Wuvulu-Aua language


The Wuvulu-Aua language is spoken on Wuvulu and Aua Islands by approximately 1500 people scattered around the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea. Although the Wuvulu-Aua language has a similar grammatical structure, word order, and tense to other Oceanic languages, it has an unusually complex morphology.
Wuvulu Island is located in the Papua New Guinea Province and reaches about 10 feet above sea level. 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 1,600 people in the Manus Province. There are approximately 1,000 speakers of the language on Wuvulu and 400 on Aua. The remaining speakers of Wuvulu inhabit either the other islands located in the Papua New Guinea territory.
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.
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.

Classification

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 language family. 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 languages, Wuvulu and Aua. These two languages vary in the pronunciation of certain consonants like /r/.

History

Most researchers believed that the Proto-Eastern Malayo Polynesian Language was produced in the area called "Bird's Head", which is in the north-west island of New Guinea. Later, PEMP developed different descended language and Proto Oceanic was one of them. PO not only reached to the northern coast of New Guinea and Indonesia, but also to Wuvulu, an island of the Bismarck archipelago. There are about 31 languages in the Admiralty Subgroup of Oceanic language that is derived from PO. 28 languages belong to Eastern Admirally Subground and the other 3 languages are in Western Admirally Subgroup.

Demographic

The ancestor of Wuvulu made ponds by digging the ground and pouring in fresh water to plant hula and the great taro around the pond. Wuvulu people also planted sweet potato, tapioca, and cabbage in their gardens. Fishing is important to the Wuvulu society and they have many different fishing methods. One method is to have a group of women form a big half circle with a fishing net while walking along the reef. The fish hide behind the rocks because the movement of the tide and the women can easily catch them by lifting the stone. They mainly depend on bush when they are building houses or constructing a canoe. During the German colonial period, locals faced difficulties as the trees were cut down by Germans.
The people of Wuvulu are nice and always help each other build houses and gardens. On the aspect of food, they often cook with coconut milk. It is taboo for local people to eat coconut crab, shell-fish, and turtles even though some of them cannot refuse the charm of these foods. The population of Wuvulu was dramatically reduced at the end of the last century because of Malaria and other diseases that were spread by outsiders. At that time, at least 90% of the population died of foreign diseases.
Christianity is very popular in this island, every Sabbath day, the residents will gather to sing songs written in Hawaiian.

Sounds and Phonology

Vowels

Wuvulu-Aua have three distinct dialects, two on Wuvulu island, and one on Aua island. The Auna dialect is spoken on the Aua Island, while Onne dialect is spoken on Wuvulu. The Wuvulu-Aua language has a very small phoneme inventory consisting of 20 phonemes. There are ten vowels; 5 vowels and 5 of their long counterparts, and 10 consonants. There are two front vowels /i/ and /e/, two back vowels /o/ and /u/, and /a/ is the only central vowel. High, mid and low vowels are all spread fairly even in terms of frequency. High vowels are the most frequent and mid vowels are the least frequent.
There are five long vowels within the Wuvulu language. These five long vowel phonemes share the same phonetic quality as their standard vowel counterparts, however are longer in duration. In Wuvulu, there are 20 possible diphthongs of the five basic vowels discussed above. There are eight falling pairs /ia/, /ie/, /io/, /ea/, /ua/, /uo/, /ue/, and /oa/, eight rising pairs /ai/, /au/, /ei/, /eu/, /oi/, /ou/, /ae/, and /ao/, and four level pairs /iu/, /eo/, /ui/, and /oe/. The terms rising, falling and level refer to the rise or fall of sonority of the diphthongs. Within Wuvulu, there are three vowel pairs that do not exist that are common in other languages. Eo, oe, and ae are three pairs that do not occur in Wuvulu. Previous research suggests that diphthongs are not phonemic in Wuvulu.

