Wuvulu-August
Native toPapua New Guinea
RegionWuvulu and Aua Islands, Manus Province
Native speakers
1,500 (2004)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3wuv
Glottologwuvu1239

The Wuvulu-Aua language is spoken on Wuvulu and Aua Islands by approximately 1500 people in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea.[2] Wuvulu is an island which are far away from north coast of Papua New Guinea. Compared to other language, the speakers of Wuvulu-Aua is not so much and it is not well documented. In order to know more about this language, scholars collected phonological and grammatical data on Wuvulu island. Like other oceanic language, Wuvulu-Aua language shares some grammatical structure, word orders and tense. However, it also has big difference on complexity and the abundance of verbal morphology.[3]


Classification

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The Wuvulu-Aua language is in the family of Austronesian language family. After that, it belongs to Malayo-Polynesian which is one of the major Nuclear Austronesian. Next, based on the location, The Wuvulu-Aua is in the Eastern Malayo- Polynesian family. If we classify it more explicitly, it is the member of Oceanic Western Admiralty island language family. In fact, Wuvulu-Aua is made up of two language including Wuvulu and Aua. These language only varies in the pronunciation of certain consonant like /r/.

History

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Most Researchers believed that the Proto-Eastern Malayo Polynesian (PEMP) Language was produced in the area called "Bird's Head", which is in the northern west island of New Guinea. Later, PEMP developed different descended language and Proto Oceanic (PO) was one of them. Actually, PO not only reached to the northern coast of New Guniea and Indonesia, but also the to the Wuvulu, the island of the Bismarck. [4] There are about 31 languages in the Admiralty Subgroup of Oceanic languagage that is derived from PO. 28 languges are belong to Eastern Admirally Subground and the other 3 languages (Wuvulu-Aua, Seimat and Kaniet) are in Western Admirally Subgroup.[4]

Demographic

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The ancester of Wuvulu made ponds by digging the ground and then poured in fresh water in order to plant hula and the great taro around the pond.[5] Not only that, but Wuvulu people also planted sweet potato, tapioca and cabbage in their gardens.[5] Fishing is very important in Wuvulu society and there is so much finishing methods One of them is that a group of women form a big half circle with fishing net while waliking along the reef. The fish hide behind the rock because the movement of the tide and these women can easily catch them by lifting the stone. [6] Wuvulu people mainly depends on bush when they are building the house or construct a canoe. At the German colonial period, local people had trouble in their life because most of the trees were cut down by German. [3] They are nice and always help each other to build a house and garden. [7] On the aspect of food, Wuvulu people like to cook food with coconut milk. It is the taboo for local people to eat coconut crab, shell-fish and turtle now even though some of them cannot refuse the charming of these delicious food. [8] The population of Wuvulu were dramatcially decreased at the end of the last century because of Malaria and other diseases that was spreaded by the outsiders. At that time, at least 90% of the population were died of foreign diseases.[5] In addition, Christianity is very popular in this island, Every Sabbath day (Saturday), the resdient will gather to sing songs which are written in Hawaiian. [9]

Geographic Distribution

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The Wuvulu Island is located in the Province of Papua New Guinea towards the western end of the Manus Island, reaching only 10 feet above sea level. [10] As a member of the Admiralty Islands, the Wuvulu and Aua islands are a part of the Bismarck Archipelago that includes other provinces such as the New Ireland province, the East New Britain province, the Morobe province and much more. Wuvulu is spoken by an estimated 1,500 people in the Manus Province. There are only approximately 1,300 speakers of the language on Wuvulu and Aua. The remaining speakers of Wuvulu inhabit either the other islands located in the Papua New Guinea territory. [11]

Wuvulu is most similar to Austronesian, Malayo-Paolynesian, and other Oceanic languages scattered around the Admiralty Islands. Wuvulu-Aua is one of only three languages categorized in the Western subgroup of the Admiralty language. The other two languages are Seimat and Kaniet; however, Kaniet is now an extinct language. [12]

