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Lemerig
Lemerig is an Oceanic language spoken on Vanua Lava, in Vanuatu. Lemerig is no longer actively spoken. The 2 remaining speakers live on the northern coast of the island. The language has receded in favour of its neighbours Mwotlap and Vera'a. Name The name ''Lemerig'' (spelled ''Lēmērig'' in the local orthography) refers to a now abandoned village in northern Vanua Lava. Its name in Mwotlap is ''Lemyig'' . It is likely the name contains a descendant of the Proto-Torres-Banks word ''*riɣi'' meaning "small". Dialects Lemerig has sometimes been referred to using the names of its local varieties: ''Päk''; ''Sasar''; ''Alo-Teqel''. Judging from wordlists published by missionary and linguist Robert Codrington,See Codrington 1885pp.39-52 sqq. these three varieties were very close to each other. The little differences there were went extinct during the 20th century. Phonology Lemerig has 11 phonemic vowels. These are all short monophthongs . Grammar The system of person ...
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Proto-Torres–Banks Language
Proto-Torres-Banks (abbr. PTB) is the reconstructed ancestor of the seventeen languages of the Torres and Banks Islands of Vanuatu. Like all indigenous languages of Vanuatu, it belongs to the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian languages. Descendants Proto-Torres-Banks is the shared ancestor of the following modern languages: Hiw, Lo-Toga, Lehali, Löyöp, Volow, Mwotlap, Lemerig, Vera'a, Vurës, Mwesen, Mota, Nume, Dorig, Koro, Olrat, Lakon, and Mwerlap. Reconstruction Proto-Torres-Banks, as reconstructed with the comparative method from the attested daughter languages, evidently represented an early, mutually intelligible chain of Oceanic dialects in the northern part of Vanuatu, as evidenced by the pattern of loss and retention of the Proto-Oceanic phoneme ''*R'', which merged with ''*r'' in the early history of the North-Central Vanuatu dialect chain. It therefore is not a "true" proto-language in the sense of an undifferentiated language ancestral to all Torres ...
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Vanua Lava
Vanua Lava is the second largest of the Banks Islands in Torba Province, Vanuatu, after slightly larger Gaua. It is located about 120 km north-northeast of Espiritu Santo and north of Gaua. Name The name ''Vanua Lava'' comes from the Mota language, which was used as the primary language of the Melanesian Mission. Locally, the island is called ''Vōnōlav'' / in Vurës language, Vurës and Mwesen language, Mwesen, ''Vunulava'' in Vera'a language, Vera'a, and ''Vunulāv'' in Lemerig language, Lemerig. In the immigrant language Mwotlap language, Mwotlap, it is referred to as ''Apnōlap'' (with the locative prefix ''a-''). All of these terms come from a Proto-Torres–Banks language, Proto-Torres-Banks form *''vanua, βanua laβa'' "Large Land". History Vanua Lava was first sighted by Europeans during the Spanish expedition of Pedro Fernández de Quirós from 25 to 29 April 1606. The island’s name was then charted as ''Portal de Belén'' (“Nativity scene” in Spanish l ...
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Vera'a Language
Vera'a , formerly known by its Mota name ''Vatrata'', is an Oceanic language spoken on the western coast of Vanua Lava Island, in the Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu. Vera'a was described in 2011 by linguist Stefan Schnell. Schnell (2011). Name The language ''Vera'a'' is named after the village where it is spoken. This village is known locally as ''Vera'a'' , even though foreigners often ''Vatrata'' after its name in Mota. These names ultimately reflect a protoform *''βaturata'' in Proto-Torres-Banks — literally "flat stone": *''βatu'' "stone" (<  *) + *''rata'' "flat" (<  *''rataR'' <
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Torres–Banks Languages
The Torres–Banks languages form a linkage of Southern Oceanic languages spoken in the Torres Islands and Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu. Languages François (2011) recognizes 17 languages spoken by 9,400 people in 50 villages, including 16 living (3 of which are moribund) and one extinct language. François (2011). The 17 languages, ranked from northwest to southeast, are: : Comparative studies A. François has published several studies comparing various features of the Torres–Banks languages: * François (2005): Inventories of vowel systems, and their historical development; * François (2007): Systems of noun articles, and their historical development; * François (2009): How several languages grammaticalized a set of light personal pronouns into markers for “aorist” aspect; * François (2011): How Torres–Banks languages tend to show structural isomorphism, yet lexical diversity; * François (2013): Etymological reconstruction of spiritual terms in Torres–B ...
