Mavea language


Mavea is an Oceanic language spoken on Mavea Island in Vanuatu, off the eastern coast of Espiritu Santo. It belongs to the North–Central Vanuatu linkage of Southern Oceanic. The total population of the island is approximately 172, with only 34 fluent speakers of the Mavea language reported in 2008.
There are 94 languages in the North Vanuatu linkage, including Mavea. The closest linguistic relative to Mavea, sharing a little over 70% of cognates, is Tutuba. Following Tutuba, Aore, South Malok, Araki, and Tangoa are the next closest relatives.

Language endangerment

Mavea is a moribund language and there are many factors as to why this is.
One factor would be the arrival and Christianization by the Seventh-day Adventist and Church of Christ missionaries in 1839. Only 16% of the population can speak Mavea. These native speakers of Mavea belong to Generation 1, 2, and 3 which ranges from the ages of 20–80 years old. Those born after 1980 are less fluent. Commonly, this generation is not taught the language, because the language is inactive and not used in any new domain.
Mavea is not used very commonly outside of the home; in particular, it is not used in school, which reduces the younger speakers’ exposure to the language. Most speakers do not feel concerned with the possible loss of the Mavea language.
Bislama, the national lingua franca of Vanuatu, is used more frequently. This creole is the first language for many people in Vanuatu who live in the city. It is used for business, religious sacraments, politics, and is seen as a way to move upward in society.

Phonology

Mavea has 15 consonants and 8 vowels.
Plosives in Mavea are not aspirated.
ieaou
High++
Back+++
Low+
Rounded++

Orthography

consonants are represented using the corresponding labial consonant with a diaeresis diacritic on top: p̈ ; v̈ ; m̈. The retroflex is represented in the orthography as d.

Grammar

Pronouns

There are both free and bound pronouns. Free pronouns are common in many Pacific languages. These free pronouns do not change for gender, but shows numerical differences, including singular, plural, dual, or paucal.
For example:
Proper Nouns
Proper nouns includes personal names, vocatives, relational terms, and locatives. They do not proceed an article and can not be used with a determiner. To show gender distinction, males use the prefix /mol-/. For females, the prefix /vo-/ or /va-/ was added.
Common Nouns
Similar to the proper nouns, there are both bound and free common nouns. Both can be used in an argument, be quantified with a marker, be modified with a determiner, be the head of a relative clause, and be questioned with “who” or “what”. Bound common nouns are separated into nouns of kinship, body parts, bodily functions, and whole part relations. Also shows possessives.
Verbs
Verbal predicates are marked with a subject agreement prefix. There are intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, ambitransitive, ditransitive, and auxiliary.
Intransitive verbs are used when the subject has no direct object receiving the action.

Adverbs

There are two kinds of adverbs: phrasal adverbs and sentential adverbs. Sententail adverbs take up the entire sentence and appear after or before the verb's core argument. For example: to show frequency, /te pong/ meaning “sometimes” is used as a sentential adverb.
Spatial adverbs are used to show the location of the speaker and the direction the speaker is speaking towards. For example: konaro means “here, at speaker’s location.” This is common in many Pacific languages.
Reduplication
Mavea shows partial reduplication in its grammar. Reduplication is used to show emphasis. For example: sua means “to paddle” and suosua means “to paddle intensely”. Sometimes when using reduplication, the vowels can change. Usually the “a” changes to “o” or “e”.
Adjectives
Adjectives can only be used as noun modifiers. There both adjectives as independent lexical items and also adjectives pulled from transitive verbs by using reduplication. For example: pulua is “paint” and “ima pulpulu” means “painted house”.
Prepositions
There are seven prepositions in Mavea.
to/fromvalu
straightdomdomi
forlape
to/forsuri
arounddal
withtuan
in/atna

Morphology

Personal pronouns in Mavea do not inflect for case or gender, but do show number.
First person non-singular has an inclusive/exclusive distinction.
Independent personal pronouns are not obligatory, but are used for emphasis, contrast or focus.
Example:

Bound Pronouns

pronouns are obligatory at the beginning of a predicate phrase. Only 1SG and 3SG inflect for mood.

Subject Agreement MarkersGuérin 2008: p. 78

Object Enclitics



Example:

Counting System

The Mavea counting system is very similar to other Proto Oceanic languages, especially numbers 1 through 5, and 10.
1tea
2rua
3tol
4vat
5lima
6marava
7rave rua
8rattol
9rappat
10anavul

Possession

Mavea distinguishes direct and indirect possession. Direct possessive constructions nouns take a bound possessive clitic. On the other hand, indirect possession is expressed by the presence of a classifier to which a possessive clitic is suffixed.