There are three different dialects of Wuvulu that are unique to the different clans located on the island: the Onne dialect, the Auna dialect, and the Aua dialect which is native to the Aua island. Each dialect differs in phoneme, distinguishing them from each other. However, the individual islands Wuvulu and Aua have a lexical and phonological distinction. [13]

Sounds and Phonology

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Wuvulu-Aua have three distinct dialects, two on Wuvulu island, and one on Aua island.[14] Wuvulu-Aua contains 10 consonant phonemes and 10 vowel phonemes (5 vowels with short and long versions).[15]

The syllable pattern of Wuvulu-Aua is similar to many other Oceanic languages, following the pattern of (C)V syllables. Stress is used to clarify ambiguous vowel sequences.[16][3] There are several publications on Wuvulu-Aua phonology, but they disagree on the allophones of the phonemes /l/, /r/, and /t/. Two publications, Blust 1996 and 2008, vary the number of consonant phonemes, reducing from 14 to 12. The third publication, Hafford 2012, further reduces the consonant phonemes to 10. [3][17]

There are four plosives in Wuvulu-Aua: /b/, /p/, /t/, and /ʔ/. The single fricative, /f/, is normally voiceless but is sometimes voiced between vowels. Two nasals are agreed upon, /m/ and /n/, with one report suggesting /ŋ̩/, but it was removed in subsequent publications. The two approximates, /l/ and /r/ have multiple allophones[17].

The classification of [x] and [g] is still debated as an allophone of /r/. In contemporary dialects of Wuvulu-Aua, [r] exists as a variant of [x] and [g]. Older generations of Wuvulu-Aua speakers still use the [r] phone. The alveolar trilled [r] is also regularly used by older generations and is understood by children. [r] is also borrowed as either [x] or [g] from English, choosing one depending on the height of adjacent vowels.[8] Historically, Proto Oceanic languages say [g] for a [r] next to a high vowel and [x] next to everything else.[8] Similar to /r/, /l/ also has two conditioned variants, [d] and [l]. [d] will be used next to a high vowel, and [l] for everything else.[18]

Conditioned variants [x] and [g] have been proposed by Blust 2008. This proposal is a correction from Blust 1996 which proposed that [x], [g], [ɣ], and [k] are all free variation phones. All dialects of Wuvulu-Aua claim that [k] is not a phone as borrowed words from English replace [k] with ʔ.[18]

The vowels of Wuvulu-Aua are a, i, u, e, o and their long phonemes ā, ī ū, ē, ō. The frequency of each vowels is spread fairly evenly between the front, central, and back areas, with [a] being the most frequent.[19] Mid vowels are the least frequent, occurring 28% of the time in a studied sample. High vowels are the most frequent, occurring 39% of the time in the same sample.[19] It has been proposed that the increased frequency of high vowels may be linked to the shift towards the allophone [g] next to high vowels.

The long vowels of Wuvulu-Aua are the same sound as their short counterparts, but are longer in duration and are always stressed in pronunciation. Mostly nouns contain long vowels, though they can also be found in grammatical words.[20]

20 permutations of vowel pairs exist with the five vowels. Eight pairs have a rising tongue, eight pairs with a falling tongue, and four pairs with a level tongue.[21] Generally, the movement of the tongue determines a change in sonority. An upward movement corresponds with a decrease in sonority, and a downward movement corresponds with an increase. The pairs eo, oe, and ae are not considered to be part of the language.[21]


Grammar

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Proto-Oceanic language is the ancestor of the Wuvu language. Even though their grammar structure is similar it also differs. In the Proto-Oceanic language noun-phrase sentence structure, it goes: ART + (NUMBER/QUANTIFIER +) NOUN (+ MODIFIER) (+ DEMONSTRATIVE) In the Wuvulu language noun noun-phrase sentence structure, it goes: (ART/DEMONSTRATIVE +) (NUMBER/QUANTIFIER +) (MODIFIERS +) NOUN (+ MODIFIER)[22]

Proto-Oceanic verb phrases structure is (ASPECT/MOOD=) SUBJECT= VERB (=OBJECT) (=DIRECTIONAL) Wuvulu verb phrase structure is (SUBJECT=) (MOOD/ASPECT-) (DIRECTIONAL-) VERB (-ADVERBIAL) (=OBJECT) (-DIRECTIONAL)

