The Wuvulu-Aua language is an Austronesian language which is spoken on the Wuvulu and Aua Islands and in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea.
Description Although Wuvulu-Aua has a grammatical structure, word order, and tenses which are similar to other Oceanic languages, it has an unusually complex morphology. Wuvulu Island, in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea, is about above sea level. Wuvulu and Aua Islands are part of the Admiralty Islands, part of the Bismarck Archipelago, which includes other provinces such as New Ireland, East New Britain, and Morobe. Wuvulu is spoken by an estimated 1,600 people in Manus Province; there are approximately 1,000 speakers of the language on Wuvulu, and 400 on Aua. The remaining speakers of Wuvulu inhabit other islands in Papua New Guinea.
Wuvulu is most similar to Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, and other Oceanic languages surrounding the Admiralty Islands. Wuvulu-Aua is one of only three languages in the Western subgroup of the Admiralty Islands languages. The other two languages are Seimat and Kaniet, the latter of which is now extinct.
There are three dialects of Wuvulu which are unique to the clans on the islands. The Onne and Auna dialects are spoken on Wuvulu, and the Aua dialect is spoken on Aua. Each dialect differs in phoneme, distinguishing them from one another. The islands of Wuvulu and Aua also have a lexical and phonological distinction.
Classification Wuvulu-Aua is part of the Austronesian language family. It also belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian language group, one of the major Austronesian language families. Based on location, Wuvulu-Aua is in the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian family. More specifically, it is part of the Oceanic Western Admiralty Island language family. Wuvulu-Aua is made up of two languages (Wuvulu and Aua), which vary in the pronunciation of consonants such as .
History Most researchers believe that the Proto-Eastern Malayo Polynesian (PEMP) language originated in the Bird's Head Peninsula of northwestern New Guinea. PEMP developed different descendant languages; one was Proto-Oceanic (PO), which reached the northern coasts of New Guinea and Indonesia and Wuvulu. About thirty-one languages in the Admiralty subgroup of Oceanic languages are derived from PO; twenty-eight languages belong to the Eastern Admiralty subgroup, and three other languages (Wuvulu-Aua, Seimat, and the extinct Kaniet) belong to the Western Admiralty subgroup.
Phonology Vowels Wuvulu-Aua has a small phoneme inventory, consisting of 20 phonemes. There are ten vowels (five vowels and five long counterparts) and 10 consonants. There are two front vowels ( and ) and two back vowels ( and ); is the only central vowel. High, mid, and low vowels are fairly even in terms of frequency; high vowels are the most frequent, and mid vowels are the least frequent.
Wuvulu's five long-vowel phonemes have the same phonetic quality as their standard-vowel counterparts, but are longer in duration. There are 20 possible diphthongs of the five basic vowels: eight falling pairs (, , , , , , and ), eight rising pairs (, , , , , , and ), and four level pairs: , , and . The terms rising, falling and level refer to the rise (or fall) of the sonority of the diphthongs. Three vowel pairs common in other languages do not exist in Wuvulu: eo, oe, and ae. Previous research suggests that diphthongs are not phonemic in Wuvulu. FrontCentralBackClose Mid Opena aː
Consonants Sources about Wuvulu-Aua phonology disagree on the allophones of the phonemes , , and . Blust varied the number of consonant phonemes: 14 in 1996 and 12 in 2008. Hafford reduced the consonant phonemes to 10 in 2012. Wuvulu-Aua contains four plosives: , , , and . There are three approximants: , , and . There is one fricative (), which is usually voiceless; between vowels, however, it can become voiced. There are two nasals: and . Wuvulu has no consonant clusters.
There are three consonants with possible allophones. has three allophones (, , and ); has three allophones (, , and ), and has three allophones (, , and ). All allophones are environmentally conditioned. The fricatives and are sometimes voiced intervocalically. The voiceless fricative is sometimes voiced: -> . In rapid speech, the voiceless fricative is sometimes voiced: -> . The use of is not conditioned by a phonological rule. Older speakers of Wuvulu-Aua speakers still use the phone. The alveolar trilled is also regularly used by older speakers, and is understood by children. will generally be used, and and are uttered in complementary distribution (Hafford 2015, p. 38). If is adjacent to a [+high] vowel, will become a voiced alveolar stop: -> (child). Wuvulu has four plural pronouns; for each, can be deleted: -> (Hafford 2015, p. 39). Conditioned variants and were proposed by Blust in 2008; this corrects Blust 1996, which proposed that , , , and are free variation phones. All dialects of Wuvulu-Aua claim that is not a phone, since borrowed words from English replace with ʔ. +LabialAlveolarVelarGlottalPlosivep bt(k)ʔNasalmnFricativefTrillrApproximantwl(w)
Syllable structure The syllable structure in Wuvulu is (C)V. The vowel is the nucleus of the syllable and can be a standard vowel, a long vowel, or a diphthong. The consonant is optional. All vowels hold one mora of weight; long vowels and diphthongs hold two moras of weight.
Stress If a syllable in Wuvulu contains a long vowel or diphthong, it is considered "heavy"; long vowels and diphthongs are always stressed. A word ending with a short vowel has penultimate stress. Thus, (sink) has penultimate stress because its final vowel is short in length. If a syllable ends with a long vowel or a diphthong, it has ultimate stress; (my village) has ultimate stress because its final vowel is long.
Morphosyntax Proto-Oceanic is the ancestor of Wuvulu, and their grammatical structure is similar. Proto-Oceanic noun-phrase sentence structure is: art + (number/quantifier)+ noun + modifier + demonstrative. In Wuvulu, the noun-phrase sentence structure is (art/demonstrative) + (number/quantifier) + modifiers + noun + modifier.
