and kids to live and work among the people of PNG. I am especially grateful for the opportunity to live on Wuvulu Island. In Melanesian Pidgin, bikman ‘big man’ is used to refer to a chief or leader. There are two big men whom I would like to acknowledge and thank for their friendship—Sir Paulius Matane, and Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare. In 1994, prior to ever setting foot in PNG, I had the privilege of hosting Sir Paulias Matane in the Seattle area. He is one of the founding statesmen of PNG, and has served as PNG’s ambassador to both the U.S. and the U.N. As Education Minister, Sir Paulius authored the vernacular eduction policy of PNG. He told me that I would always be welcome in his home on New Britain, and he was a source of encouragement while we were in PNG. In 2005, the Prime Minister of PNG, Sir Michael Somare accepted my invitation to the Wuvulu New Testament dedication, and he blessed the ceremony with his presence and his words. I am also thankful to the Manus Provincial Government and the Wuvulu-Aua local government, for working together with our team to successfully start and operate one of the first vernacular schools in the Manus Province. Thank you very much to all the people of Wuvulu, especially Ma’ai’u Aile, Samson Aile, Lagu Aile, Chifana Benjamin, E’enaio Namo, and the huge team of people who worked together with us. I express heartfelt appreciation to all the Wuvulu people for allowing me to live on Wuvulu with my wife and children and to be immersed in the language and culture. The decade we spent living on the island is certainly one of the iv richest experiences of our lives. I am so thankful for Manini, our Wuvulu waspapa ‘watch papa’, his wife Me’ime’i, their son Apini and his wife Anita, all the others, for caring for us. Along these lines, I am also grateful to Vinton and Audrey Goff for building the house we lived in, and for helping us in a variety of practical ways. I am eternally grateful for the old men’s Sabbath School class, for sharing their lives and stories with me. Included in this group are the master storytellers Pana’ai, Namo, Taigugu, Wawanai, Sumerai, Nunu, and Funaigi. I give special thanks to the individuals and organizations that have faithfully supported us in our research, and in the translation work, including the President of Crown Audio who donated a microphone for my research. Much thanks to my colleagues in the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) for consistently serving us in the areas of translation consulting, aviation, and medical care. My wife and I appreciate the administration and staff of the Ukarumpa International Schools for their role in teaching our children. Thank you to all of our Papua New Guinean and expatriate SIL colleagues located throughout PNG, in Ukarumpa, Wewak, Madang, Lae, and Port Morseby. Mahalo nui loa! ‘thank you very much!’ to my dissertation committee: Dr. Yuko Otsuka (Chair), Dr. Bob Blust, Dr. Lyle Campbell, Dr. Alex Golub, and Dr. Kenneth Rehg. I have the highest degree of admiration and respect for each of you. I am especially thankful to Dr. Otsuka for her excellent consultation at every stage of the work! A huge thanks to Nora and Jen, and the entire Linguistics Department of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa! I also express my gratitude to all of our family, friends, and supporters on Wuvulu, at Ukarumpa, in Washington State, in the Dallas Metroplex, in the Mānoa v Valley, and in Honolulu and Kaimukī. A big Mahalo to my buddies in Hawai‘i: Akiva, Matt, and Ramón. Thank you to my mom for her all her encouragement and support, and to my sister Jowena, and my uncle Wally, for allowing me to stay in their homes during my transitions to and from of Hawai‘i. I praise my wife Lois for being so awesome, and I thank our ‘kids’ Cubby, Joelle, and John, for their amazing flexibility in our first four years in PNG, when we moved 24 times (counting only moves where we stayed for one month or longer). Finally, I give thanks to Jesus for his friendship! vi Abstract Wuvulu and Aua are two tiny coral islands located in the Bismarck Sea, about 150 miles north of the island of New Guinea. The linguistic heritage of Wuvulu can be traced back through Proto-Oceanic, and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian to Proto-Austronesian—the mother of more than 1200 of the world’s 6500 languages. Oceanic languages form a subset of about 500 languages within the larger Austronesian family. Wuvulu is one of 31 languages classified into the Admiralty subgroup of Oceanic and, it is one of only two living languages that are further classified into the Western Admiralty subgroup (together with the extinct language, Kaniet). The 28 Eastern Admiralty languages are located more than 200 miles to the east on Manus Island and the islands that surround it. Wuvulu’s position in the Oceanic subgroup is noteworthy in at least two respects. First, Wuvulu is somewhat of a typological exemplar, in that its 28 linguistic sisters (excepting Seimat) are geographically quite distant, and as a subgroup, those languages possess phonetic features that are markedly different than those of Wuvulu. Second, of the Oceanic languages, Wuvulu lies on the western edge of a diaspora that extends more than 7000 miles to Rapanui ‘Easter Island’, the eastern most vertex of the Polynesian Triangle. This present work discusses the most important features of Wuvulu grammar from a functional-descriptive perspective of linguistics. The intended audience is linguists, particularly those engaged in the research of Oceanic langauges. In Part I, the grammar component spans a variety of topics including linguistic affiliation, vii sociolinguistic context, phonology, the noun phrase, verb structure (with an emphasis on morphology), clause structure, constituent order syntax, and complex constructions. The grammar component closes with a disscusssion prospects for future research in the language. The vocabulary in Part II consists of over 2000 lexical items, including species of flora, fauna, and fishes. The present work contributes to the compendium of linguistic knowledge, providing a fuller typological picture of Oceanic langauges. The alarming rate of pidginization and langauge death in and around Papua New Guinea highlights the acute need for language documentation in this area. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Abstract ............................................................................................................................. vii List of Tables ................................................................................................................... xvi List of Figures ................................................................................................................. xvii List of Abbreviations ..................................................................................................... xviii Part I: Grammar .................................................................................................................. 1 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Wuvulu Island ..................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 Geography ..................................................................................................... 1 1.1.2 Meterological phenomena ............................................................................. 2 1.1.3 Demographics ............................................................................................... 3 1.2 Linguistic affiliation ........................................................................................... 4 1.3 Dialects ............................................................................................................... 5 1.4 History of contact ................................................................................................ 6 1.4.1 European discovery ....................................................................................... 6 1.4.2 Theil, Hellwig, Luschan, and the “Matty Mystery” ..................................... 7 1.4.3 The Coconut plantation ................................................................................. 7 1.4.3.1 Resettlement of the Native People......................................................... 8 1.4.3.2 Large-scale Mortality ............................................................................ 8 1.4.4 Church influence ........................................................................................... 9 1.4.5 The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) ................................................... 9 1.5 Purpose and scope ............................................................................................. 10 1.6 Previous research .............................................................................................. 10 1.7 Wuvulu