Consonants

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. Wuvulu-Aua contains four plosives, /p/, /b/, /t/, and /ʔ/. There are three approximates /l/, /r/, and /w/. There is one fricative /f/ which is usually voiceless however when placed between vowels it can become voiced. And finally, there are two nasals /m/ and /n/. There are no consonant clusters within the language.
There are only three consonants that contain possible allophones. /t/ has three allophones - , , and ; /r/ has three allophones - , , and ; and /l/ has three allophones - , , and . All allophones are environmentally conditioned. The fricatives and are sometimes voiced intervocalically. The voiceless fricative /f/ is sometimes voiced fafi -> . In rapid speech the voiceless fricative /x/ is sometimes voiced ere -> . The use of is not conditioned by a phonological rule. Older generations of Wuvulu-Aua speakers still use the phone. The alveolar trilled is also regularly used by older generations and is understood by children. will generally be used, otherwise and are uttered in complementary distribution. If /l/ is adjacent to a vowel, /l/ will become a voiced alveolar stop balu -> ‘child’. Wuvulu has four plural pronouns. For each of the plural pronouns, /l/ can be deleted ɁoɁolu -> ɁoɁou. Conditioned variants and have been proposed by Blust 2008. This proposal is a correction from Blust 1996 which proposed that , , , and are all free variation phones. All dialects of Wuvulu-Aua claim that is not a phone as borrowed words from English replace with ʔ.

Syllable structure

The syllable structure in Wuvulu is V. This means that the vowel is the nucleus of the syllable and can be either a standard vowel, long vowel or a diphthong. The consonant, on the other hand, is optional. All vowels hold one mora of weight; however, long vowels and diphthongs hold two moras of weight.

Stress

If a syllable in Wuvulu contains a long vowel or diphthong, it is considered “heavy”. Therefore, long vowels and diphthongs always carry stress. Similarly, stressed is considered to be linked to vowel length. If a syllable ends with a vowel that is short in length, then they have penultimate stress. So, lolo ‘sink’ has penultimate stress because its final vowel is short in length. If a syllable ends with a vowel that is long in length or a diphthong, then they have ultimate stress. Rufu: ‘my village’ has ultimate stress because its final vowel is long in length.

Morphosyntax

Proto-Oceanic language is the ancestor of the Wuvu language. Even though their grammar structure is similar it also differs.
Proto-Oceanic language noun-phrase sentence structure : Art + + Noun + modifier + Demonstrative Where as in the Wuvulu language, the noun-phrase sentence structure is : + + Modifiers + Noun + Modifier
Noun Phrase
Similar to Proto Oceanic language, the nouns are categorized into personal, local and common. Personal nouns is the noun that related to you, such as kin term and name of person. Furthermore, local noun is the name of place and the rest of noun are common noun like tree and "under".
Compounds, reduplication and Onomatopoeia are the three ways to construct noun in Wuvulu Aua language.
  1. Compounds is the two words combine together to form a new word. Here are some examples: Tawaparara is combined by tawa and parara
  2. Waliwali and wiliwili are examples of reduplication.
  3. Onomatopoeia describe the sound in their language. baʔa or is mimic the sound of knocking the door.

    Verb Phrase

Wuvulu languages have a single word that contains 20 morphemes, which has the most complicated single verb among the 500 Oceanic language. These verbs can be attached by subject and object clitics and can be added mood, aspect, completion and etc.
Example:
timi Timi=nia! Timi-na fei muro
to throw throw it ! Throw the stone
bound with object marker The verb root take the transitive morpheme
Example:
na-poni to na-fa-poni=a
run make it run
There are six different morphemes of adverb to describe the verb including complete, frequent, infrequent, eventual, intensified, or sequential.
Also, Wuvulu language also has suffix adverb.
"Pronominal clitics in Wuvulu are modified forms of free pronouns that are bound to the edges of verb stem." Verb clitics are able to be used as subjects, objects of a clause, or co-located in a clause with noun phrases.

