Mwotlap (pronounced [ŋ͡mʷɔtˈlap] ; formerly known as Motlav ) is an Oceanic language spoken by about 2,100 people in Vanuatu . The majority of speakers are found on the island of Motalava in the Banks Islands , with smaller communities in the islands of Ra (or Aya ) and Vanua Lava , as well as migrant groups in the two main cities of the country, Santo and Port Vila .
21-521: Mwotlap was first described in any detail in 2001, by the linguist Alexandre François . Volow , which used to be spoken on the same island, may be considered a dialect or a separate language. The language is named after the island . Mwotlap is spoken by about 2,100 people in the Banks Islands , in the North of Vanuatu . Among them, 1,640 live on the island of Mota Lava and its neighbor island, Ra . It
42-655: A scientific expedition to Vanikoro ( Solomon Islands ), whose objective was to understand the wreckage of the French navigator La Pérouse in 1788. As a member of a multidisciplinary team, he recorded the oral tradition of the Melanesian and Polynesian populations of this island, concerning popular representations of this historical event. On that occasion, he also documented the three languages spoken on Vanikoro – Teanu , Lovono and Tanema – two of which are highly endangered . In 2015, he coauthored with Jean-Michel Charpentier
63-423: A word and that no word can start or finish with more than one consonant. Recent loanwords, like skul (from English ' school ' ), are exceptions to this structure. When a root beginning with two constants forms the beginning of a word, an epenthetic vowel (the same as the next vowel) is inserted between the two consonants. For example, the root tron̄ ' drunk ' can form the following: Vowel copying
84-710: Is also spoken by a few hundred people living elsewhere in Vanuatu: Mwotlap belongs to the Austronesian language family , which includes more than 1,200 languages. Inside its family, Mwotlap is an Oceanic language , descending from the hypothetical common ancestor of all Oceanic languages, Proto-Oceanic . More specifically, it is a Southern Oceanic language . Robert Henry Codrington , an Anglican priest who studied Melanesian societies, first described Mwotlap in 1885 . While focusing mainly on Mota , Codrington dedicated twelve pages of his work The Melanesian Languages to
105-577: Is based on a system of geocentric ( absolute ) directionals, which is in part typical of Oceanic languages , and in part innovative. Alexandre Fran%C3%A7ois Alexandre François is a French linguist specialising in the description and study of the indigenous languages of Melanesia . He belongs to Lattice , a research centre of the CNRS and École Normale Supérieure dedicated to linguistics. François has done linguistic fieldwork in Vanuatu and
126-472: Is extinct today, was spoken in the east of Mota Lava, in the area of Aplow . Because Mwotlap has been passed down by oral tradition, it has no official writing system. This article uses the orthography devised by linguist Alexandre François, based on the Latin alphabet. Mwotlap contrasts 16 consonant phonemes. Mwotlap has 7 phonemic vowels, which are all short monophthongs , with no diphthongs being present in
147-403: Is its front, the side of the house that faces the street and has an entrance and maybe a porch. Absolute frame of reference is also a binary system in which the location of an object is defined in relation to arbitrary fixed bearings, such as cardinal directions (North, South, East, West). For instance, “The cat is to the south of the house” has the location of the cat described independently of
168-526: Is no way to say "The cat is to the left of the house," and the only way to describe the location of the cat in relation to the house is "The cat is to the south of the house." Examples of languages that rely largely on intrinsic frame of reference are Mopan (another Mayan language) or Totonac (a language cluster of the Totonacan family ). The use of different frames of reference has a far-reaching effect on cognition. For instance, to be able to communicate in
189-499: Is the tendency of certain prefixes to copy the first vowel of the following word. Notable vowel copying prefixes include the article na- , the locative le- , and te- , a prefix used to form adjectives describing origin. These prefixes form nō-vōy ' volcano ' , ni-hiy ' bone ' , and to-M̄otlap ' from Mota Lava ' , but also na-pnō ' island ' and na-nye-k ' my blood ' . Words stems beginning with two consonants do not permit vowel copying. Thus
210-671: Is to the left of the house” refers to three points of reference: the cat, the house, and the perceiver himself. People can use multiple frames of reference in communication. For instance, in English, all three are available and used, but the use of absolute frame of reference is limited to topographic objects ("Finland is to the east of Sweden"). The preferred frame of reference is the relative one. Languages that rely largely on absolute frame of reference include many Australian aboriginal languages (e.g., Arrernte , Guugu Yimithirr ) and some Mayan languages (e.g., Tzeltal ). In Guugu Yimithirr, there