Morphology

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Within the Oceanic languages, Wuvulu has one of the most complex morphology. Unlike their ancestor language, Proto-Oceanic language, Wuvulu doesn't use derivational morphology. It gets verb derivation from nouns and adjectives. Wuvulu also gets their transitive verbs from their intransitive verbs To get verb derivation from nouns/or adjectives (intransitive) and adjectives by adding a suffix (-i) to the noun or adjective. A verb from noun creates a sentence that means "to be noun or adjective" when adding a -i. When the suffix is combined with the fa- prefix it can change the meaning of the sentence to "to cause/let something become noun or adjective". ex: fei muro the stone ʔi=na-muro-i 3SG=REAL-stone-DER ‘It is stone.’ ʔi=na-fa-muro-i-na larua 3SG=REAL-CAUS-stone-DER-TR PRON.3DU ‘She turned the two to stone.’

As for the Wuvulu intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, they add the causative marker -fa. ex: ʔi=na-poni 3SG=REAL-run ‘He ran.’

ʔi=na-fa-poni=ia 3SG=REAL-run=3SG ‘She made him run.’ [23]

Transitive Transitive verbs can come from adjectives when adding the causative marker -fa. ex: ʔi=na-fa-rawani=nia 3SG=REAL-CAUS-good=3SG ‘He treated her well.’ [24] ʔi=na-fa-afelo=ia 3SG=REAL-CAUS-bad=3SG ‘He destroyed it (lit. caused it to be bad).’ [25]

Preverbal morphology "Preverbal morphemes within the Wuvulu verb phrase, consists of positions for subject clitics, and inflectional prefixes denoting mood/aspect and direction" [26] ex: (SUBJECT=) (MOOD/ASPECT-) (DIRECTION-) VERB (-ADVERBIAL) (=OBJECT) (-DIRECTIONAL)

Generally, the Wuvu family language, Oceanic, tends to have pre-verbal morphemes that are free or prefixed. But in the wuvulu language, the pre-verbal and post-verbal morphemes are bounded by the verb stem. Except for subjects and objects; which can be free nominals, verbal clitics, or both. [27]

Mood Like Proto-Oceanic language, Wuvulu also lacks a tense category. Even though Wuvulu lacks a tense category, they tend to use mood, aspect markers, and time phrases to express tenses. [28]

The realis mood/marker inflection conveys past tense. (na-) ro=na-biri=ʔia 3PL=REAL-work=3SG ‘They did it.’

whereas an irrealis mood/marker doesn't convey a past tense. ro=ʔa-biri=ʔia 3PL=IRR-work=3SG ‘They are about to do it.’[29]

Vocabulary

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The Wuvulu language consists of 10 phonemes, or consonants, 10 vowels, and 10 diphthongs. Wuvulu diphthongs separate vowels phonetically, despite the fact that when spoken, the vowels create one phonetic sound [30] Within the Wuvulu language, the vowel "a" dominates as most common, having a one-third frequency in the language. [19] Wuvulu has two numerical systems, one for animate objects and one for inanimate objects. For example, the word for 2 inanimate objects is "ruapalo", whereas the number for two animate objects is "elarui". [31]

Number Wuvulu Number
1 ai/e
2 rua,roa
3 olu
4 fa
5 aipani
6 oluroa
7 olorompalo/oloromea
8 fainaroa
9 faimapalo/faimea
10 efua

Each number less than or equivalent to four is representative of the Proto-Oceanic language. [32] Any number following four demonstrative of a multiplicative construct, similarly found in the Marshall Islands. [33] For example, the number five in Wuvulu is aipani. "Ai" in Wuvulu is one, while "pani" means hand. On one hand, there are five fingers, hence, "one hand" translating to aipani. Similarly, for larger numbers the system becomes more complex, like when discussing the number eight. fainaroa translate to 8. When the word is broken into sections, "fai" means four, "na" is multiply, and "roa" is two. Loosely translated, it means "four multiply two". Therefore, fainaroa translates to eight in Wuvulu. [34]