Subject Proclitics

Wuvulu is one of the few languages to have a structure similar for subject proclitics, that was thought to be exclusive to the Proto-Oceanic language. There are three possibilities where the Wuvulu subject proclitics are from.
Example-
person POc Wuvulu
1 *au= ʔu=
2 *ko= ʔo=
3 *i= ʔi=

Clause Structure

Clause structure is divided into verbal clauses and verbless clauses. Verbless is constructed by two nouns that are close together. In this kind of sentence, pause 【，】 separated between the subject and predicate. Ex： ia,futa According to Foley & Van Valin and Van Valin & LaPolla, verbal clauses can be described into one model.
] Adjunct
Example
minoa, ʔei wawane, ro=na-paʔuru-paʔa-a ʔei aʔu, ʔi ʔari
Yesterday the PL man 3SG=Real-cast-have-TR the.PL tuna at sea
' Yesterday the men caught the tuna at sea. '
According to the model above
] Adjunct
the tuna] at sea
Syntax
Wuvulu language just like its 30 linguistics sisters which they are SVO language. However, it has a tendency for VOS syntax because Wuvulu is very similar to proto-Oceanic language, which the verbal agreement marking and its propensity for the subject constituent are at the ending of sentence.
Verbless Clauses
Example: ia, fatu
PRON.3SG chief
' He is a chief.'
Example: ai, iei
Pron.3SG PROPN
'He is there.'
Verbal Clauses
Example:
ʔi=na-biri-ʔia
3SG=REAL-work=3SG
'He did it.'
Example:
mi-to=nia!
DIR-get=3SG
'Come get it!'
Example:
amuʔou=nei-ʔaunu!
2PL=DEON-go
'You must leave!'

Verbal morphology

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 and adjectives by adding a suffix 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=a
3SG=REAL-CAUS-run=3SG
‘She made it run.’
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.’
ʔi=na-fa-afelo=ia
3SG=REAL-CAUS-bad=3SG
‘He destroyed it.’
Preverbal morphology
"Preverbal morphemes within the Wuvulu verb phrase, consists of positions for subject clitics, and inflectional prefixes denoting mood/aspect and direction"
ex: VERB
Generally, the Wuvulu 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.
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.
The realis mood/marker inflection conveys past tense.
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.’

Negation

Wuvulu negation can be broadly divided into verbal negation and clausal negation.
Verbal negation in Wuvulu takes the form of an inflectional morpheme. It occurs in the pre-stem position of the verb. Within the pre-stem position, the negation marker specifically occurs between the mood marker and the aspect marker. The location of the negation marker in the pre-stem position is show below.


The Wuvulu negation marker can take one of two forms: ’a- or ta-.
The form ‘a- always occurs after the deontic morpheme, nei-, resulting in the form nei'a “must not’. Below is an example of nei’a negating a verb.
The marker ta- is always used with the irrealis mood, therefore falling after the irrealis marker ‘a-, as in, to mark situations which were expected to occur, but have not.
The form ta- also commonly occurs with the eventuality marker we-, as seen in, resulting in tawe. This is used to refer to events that have not happened yet, and ta- alone simply refers to those that have not happened.
'a-Follows deontic marker nei-
ta-Occurs with irrealis mood

Clausal negation in Wuvulu can be further divided into clausal, and constituent.
For clausal negation the word lomi occurs before the clause being negated. An example of this is found below.
For constituent negation, lomi can also function as a negator, as can the word aba. In both cases, the word occurs directly before the constituent being negated. Examples of each marker are below.
A negated clause using aba is often coordinated by the conjunction ua to a contrastive positive clause. Examples of aba with and without this contrastive clause are  and respectively.
Clausal and constituent negation are frequently used to express negative conditions, as seen twice in.
Note that the word lo’e appears to occur in free variation with lomi. It can be seen below in in which it functions as a clausal negator. However, according to Hafford, this free variation may require further research before it can be confirmed.