231-573: The Linguistic Atlas of French Polynesia , an atlas showcasing the internal linguistic diversity of French Polynesia . In 2020, he was elected a member of the Academia Europaea . François recorded texts from the oral literature – myths, legends, folktales – in various language communities of Vanuatu and the Solomons. He provided local communities with various books in their languages, in
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#1732870151014252-479: The Proto-Torres–Banks language , which was also reconstructed by him. After describing Mwotlap , the language with most speakers in that area, he has published articles comparing the languages of the area more generally – both from a synchronic and historical perspectives. He has described the sociolinguistic profile of this area as one of "egalitarian multilingualism ". In 2005, François took part in
273-651: The Solomon Islands . In 2002, he published a grammatical description of Araki , a language spoken by a handful of speakers on an islet south of Espiritu Santo (Vanuatu). Most of his research focuses on the northern islands of Vanuatu , known as the Torres and Banks Islands , an area where sixteen out of seventeen languages are still spoken: Hiw , Lo-Toga , Lehali , Löyöp , Mwotlap , Volow (extinct), Lemerig , Vera'a , Vurës , Mwesen , Mota , Nume , Dorig , Koro , Olrat , Lakon , Mwerlap - all descended from
294-464: The Wave model . Linguistic frame of reference#Absolute frame of reference Linguistic frame of reference is a frame of reference as it is expressed in a language. A frame of reference is a coordinate system used to identify the physical location of an object. In languages, different frames of reference can be used. They are: the relative frame of reference, the intrinsic frame of reference, and
315-407: The absolute frame of reference. Each frame of reference in a language can be associated with distinct linguistic expressions. Intrinsic frame of reference is a binary spatial relation in which the location of an object is defined in relation to a part of another object (its side, back, front, etc.). For instance, "The cat is in front of the house" means that the cat is at that part of the house that
336-462: The "Motlav" language. Despite being very short, this description can be used to show several changes that occurred in Mwotlap during the 20th century, such as the change of r to y (a process demonstrated already in the loanword Epyaem ' Abraham ' ). Furthermore, Codrington described Volow , a language closely related to Mwotlap (sometimes even considered a dialect of Mwotlap). Volow, which
357-466: The language. Mwotlap is not tonal . Stress always falls on the last syllable of a word. Historically, before syncope of unstressed vowels, it always fell on the penultimate syllable. When syncope took place, the stressed vowel became part of the last syllable. Mwotlap's syllable structure is (C)V(C), historically resulting from the syncope of unstressed vowels in pre-modern times. This means that no more than two consonants can follow each other within
378-464: The perspective of promoting the use of vernacular languages in writing. Together with ethnomusicologist Monika Stern and anthropologist Éric Wittersheim, he ran a multidisciplinary project on traditional music and poetry in Vanuatu. This led to the publication of Music of Vanuatu: Celebrations and Mysteries , a CD album of songs and dances recorded during social events in the field. François coined
399-407: The position of the speaker or of any part of the house (as in intrinsic frame of reference). Apart from cardinal directions, fixed bearings such as seacoast, upriver/downriver, and uphill/downhill/across are also used. Relative frame of reference is a ternary system. The location of an object is expressed in relation to both the viewpoint of the perceiver and position of another object. Thus, “The cat
420-501: The stems VŌY and HIY allow their vowel to be copied, while the stems VNŌ and DYE do not. Mwotlap is an SVO language: the word order of a sentence is fixed and is always subject-verb-complement-adverbial. The system of personal pronouns contrasts clusivity , and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual , trial , plural). Human nouns also have four numbers; as for non-human nouns, they do not inflect for number and are expressed as singulars. Spatial reference in Mwotlap
441-413: The term " colexification ". This term captures the fact that certain concepts, which some languages distinguish in their lexicons, are encoded in the same way ("colexified") in other languages. Colexification is increasingly used in research about lexical typology . Together with Siva Kalyan (ANU), he also developed Historical glottometry , a non-cladistic approach to language genealogy , inspired by
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