Tokelauan ()Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh is a Polynesian language spoken in Tokelau and historically by the small population of Swains Island (or Olohega) in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan and other Polynesian languages. Tokelauan has a co-official status with English in Tokelau. There are approximately 4,260 speakers of Tokelauan, of whom 2,100 live in New Zealand, 1,400 in Tokelau, and 17 in Swains Island. "Tokelau" means "north-northeast".
Loimata Iupati, Tokelau's resident Director of Education, has stated that he is in the process of translating the Bible from English into Tokelauan. While many Tokelau residents are multilingual, Tokelauan was the language of day-to-day affairs in Tokelau until at least the 1990s, and is spoken by 88% of Tokelauan residents. Of the 4600 people who speak the language, 1600 of them live in the three atolls of Tokelau – Atafu, Nukunonu and Fakaofo. Approximately 3000 people in New Zealand speak Tokelauan, and the rest of the known Tokelauan speakers are spread across Australia, Hawaii, and the west coast of the United States. The Tokelauan language closely resembles its more widely spoken and close genealogical relative, Samoan; the two maintain a degree of mutual intelligibility.
Documentation Horatio Hale was the first person to publish a Tokelauan dictionary in 1846. Rather than being the accepted definition of dictionary, it was a reference that only contained 214 entries of vocabulary. Hale's publication remained the only published Tokelauan reference until 1969. However, Tokelauan had been instituted into schools in the late 1940s; prior to the publication, there was not much headway made in the teaching of the language. In 1969, the New Zealand Department of Education published D. W. Boardman's Tokelau–English Vocabulary. This second, more advanced reference was a collection of around 1200 vocabulary entries. In the times that passed after the second publication, the necessity of a more detailed and in depth reference to the language for the purpose of education with the Tokelauan community was realized by Hosea Kirifi (who later became the first Tokelau Director of Education) and J. H. Webster. In the year 1975, Kirifi and Webster published the first official precursory Tokelauan dictionary, which contained an estimated 3000 items, called the Tokelau–English Dictionary. This entire movement was based on the fact that the Tokelauan people take a great deal of pride in their language. Tokelauan schools lacked an abundance of resources and materials that could be used to educate their children on the language. It has a high place in their culture, and the revitalization and renewal of the language for their younger generation had eventually reached a point where action had to be taken. One year after the publication of the 1975 Tokelau–English Dictionary, the government approved the installation of Ropati Simona who was to head the Tokelau Dictionary Project. This eventually led to the publication of the first comprehensive Tokelauan dictionary, Tokelau Dictionary by the Office of Tokelau Affairs in 1986.
Background Tokelau is a dependency of New Zealand and has three main parts, which consist of atolls: Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo. Together these three atolls lie about two hundred sixty nautical miles away from Samoa. The three atolls of Tokelau are also known as the Duke of York, Duke of Clarence, and D'Wolf or Bowditch, respectively (on old maps). Together, they are known as The Union Islands, The Union Group, and as the Tokelau Islands. Tokelau's language, Tokelauan, belongs to the Austronesian language family and is considered to be part of the subgroup of Polynesian languages. More than half of the speakers of the Tokelauan language reside in New Zealand, about thirty percent live in either Atafu, Nukunonu, or Fakaofo, and a minority live in Australia (geographically close to New Zealand) and states in the United States that touch the Pacific Ocean (Hawaii and other western states part of the mainland). Since Tokelau lies very close to Samoa, it is common to think that the Tokelauan language has some Samoan language influences, but due to the lack in extensive documentation, it is inaccurate to assume such a thing. Tokelauan was still only considered to be a spoken language up until the 1960s. During the 1960s schools began teaching their peoples how to read and write their own language. Short works were also produced in Tokelauan. Additionally, it was common for adults to be fluent in Samoan and Tokelauan. The Tokelauan language is small, and has always been fairly small, even before the Europeans invaded, because of the limited resources that each atoll had, which limited the number of people that could be supported on each.
Phonology and orthography + Vowel inventory Front Central Back High Mid Low
To indicate whether a vowel is read short or long, Tokelauan language denotes a long vowel with a macron (a horizontal line) above the letter.
However, not all Tokelauan speaking peoples agree with the use of the macron. Those residing in the three atolls of Tokelau are known to have shown much resistance to the macron, while the Tokelauan speakers of New Zealand are more open and accepting of adopting the use of this linguistic symbol.
+ Consonant inventoryLabialAlveolarVelarGlottal Nasal Plosive Fricative () Lateral
There are some phonetic similarities between sounds in the language, such as /h/ and /ɸ/, which results in some variation in orthographic practice. For example, and both mean goodbye but can be pronounced differently. The sounds for h, s, f and wh can all be used interchangeably. There are two dialects in Polynesia, both of which have affected the pronunciation of the Tokelauan language. The h and wh sounds are from the older dialect, while the f and s sounds are from the newer one. The fact that all these sounds are interchangeable regardless of when they arrived at the islands suggests that no one dialect surpassed the other. Although Tokelauan is closely related to the Samoan language, there is a distinct difference between their pronunciation of words. For example, Samoan words containing the k sound can sound like g with words such as often mistakenly heard as . Tokelauan language does not allow the k's to drop.