Possession

Possession in Wuvulu can be indicated in two ways: either by a bound possessor suffix attached to the head noun of a noun phrase, or by juxtaposing noun phrases. The head noun always precedes the possessive marker/possessor, whether the possessor is indicated by the bound suffix, or by a juxtaposed noun phrase, as demonstrated in the examples in this section. Possessed nouns, as for other Oceanic languages, are classified in terms of either indirect or direct possession, with indirectly possessed nouns being divided further into three categories, as detailed below.

Possessor suffixes

In the case of possessor suffixes, the suffix differs based on whether the possessor is first-, second- or third-person. These suffixes are only used when there is a single possessor – that is, they cannot be used in the case of more than one possessor.
For a possessor suffix to be applied to an indirectly possessed noun, there are three possessum nouns which must be used in the place of an explicit reference to the indirectly possessed object. The classifiers correspond to three categories of objects; ana for edible things, numa for drinkable things, and ape for general indirect possession. Hafford states, “These classifiers act as nouns… taking quantifiers, articles and bound agreement suffixes.” Accordingly, the possessor suffixes attach either to a directly possessed noun, or a classifier noun corresponding to an indirectly possessed object. That is, indirectly possessed nouns can only take a possessor suffix when they are represented by a possessum noun. Hafford states, "The suffixed possessum noun is optionally followed by a more specific alienable noun as in, ana-u, fulu 'my food, taro'".
The category of directly possessed nouns includes body parts and names, as well as direct objects such as “familiar places, and indispensable objects.” Possessor suffixes are also applied to kin terms, for instance, mother ʔama, father ʔina, and child ʔupu. As mentioned above, genitalia fall into the category of the general indirect possessum noun ape, contrary to other body parts, which are treated as directly possessed. This may be due to a desire to maintain modesty, allowing the speaker to refer to genitalia without explicitly referring to the particular body part.
The following table outlines the possession suffixes which can be utilised in Wuvulu:
Possessor personSuffix
First-u
Second-mu
Third-na

See the examples below for a demonstration of the usage of the bound suffixes to indicate direct and indirect possession. The first two examples are for direct possession, for first- and second-person respectively. The third example is for indirect possession, for third-person.
The example of hara, "name" is given – a directly possessed noun utilising the first-person suffix:
For second person affixation, another example is provided, using the directly possessed noun bigia, ‘work’:
In the following example, we see the third-person possessor suffix applied to the possessum noun for edible things.

Juxtaposed noun-phrases

Possession can be indicated by the juxtaposition of noun-phrases. This method can be used to indicate possession by multiple possessors, as well as a single possessor. The condition that indirectly possessed nouns are represented by a possessum noun also holds for this method of indicating possession, and in such cases, "the classifier precedes the possessor noun phrase as in hape lagua 'possession of theirs'", demonstrated in example below. Example also demonstrates the application of this method for multiple possessors :
The method can also be applied for both direct and indirect possession. The possessed noun phrase precedes the possessor noun phrase, and multiple layers of possession can be embedded into one phrase. An example of this layering of possession in English is an expression such as “the house of the son of the doctor”. An example from Wuvulu of layered possession is given below :

Vocabulary

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 Within the Wuvulu language, the vowel "a" dominates as most common, having a one-third frequency in the language.
Wuvulu has two numerical systems, one for animate objects and one for inanimate objects. Both numerical systems are a senary, or base 6 numerical systems, where the numbers following six are multipliers of six. For example, the word for 2 inanimate objects is "ruapalo", whereas the number for two animate objects is "elarui".
There are several basic words that is stable and do not change hugely which include the words for blood, stone and the sun.
NumberWuvulu Number
1ai/e
2rua,roa
3olu
4fa
5aipani
6oluroa
7olorompalo/oloromea
8fainaroa
9faimapalo/faimea
10efua

Each number less than or equivalent to four is representative of the Proto-Oceanic language. Any number following four demonstrative of a multiplicative construct, similarly found in the Marshall Islands. 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.
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".
Wuvulu family names can either be based on the patriarch's name, or it can be based on clan names. Some family names are named after locations due to settlers associating location with clan names.