Mbula (also known as Mangap-Mbula, Mangaaba, Mangaawa, Mangaava, Kaimanga) is an Austronesian language spoken by around 2,500 people on Umboi Island and Sakar Island in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. Its basic word order is subject–verb–object; it has a nominative–accusative case-marking strategy.
Name Mbula speakers generally display difficulty expressing a name for their language. Historically it has been referenced as Mangap or Kaimanga but Kaimanga is considered an offensive term along the lines of "unsophisticated bush person". Mangap is not in known use; however, Mangaaba is the name given to Mbula speakers by Siassi Islanders. Mbula is the only name known to have been used by Mbula speakers themselves, though many of them are unfamiliar with this.
Language family and origin Mbula is a member of the Oceanic group of Austronesian languages. It was originally proposed as a member of the Siassi language group which is a set of languages extending from Karkar Island in the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea, along the coast of Finschafen and across New Britain. However, more recent evidence suggests that it is a descendant of the Vitiaz Dialect Linkage. Its nearest genetic relations are the Kilenge and Maleu languages; its nearest geographic neighbour is the Papuan Kovai language.
Location Mbula speakers are generally located in seven villages: Gaura, Yangla, Birik, Marile, Kampalap, Kabi and Sakar. These villages are located on Sakar Island and the eastern half of Umboi Island. Both islands are inactive volcanoes and both are rich in game, timber and fish. Location has influenced the language in that there are many specific vocabulary items for species of fish, shells, canoes, nets, spears and a pair of motion verbs 'to go out, appear, happen' and 'to enter' which specifically describe paths of motion which are radially outward toward the sea or radially inward from the sea.
People and culture Colonialism has had a fair impact on the culture of Mbula speakers. Missionization began in 1884 and the vast majority of Mbula speakers now identify themselves as Christian. Some traditions are retained from tribal religions; foremost among them are those concerning sorcery, white magic and divination. Two general types of magic are identified among speakers, , a beneficial love magic used by many young men in their pursuit of young ladies and , a kind of mildly destructive magic used to curse and hurt others. A third kind, , is considered the most evil, used only to kill or disable people.
Language contact The Mangap-Mbula are part of a previously extensive trading network with bordering language groups, especially those in the Ngero language group of the Siassi islands which formed the hub of the trading network. As a result, approximately 65% of Mbula speakers are at least somewhat bilingual in Tok Pisin and some 30% speak and understand some Ngero. Due to missionization and other factors, 35% can speak and write English.
Phonology
Consonants The consonant phonemes of Mbula are as shown in the following table:
+ Consonant phonemes Bilabial Dental/Alveolar Velar Nasal Plosive Fricative Lateral Trill Glide
The consonant is realised as intervocalically. Prenasalised stops, while requiring two phonetic units, exist as a single phonemic unit. The palatal glide is treated as being underlyingly vocalic in morphophonemic analysis while the labio-velar glide is analysed consonantally. All voiceless plosives, , are optionally pronounced with a voiceless nasal release word finally. All velars are fronted or backed, depending on the vowel immediately contiguous to them within the same syllable. is palatalized to a voiceless, laminal, post-alveolar plosive when followed by a morpheme boundary and .
Vowels Mbula has five vowel phonemes as shown in the following table. Phonetically front vowels are unrounded and back vowels are rounded. and can be lax or tense and can be half close tense and half open lax. All vowels can be short or long, though this is interpreted in the phonology as a sequence of two vowels rather than as the existence of long vowel phonemes. The two high vowels and are lowered slightly when followed by , , or .
+ Vowel phonemesFrontCentralBack Close Mid Open
Vowels are subject to two rules: penultimate lengthening, which means that external realisations may be long vowels while the underlying form is a short vowel, and epenthesis, which means the insertion of a vowel where the underlying form of the morpheme does not contain one. Epenthesis is regressive, which means that epenthetic vowels take on the quality of the first vowel in the rest of the form. Vowel length is contrastive as can be seen in the following examples:
short long – 'long' – a type of ant – 'domestic animal' – 'new shoot of a plant' – 'be heavy' – 'reads'
Suprasegmentals The placement of stress is predictable. In most words, primary stress falls on the penultimate syllable.
Syllable patterns Syllable structure is generally (C)V(C). VV can sometimes form a syllable in the case of a diphthong or long vowel and syllable structure can be analysed as CCV when or is analysed as a C.
