Dorig (formerly called Wetamut) is a threatened Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.
The language's 300 speakers live mostly in the village of Dorig , on the south coast of Gaua. Smaller speaker communities can be found in the villages of Qteon (east coast) and Qtevut (west coast).
Dorig's immediate neighbours are Koro and Mwerlap.List of Banks islands languages.
Name The name Dorig is derived from the name of the village where it is spoken..
Phonology Dorig has eight phonemic vowels. These include seven short monophthongs and one long vowel . + Dorig vowels Front Back Close Near-close Open-mid Open , Dorig has 15 consonant phonemes.François (2022). +Dorig consonantsLabiovelarBilabialAlveolarDorsalVoiceless stop Prenasalized stop Nasal Fricative ~ Rhotic Lateral Approximant The phonotactic template for a syllable in Dorig is: — e.g. ‘woman’ (< *rVᵐbʷai); ‘poor’ (< *mʷasara); ‘octopus’ (< *ɣurita). Remarkably, the consonant clusters of these /CCVC/ syllables are not constrained by the Sonority Sequencing Principle. Historically, these /CCVC/ syllables reflect former trisyllabic, paroxytone words */CVˈCVCV/, after deletion of the two unstressed vowels: e.g. POc *kuRíta ‘octopus’ > *wərítə > .
Grammar Basic syntax Basic constituent order in Dorig is SVO.
The language has no copula (or verb be): its non-verbal predicates involve a direct juxtaposition {Subject | Predicate}.
Referential expressions Pronouns The system of personal pronouns in Dorig contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural).François (2016).
Noun phrases Dorig has four articles: reserved to human nouns with high individuation such as proper names or kin terms; for common nouns that are inalienably possessed; for common nouns that are unbound; .
Tense–Aspect–Mood and negation The Dorig system of Tense–Aspect–Mood also incorporates the dimension of polarity (affirmation vs. negation), yielding a single “TAMP paradigm” (for “Tense-Aspect-Mood-Polarity”). That paradigm consists of 21 TAMP categories, e.g. Negative Potential , positive Potential , (positive) Perfect … The 14 TAMP positive morphemes come along 7 negative ones, a phenomenon known as paradigmatic asymmetry.
The seven negative TAMP markers of Dorig form part of a total of 16 grammatical constructions encoding negation.
Spatial reference Spatial reference is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages.François (2015).
References
Bibliography
External links Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Dorig on Gaua. Audio recordings in Dorig language, in open access, by A. François (source: Pangloss Collection). Stories in Dorig, with audio recording and translation: "The mysterious Pixies", by John Star. "The woman who became volcano", by John Collection Wemaras. "The barracuda boy", by Selwyn Wesur. "Wrisris, the Guardian of the Underworld" by Charles Maklen.