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North Vanuatu Languages
The North Vanuatu languages form a Linkage (linguistics), linkage of Southern Oceanic languages spoken in northern Vanuatu. Languages Clark (2009) Clark (2009) provides the following classification of the North Vanuatu languages, divided into two main geographic areas (Torres–Banks–Maewo–Ambae–Pentecost and Espiritu Santo, Santo). Outlier (aberrant) languages identified by Clark (2009) are in ''italics''.The language names used by Clark have often been superseded by other names; in that case, the glottonym used by Clark is indicated in brackets. *North Vanuatu **Northern (Torres–Banks–Maewo–Ambae–Pentecost) ***Torres–Banks languages ****Torres Islands: Hiw language, Hiw, Lo-Toga language, Lo-Toga (“Loh”) ****Banks Islands: Lehali language, Lehali–Löyöp language, Löyöp (“Ureparapara”), Mwotlap language, Mwotlap–Volow language, Volow (“Mwotlav”), Lemerig language, Lemerig–Vera'a language, Vera’a (“Vera'a”), Vurës language, Vurës–Mwe ...
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Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of the Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji. Vanuatu was first inhabited by Melanesian people. The first Europeans to visit the islands were a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Fernandes de Queirós, who arrived on the largest island, Espíritu Santo, in 1606. Queirós claimed the archipelago for Spain, as part of the colonial Spanish East Indies, and named it . In the 1880s, France and the United Kingdom claimed parts of the archipelago, and in 1906, they agreed on a framework for jointly managing the archipelago as the New Hebrides through an Anglo-French condominium. An independence movement arose in the 1970s, and the Republic of Vanuatu was fou ...
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Open-mid Vowel
An open-mid vowel (also mid-open vowel, low-mid vowel, mid-low vowel or half-open vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned one third of the way from an open vowel to a close vowel. Partial list The open-mid vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * open-mid front unrounded vowel * open-mid front rounded vowel * open-mid central unrounded vowel (older publications may use ) * open-mid central rounded vowel (older publications may use ) * open-mid back unrounded vowel * open-mid back rounded vowel The open-mid back rounded vowel, or low-mid back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The IPA symbol is a turned letter ''c'' a ... Other open-mid vowels can be indicated with diacritics of relative articulati ...
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Near-open Vowel
A near-open vowel or a near-low vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-open vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to an open vowel, but slightly more constricted. Other names for a near-open vowel are lowered open-mid vowel and raised open vowel, though the former phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as low as open; likewise, the latter phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as high as open-mid. Partial list The near-open vowels with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * near-open front unrounded vowel * near-open central vowel without specified rounding (usually used for an unrounded vowel; the distinction can be made as (or ) vs ) Other near-open vowels can be indicated with diacritics of relative articulation In phonetics and phonology, relative articulation is description of the manner and place of articulation of a speech sound rel ...
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Open Vowel
An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels (in U.S. terminology ) in reference to the low position of the tongue. In the context of the phonology of any particular language, a ''low vowel'' can be any vowel that is more open than a mid vowel. That is, open-mid vowels, near-open vowels, and open vowels can all be considered low vowels. Partial list The open vowels with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * open front unrounded vowel * open front rounded vowel This vowel is not known to occur as a phoneme distinct from in any language. * open back unrounded vowel * open back rounded vowel There also are central vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA: * open central unrounded vowel or (commonly written as if it were front) * open central rounded vowel There is no unambiguous way of transcribing the open central ...
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Clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee (that is, one of the words for "we" means "you and I and possibly others"), while exclusive "we" specifically excludes the addressee (that is, another word for "we" means "he/she/they and I, but not you"), regardless of who else may be involved. While imagining that this sort of distinction could be made in other persons (particularly the second) is straightforward, in fact the existence of second-person clusivity (you vs. you and them) in natural languages is controversial and not well attested. While clusivity is not a feature of standard English language, it is found in many languages around the world. The first published description of the inclusive-exclusive distinction by a European linguist was in a description of languages of Peru ...
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Personal Pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender, case, and formality. The term "personal" is used here purely to signify the grammatical sense; personal pronouns are not limited to people and can also refer to animals and objects (as the English personal pronoun ''it'' usually does). The re-use in some languages of one personal pronoun to indicate a second personal pronoun with formality or social distance – commonly a second person plural to signify second person singular formal – is known as the T–V distinction, from the Latin pronouns and . Examples are the majestic plural in English and the use of in place of in French. For specific details of the personal pronouns used in the Eng ...
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Close Vowel
A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth as it can be without creating a constriction. A constriction would produce a sound that would be classified as a consonant. The term "close" is recommended by the International Phonetic Association. Close vowels are often referred to as "high" vowels, as in the Americanist phonetic tradition, because the tongue is positioned high in the mouth during articulation. In the context of the phonology of any particular language, a ''high vowel'' can be any vowel that is more close than a mid vowel. That is, close-mid vowels, near-close vowels, and close vowels can all be considered high vowels. Partial list The six close vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * close front unrounded vowel * c ...
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