Orthography As stated above, vowel length is contrastive. What would be written phonetically as a: is represented by aa. All long vowels are written this way. All alveolars () are dental-alveolars. They are represented in the orthography by t, d, n and nd. The sound is represented by y. The complete orthography of Mbula is as follows:
a e i o u b d g k l m mb n nd ŋ ŋg p r s t w z y A E I O U B D G K L M Mb N Nd Ŋ Ŋg P R S T W Z Y
Syntax and word classes In an ideal grammar each classificatory word type would belong only to one category and in Mbula that is mostly the case. However, in the following three areas, word forms exist which are hard to nail down as one or the other:
verbs and prepositions verbs and adverbs verbs and instrumental nouns
The occurrence of a form in a wide range of conversational environments can result in the gradual loss of morphological features which are not appropriate to some particular conversational environments as well as the morphological gain of features which are appropriate to other conversational environments. This can mean ultimately either category shift of a word class or even just the general greying of the word classes as iron-clad categories.
Verbs and prepositions Prototypical verbs and prototypical prepositions exist along a cline with verbs at the start, prepositions at the end, and multicategoried word types in the middle:
forms inflected with the subject prefixes which function syntactically only as predicates in sentences forms not inflected with the subject prefixes which syntactically function only as predicates in sentences (the uninflected verbs discussed below in verbs) forms potentially exhibiting subject agreement inflection which function syntactically as both predicates in sentences and in serial constructions (the prepositional verbs discussed below) forms never exhibiting inflection and which function syntactically only as prepositions
Verbs and adverbs Prototypical verbs and adverbs exist along a cline with verbs at the start, adverbs at the end and multicategoried word types in the middle:
inflected verbs which never occur as modifiers within the predicate phrase and never occur in cosubordinate adverbial predications inflected verbs which never occur as modifiers within the predicate phrase, and can occur in either a preceding or following cosubordinate adverbial predication uninflected verbs which never occur as modifiers within the predicate phrase, but which can occur in either a preceding or following cosubordinate adverbial predication forms which can occur as modifiers in the predicate phrase after the object or occur as uninflected verbs in an adjacent cosubordinate adverbial predication forms which occur immediately after the object and never function as predicates in an adjacent cosubordinate adverbial construction forms which can occur immediately after the predicate and never function as a predicate in an adjacent cosubordinate adverbial construction
Verbs and instrumental nouns Verbs and instrumental nouns crossover in that verbs theoretically derived from these nouns appear in an identical form. I.e., there is no overt morphological derivation which might indicate what direction the derivation has occurred in. Examples include:
– 'wall' – 'to wall in' – 'paddle' – 'to paddle' – implement for sweeping – 'to sweep up' using this implement – 'a line' – 'to draw a line'
Nouns There is no syntactic distinction between nouns and adjectives in Mbula. Nouns are syntactically distinguished by the following three characteristics:
They may function 'in isolation' (i.e. without any further syntactic modification) as arguments in a predication, a property that distinguishes them from non-inflecting stative verbs. When functioning as the heads of noun phrases, nouns occur phrase initially with all modifiers following. A subclass of nouns is morphologically distinguished by being obligatorily inflected with a set of genitive suffixes.
There are eight semantic features of noun referents which are especially important for characterising the morphosyntactic behaviour of Mbula nouns:
human referent animate referent potent (the referent of the noun can be viewed as the ultimate cause of some process which affects another entity) concrete (the noun can potentially refer to a physical location to which, at which, or from which an event takes place) temporal (the noun may be used to delineate the time at which an event takes place) potentially consumable (the referent of the noun can be eaten or drunk) individuated/count (the referent of the noun may be easily separated from its environment and may not be divided without changing its essential nature/character) inalienable genitive (the referent of the item is inherently associated with some other entity)
Pronouns Pronouns make the following person/number distinctions.
1 singular 1 dual exclusive 1 dual inclusive 1 plural exclusive 1 plural inclusive 2 singular 2 dual 2 plural 3 singular 3 dual 3 plural
Pronouns also inflect for nominative, accusative, referent and locative cases. Most pronouns are composed of an initial case marker plus a person-number marker. The nominative series of pronouns is generally used to encode animate participants which function as subjects. There are three demonstrative pronouns: ('this one, these ones'), ('that one, those ones') and ('that one over there, those ones over there'). Accusative pronouns encode animate participants which function as objects. The referent pronouns encode virtually any animate oblique argument. Locative pronouns indicate an animate location toward which an action is taking place in dynamic predications, or at which an item is located. The locative form is also used to encode possession. Interrogative pronouns such as who, when, where, operate in a replacement fashion. That is, the interrogative pronoun is used in place of the normal syntactic position of the item being questioned.
Verbs The characteristic syntactic function of verbs is to act as the heads of predications in which they occur. They are defined by a number of properties:
They typically index the person and number of the subject of the sentence. They may contain transitivity-altering prefixes. They may not function as noun-phrase modifiers in certain frames.
Uninflected verbs There are several categories of non-inflecting verbs in Mbula:
stative experiential verbs stative verbs encoding properties verbs of manner aspectual verbs