Noun phrases Like Proto–Oceanic, nouns are categorized as personal, local and common. Personal nouns are nouns related to the speaker, such as kinship terms or personal names. Local nouns are names of places. All other nouns are common nouns, such as 'tree'. This category also includes words like 'under' (a preposition).
Compounds, reduplication, and onomatopoeia are the three ways to construct nouns. Compounds are the combination of two words to form a new word. For example, ('spotted triggerfish') is formed from ('table') and ('sea bird'). ('driftwood') and ('bicycle') are examples of reduplication. Onomatopoeic words include or ('knock'), which mimics the sound of knocking on a door.
Verb phrases Wuvulu has one verb with 20 morphemes (the smallest unit of meaning in a language), the most complicated single verb in the 500 Oceanic languages. Verbs can be attached by subject and object clitics and can have added mood, aspect, and completion.
Examples:
'to throw'; 'throw it!' 'Throw the stone'
With an object marker, the verb root takes the transitive morpheme (-ca). When an intransitive verb changes to a transitive word, the marker is added:
to
'run' (transitive); 'make it run' (intransitive)
When a noun changes to a verb, the suffix is added to the word stem. If a verb is intransitive, the marker makes it transitive.
Adverbs Six adverbial morpheme prefixes describe verbs: complete, frequent, infrequent, eventual, intensified, and sequential. The marker describes actions performed completely. The marker describes actions performed frequently. The marker describes actions performed infrequently. The marker describes actions performed eventually. The marker describes actions performed with strong emotion. The marker describes actions performed before other actions.
Wuvulu also has adverbial suffixes: The marker describes actions performed within a limit, similar to only in English. The markers (intransitive) and (transitive) describe actions performed repeatedly.
Verbal clitics Pronominal clitics in Wuvulu are modified forms of pronouns which are bound to a verb stem. Verbal clitics can be used as subjects, objects of a clause, or co-located in a clause with noun phrases.
Subject proclitics Wuvulu is one of the few languages with a similar structure for subject proclitics, previously thought to be exclusive to Proto-Oceanic (PO). PersonPOWuvuluFirstSecondThird
Clause structure Clause structure is categorized as verbal or verbless. A verbless clause is constructed with two nouns which are close together. In this kind of sentence, a pause (【，】) separates the subject and predicate; an example is ia, futa ('He, (is a) chef'). According to Foley and Van Valin (1984) and Van Valin and LaPolla (1997), verbal clauses can be described with one model: [ Clause [ Adjunct ] [ Core [Nucleus] ] Adjunct. For example:
'Yesterday the men caught the tuna at sea.'
According to the model above:
[ Clause [ Adjunct ] [ Core [Nucleus] ] Adjunct [ [ yesterday ] [ the men ] [ they=caught ] the tuna] at sea
Syntax
Wuvulu, like the other 30 languages in the Admiralty Islands language family, is a subject–verb–object (SVO) language. It also tends towards verb–object–subject syntax, however, because of its similarity to Proto-Oceanic (where verbal-agreement marking and its propensity for the subject are at the end of the sentence).
Verbless clauses The predicate nominal is formed by two close noun phrases. The first noun phrase is usually the subject, and the second is the predicate; for example, ("He is a chief").
The predicate locative is formed when a noun is followed by a location noun; for example, ("He is there").
Verbal clauses Existential clauses express the existence of something by using the verb , equivalent to there is in English. Declarative clauses are used to denote a situation. (Note: realis and irrealis mood will be used.) For example, ("He did it").
Imperative clauses are a sentence without a subject, but a second-person subject is assumed; for example, mi-to=nia! ("Come get it!")
Deontic clauses are similar to imperative clauses, but in a command form; for example, ("You must leave!")
Verbal morphology Wuvulu has one of the most complex morphologies of the Oceanic languages. Unlike Proto-Oceanic, Wuvulu does not use morphological derivation; it gets verb derivation from nouns and adjectives, and transitive verbs from intransitive verbs.
Deriving a verb from noun creates a sentence that means 'to be [noun or adjective]' when adding -i. When the suffix is combined with the prefix, the meaning of the sentence can be changed to 'to cause/let something become [noun or adjective]'.
Example:
'the stone'
'It is stone.'
'She turned the two to stone.'
Intransitive verbs are formed from transitive verbs by adding the causative marker : ʔi=na-poni 'He ran.' ʔi=na-fa-poni=a 'She made it run.'
Transitive verbs Transitive verbs can be derived from adjectives by adding the causative marker -fa: ʔi=na-fa-rawani=nia 'He treated her well.'
ʔi=na-fa-afelo=ia 'He destroyed it (literally, caused it to be bad).'
Preverbal morphology "Preverbal morphemes within the Wuvulu verb phrase, consist of positions for subject clitics, and inflectional prefixes denoting mood/aspect and direction".
Example: (SUBJECT=) (MOOD/ASPECT-) (DIRECTION-) VERB (-ADVERBIAL) (=OBJECT) (-DIRECTIONAL)
The Oceanic language family tends to have preverbal morphemes which are free or prefixed. Pre-verbal and post-verbal morphemes are bound in Wuvulu by the verb stem, however, except for subjects and objects (which can be free nominals, verbal clitics, or both).
Mood
Like Proto-Oceanic, Wuvulu lacks verbal tense; however, it uses mood, aspect markers, and time phrases to convey tense.
Realis mood conveys past tense. ()
ro=na-biri=ʔia 'They did it.'