Tokelauan is written in the Latin script, albeit using only 15 letters: A, E, I, O, U, F, G, K, L, M, N, P, H, T, and V.
Although there is not a lot of available systemic data for Tokelauan word stressing, linguists have developed three rules relating to word stress and vowels based upon some previous evidence. The first rule is that a long vowel will receive the main stress. Secondly, with some exceptions to rule number one, the second to last vowel would bear the main stress (if the long vowel is not the main stress). And thirdly, words do not lose their normal stress when compounded with another word. Furthermore, monosyllabic grammatical morphemes are left unstressed.
Types of sentences Similarly to English, each Tokelauan clause has a predicate. There are five types of predicate including verbal, locative, existential, possessive, and nominal. Each predicate is available for an interrogative and declarative statement, and can also have multiple predicates conjoined.
Verbal predicates
A verbal phrase will follow a verbal clause.
(An evaluative predicate can and usually does occur with no argument.)
Locative predicates
Preposition and a noun phrase following a tense-aspect particle.
Possessive pronouns Below is a table displaying the predicative possessive pronouns in the Tokelauan language. Singular Dual Plural 1st person incl o oku, o kitaa aku, a kite o taua, o taa taua, a ta o tatoua tatou excl o maua, o ma oa maua, a ma a matoumatou 2nd person o ou/o koea au/a koe o kouluaa koulua o koutoua koutou 3rd person o onaa ona o laua, o laa laua, a la o latoua latou
Shown below is a table showing Tokelauan premodifying possessive pronouns.
Possessor Singular reference Plural reference 1 singular toku, taku, tota, tata oku, aku, ota, ata 2 singular to, tau o, au 3 singular tona, tana ona, ana 1 dual incl. to ta, to tauata ta, ta taue o ta, o tauea ta, a taua 1 dual excl. to ma, to mauata ma, ta maua o ma, o mauaa ma, a maua 2 dual toulua, taulua oulua, aulua 3 dual to la, to laueta la, ta laue o la, o lauaa la a laua 1 plural incl. to tatou, ta tatou o tatou, a tatou 1 plural excl. to matou, ta matou o matou, a matou 2 plural toutou, tautau outou, autou 3 plural to latou, ta latau o latou, a latou NON-SPECIFIC/INDEFINITE 1 singular hoku, hotahaku, hata ni oku, ni otaniaku, niata 2 singular ho, hau ni o, ni au 3 singular hona, hana ni ona, ni ana 1 dual incl. ho ta, ho tauaha ta, ha taua ni o ta, ni o taueni a ta, ni a taua 1 dual excl. ho ma, ho mauaha ma, ha maua ni o ma, ni o mauani a ma, ni a maua 2 dual houlua, haulua ni oulua, ni aulua
Articles There are two articles that are used in the English language. These articles are the and a/an. The usage for the word the when speaking of a noun is strictly reserved for the case in which the receiver of the word should be aware of its context, or if said item has been referred to previously. This is because in English, the word the acts as what is known as a definite article, meaning that a defined object or person is being spoken of. However, in the case of definite article usage in Tokelauan language, if the speaker is speaking of an item in the same manner as the English languages uses the, they need not to have referred to it previously so long as the item is specific. The same can be said for the reference of singular being. Because of the difference in grammatical ruling, although the definite article in the Tokelauan language is te, it is very common for it to translate to the English indefinite article a. An indefinite article is used when there is no specification of the noun being referred to. The usage of the word he, the indefinite article in Tokelauan is 'any such item'. In negative statements the word he is used because that is where it is most often found, as well as when phrasing a question. However, it is important to remember that just because these two types of statements are where he occurs the greatest it does not mean that he does not occur in other types of statements as well. Examples of both te and he are as such:
Tokelauan: Kua hau te tino English: 'A man has arrived' or 'The man has arrived' (Notice how te in Tokelauan has been translated to both a and the in English.)
Tokelauan: Vili ake oi k'aumai he toki English: 'Do run and bring me an axe'
The use of he and te in Tokelauan are reserved for when describing a singular noun. When describing a plural noun, different articles are used. For plural definite nouns, nā is the article that is used. However, in some cases, rather than using nā, plural definite nouns are subject to the absence of an article represented by 0. The absence of an article is usually used if a large amount or a specific class of things are being described. An example of an exception to this commonality would be if one was describing an entire class of things, but in a nonspecific way. In this case, rather than nā as the article, the singular definite noun te would be used. The article ni is used for describing a plural indefinite noun. Examples of nā, a 0 exception, and ni are as such:
Tokelauan: Vili ake oi k'aumai nā nofoa English: 'Do run and bring me the chairs'
Tokelauan: Ko te povi e kai mutia English: 'Cows eat grass' ('Ko' in this sentence acts as a preposition to 'te'.)
Tokelauan: E i ei ni tuhi? English: Are there any books?
(Notice that this is the use of an indefinite article in an interrogative statement. As mentioned above, the use of indefinite articles in these types of statements is very common.)
Particles