Within the Wuvulu language, addressing people and locations must use proper nouns with the morpheme o- to prefix any name. The person being addressed must have the o- prefix added to the beginning of their name by the person who is addressing them. The use of this prefix is not limited to proper nouns but can also be used for pronouns, such as when addressing a relative like "aunty", "sister", or "mother". [35]

Wuvulu family names can either be based on the patriarch's name, or it can be based on clan names which are also locations. Some family names are named after locations due to settlers associating location with caln names. [36]

References

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  1. ^ "Organized Phonology Data - Wuvula-Aua Language - Manus Province" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-07-15.
  2. ^ Blust, Robert (1996). "The linguistic position of the Western Islands, Papua New Guinea". Oceanic Studies: proceedings of the First International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics: 1–46.
  3. ^ a b c d Hafford, James (2015). "Introduction". Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary: vi. Cite error: The named reference ":5" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b Hafford, James (2015). "Introduction". Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary: 4, 6.
  5. ^ a b c Crawford, A. (1979). The Wuvulu, People of Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea: National Cultural Council. p. 3. ISBN 0724702210.
  6. ^ Crawford, A. (1979). The Wuvulu, People of Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea: National Cultural Council. p. 4. ISBN 0724702210.
  7. ^ Crawford, A. (1979). The Wuvulu, People of Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea: National Cultural Council. p. 6. ISBN 0724702210.
  8. ^ a b c Crawford, A. (1979). The Wuvulu, People of Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea: National Cultural Council. p. 4. ISBN 0724702210. Cite error: The named reference ":6" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  9. ^ Crawford, A. (1979). The Wuvulu, People of Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea: National Cultural Council. p. 8. ISBN 0724702210.
  10. ^ "Geography". Retrieved 2007-07-15.
  11. ^ Hafford, James. Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 22.
  12. ^ Hafford, James. Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 5.
  13. ^ Hafford, James. Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 5-6.
  14. ^ Hafford, James A. (1999). Elements of Wuvulu Grammar. Arlington, TX: UMI Dissertation Services. p. 8. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  15. ^ Hafford, James A. Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). Hawaii: University of Hawaii At Manoa. p. 19.
  16. ^ Hafford, James A. (1999). Elements of Wuvulu Grammar. Arlington, TX: UMI Dissertation Services. p. 9-10. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  17. ^ a b Hafford, James (2012). The Wuvulu velar obstruent puzzle solved. Working Papers in Linguistics: University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Vol.43(2). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai`i at Manoa.
  18. ^ a b Hafford, James (2014). Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary. University of Hawaii: University of Hawai`i at Manoa. p. 23.
  19. ^ a b c Hafford, James (2014). Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 28. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  20. ^ Hafford, James A. Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary. p. 29.
  21. ^ a b Hafford, James A. Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary. p. 31.
  22. ^ Hafford, James. "Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary" (PDF). p. 66. Retrieved 09 February 2017. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  23. ^ Hafford, James. "Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary". p. 85. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  24. ^ Hafford, James. "Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary". p. 86. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  25. ^ Hafford, James. "Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary". p. 87. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  26. ^ Hafford, James. "Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary". p. 88. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  27. ^ Hafford, James. "Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary". p. 88. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  28. ^ Hafford, James. "Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary". p. 89. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  29. ^ Hafford, James. "Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary". p. 90. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  30. ^ Hafford, James (March 2004). Organised Phonology Data Supplement Wuvulu Language (PDF). Summer Institute of Linguistics. p. 99. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  31. ^ Harrod, James (2014). Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 73. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  32. ^ Harrod, James (2014). Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 73. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  33. ^ Lean, Glendon A. (1991). Counting Systems of Papua New Guinea (2 ed.). Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Papua New Guinea University of Technology. p. 60. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  34. ^ Harrod, James (2014). Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 73. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  35. ^ Harrod, James (2014). Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 49. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  36. ^ Harrod, James (2014). Wuvulu Grammar and Vocabulary (PDF). p. 49. Retrieved 8 February 2017.

Further reading

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Category:Admiralty Islands languages Category:Languages of Manus Province