Direct possession

Direct possession is expressed by a possessive clitic attached to the noun when the possessor is not expressed as a Noun Phrase. Alternatively, if no suffix exists for the person and number of the possessor, the nouns are followed by an independent pronoun.
The semantic classes of nouns participating in direct possessive constructions, include, body parts, and bodily functions, kinship terms, articles of clothing, and household goods.
Table of Possessive Clitics
SingularPluralDualPaucal/trial
1INCL-dadarua/odatol
1EXCL-ku-mam-mamrua/o-mamtol
2-m-mim-mrua/o-mtol
3-n-ra-rarua/oratol

A noun, which is directly possessed, takes a possessive clitic matching the possessor's features.
For example:
Ka-deo mo-adia ro me ko-on tae=ku.
1SG.ιR-defecate 3SG-first then FUT 2SG-look excrement=lSG.POSS
Ί will defecate first, then you will look at my excrement’
and
This third person singular possessive clitic, pronounced as , is suffixed to the noun ‘Laloa’ for ‘saliva’.
Lalao=na mo-si mo-va.
saliva=3SG.POSS 3SG-go.down 3SG-go
'Her saliva was hanging down.’
Non-pronominal possessors
If a full NP expresses the possessor, the possessee takes the construct suffix –n, or can be pronounces , although this construct suffix is a homophony of the possessive clictic –n and –na the distribution is different as displayed in the following example;
Note that the case of Full NP, the possessee precedes the possessor
Ra-tau ese-n Piria.
3PL-put name-CONS wild.yam
'They named it Piria’
and
Natu-n vomae mo-sa mo-sakel na patu-n kou.
child-CONS dove 3SG-go.up 3SG-sit LOC head-CONS fowl
'Dove's child went up and sat on Fowl's head.
Possession is recursive, in the following example, the noun ‘vulu’ which is possessed by the noun ‘vanatu’ which in turn is possessed by John, therefore both nouns a suffixed with –.
vulu-n vanatu-n John
hair-CONS daughter-CONS John
'John's daughter's hair’

Indirect possession

Nouns in indirect possession constructions do not take a possessive clitic, they require a classifier to which a possessive clitic is attached.
There are six classifiers in Mavea:
a- ‘to be eaten’
ma- ‘to be drunk’
no- ‘general possession, valuables’
pula- ‘anima raised, vegetable planted’
sa- ‘housing and land’
madoue- ‘a dead man’s possession’
classifier "a-" infers that the item is possessed is meant to be eaten
Mo-vir loko a=na.
3sG-throw laplap CLF.eat=3SG.POSS
'She threw his laplap ’
If the possessor is a full NP, the classifier is market with the construct -n
Nira ra-ve inanan vaisesea a-n re famli.
3pl 3PL-make food small CLF.eat-CONS PL family
'They make a small party for the families ’
Summarised
Possession TypePossesseePossessor
DirectN -n
N CLF -n		Personal Noun
Personal Noun
IndirectN -n
N CLF -n		Personal Noun
Personal Noun
DirectN -n
N CLF -n		Specific
Specific
IndirectN -n
N CLF -n		Specific
Specific
DirectN -n
N -i		Non-specific
IndirectN CLF -nNon-specific

Questions

is used to distinguish yes-no questions because there is no syntactic way to do so. There are also tag questions which uses the negative tag /te modere/ at the end. In English, /te modere/ means “or not”.
Some monoclausal content questions include:
Sentential negation is expressed with the bound prefix /sopo/ and appears right after the subject agreement prefix. The order is subject ---> negation ---> verb.
Sometimes /sopo/ can be shorten to /po/.
When the subject agreement marker is absent, the bare negation marker jumps to the front.
To show the aspectual meaning “not yet”, /lo/ is added to the negation marker /sopo/. This refers to events that have not happened yet but are likely to in the future. Added to the end of this form of negation is /pa/ which means “still” or “yet”.
When combined with /me/ the negation changes into “not anymore, no more”.
Equative clauses are shown by adding the negative marker /sopo/ to the subject marker for third person singular /mo-/. Mosopo meaning “ it is/was/not.”
Negative locational predicates are similar to equative clauses, by adding the locational marker /na/ to the equative clause /mosopo/.