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Mwotlap (pronounced ; formerly known as ''Motlav'') is an
Oceanic Oceanic may refer to: *Of or relating to the ocean *Of or relating to Oceania **Oceanic climate **Oceanic languages **Oceanic person or people, also called "Pacific Islander(s)" Places * Oceanic, British Columbia, a settlement on Smith Island, ...
language spoken by about 2,100 people in
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 no ...
. The majority of speakers are found on the island of
Motalava Mota Lava or Motalava is an island of the Banks group, in the north of Vanuatu. It forms a single coral system with the small island of Ra. The 2009 census figures give a population of 1640 inhabitants (Mota Lava + Ra), which amounts to a popu ...
in the
Banks Islands The Banks Islands (in Bislama ''Bankis'') are a group of islands in northern Vanuatu. Together with the Torres Islands to their northwest, they make up the northernmost province of Torba. The island group lies about north of Maewo, and include ...
, with smaller communities in the islands of Ra (or ''Aya'') and
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 ...
, as well as migrant groups in the two main cities of the country, Santo and
Port Vila Port Vila (french: Port-Vila), or simply Vila (; french: Vila; bi, Vila ), is the capital and largest city of Vanuatu. It is located on the island of Efate. Its population in the last census (2009) was 44,040, an increase of 35% on the pr ...
. Mwotlap was first described in any detail in 2001, by the linguist
Alexandre François Alexandre François is a French linguist specialising in the description and study of the indigenous languages of Melanesia. He belongs t''Lattice'' a research centre of the CNRS and École Normale Supérieure dedicated to linguistics. Research ...
.
Volow Volow (formerly known as ''Valuwa'' or ''Valuga'') is an Oceanic language variety which used to be spoken in the area of Aplow, in the eastern part of the island of Motalava, in Vanuatu. Name The name ''Volow'' is originally a placename: it c ...
, which used to be spoken on the same island, may be considered a dialect or a separate language.


The language


Name

The language is named after the
island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...
.


Geographic distribution

Mwotlap is spoken by about 2,100 people in the
Banks Islands The Banks Islands (in Bislama ''Bankis'') are a group of islands in northern Vanuatu. Together with the Torres Islands to their northwest, they make up the northernmost province of Torba. The island group lies about north of Maewo, and include ...
, in the North of
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 no ...
. Among them, 1,640 live on the island of
Mota Lava Mota Lava or Motalava is an island of the Banks Islands, Banks group, in the north of Vanuatu. It forms a single coral system with the Ra Island, small island of Ra. The 2009 Vanuatu Census, 2009 census figures give a population of 1640 inhabitan ...
and its neighbor island, Ra. It is also spoken by a few hundred people living elsewhere in Vanuatu: *
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 ...
, particularly in the northeast * Several other northern Vanuatu islands including
Ureparapara Ureparapara (also known as ''Parapara'' for short; once known as ''Bligh Island'') is the third largest island in the Banks group of northern Vanuatu, after Gaua and Vanua Lava. The climate on the island is humid tropical. The average annual r ...
,
Gaua Gaua (formerly known as ''Santa Maria Island'') is the largest and second most populous of the Banks Islands in Torba Province in northern Vanuatu. It covers 342 km². History Gaua was first sighted by Europeans during the Spanish expeditio ...
, and
Ambae Ambae Island, also known as Aoba, Omba, Oba, or Opa and formerly Lepers’ Island, is an island in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, located near , approximately north-northwest of Vanuatu's capital city, Port Vila. History First ...
*
Port-Vila Port Vila (french: Port-Vila), or simply Vila (; french: Vila; bi, Vila ), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Vanuatu. It is located on the Efate, island of Efate. Its population in the last census (2009) was 44,040, an incre ...
, the capital of Vanuatu *
Luganville Luganville is the second largest city in Vanuatu after the capital Port Vila; it is located on the island of Espiritu Santo and has a population of 18,062 as of the 2020 census. Those on Vanuatu's northern islands who regard Luganville as their bi ...
, the country's second largest city, located on the island of
Espiritu Santo Espiritu Santo (, ; ) is the largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, with an area of and a population of around 40,000 according to the 2009 census. Geography The island belongs to the archipelago of the New Hebrides in the Pacific region o ...


Classification

Mwotlap belongs to the Austronesian language family, which includes more than 1,200 languages. Inside its family, Mwotlap is an
Oceanic language The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...
, descending from the hypothetical common ancestor of all Oceanic languages,
Proto-Oceanic Proto-Oceanic (abbr. ''POc'') is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant ...
. More specifically, it is a Southern Oceanic language.


History

Robert Henry Codrington Robert Henry Codrington (15 September 1830, Wroughton, Wiltshire – 11 September 1922)Davidson, Allan K. "The Legacy of Robert Henry Codrington." ''International Bulletin of Missionary Research.'' Oct 2003, Vol. 27 Issue 4, p. 171-176full tex ...
, an
Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
priest who studied
Melanesian Melanesian is the adjectival form of Melanesia. It may refer to: * Melanesians * Melanesian mythology * Melanesian languages In linguistics, Melanesian is an obsolete term referring to the Austronesian languages of Melanesia: that is, the Oceani ...
societies, first described Mwotlap in
1885 Events January–March * January 3– 4 – Sino-French War – Battle of Núi Bop: French troops under General Oscar de Négrier defeat a numerically superior Qing Chinese force, in northern Vietnam. * January 4 – ...
. While focusing mainly on
Mota Mota, MOTA or variations thereof may refer to: Geography * Mota (island), Vanuatu * Mota, Ethiopia, a town * Mota, Gujarat, India, a town * Mota, Ljutomer, Slovenia, a village Music * ''M.O.T.A.'' (album), a 2005 album by Cultura Profética * "M ...
, Codrington dedicated twelve pages of his work ''The Melanesian Languages'' to 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''. Furthermore, Codrington described
Volow Volow (formerly known as ''Valuwa'' or ''Valuga'') is an Oceanic language variety which used to be spoken in the area of Aplow, in the eastern part of the island of Motalava, in Vanuatu. Name The name ''Volow'' is originally a placename: it c ...
, a language closely related to Mwotlap (sometimes even considered a dialect of Mwotlap). Volow, almost extinct today, was spoken in the east of Mota Lava, in the area of
Aplow Aplow, or ''Valuwa'', is a village located on the eastern part of Motalava island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu. Located close to it is the island's airport, ''Valua airport''. Aplow also designates the whole district around this village, corr ...
.


Phonology

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.pp. 77–78 Mwotlap contrasts 16 consonant phonemes. : Mwotlap has 7
phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
vowels, which are all short
monophthong A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
s, with no diphthongs being present in the language. :
Stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
always falls on the last syllable of a word.


Prosody

Mwotlap is not tonal. Stress falls on the last syllable of a word or syntagma.


Morphophonology


Syllables

Mwotlap's
syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
structure is (C)V(C). This means that no more than two consonants can follow each other within 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 In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek language, Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable (''prothesis (linguistics), prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syll ...
vowel (the same as the next vowel) is inserted between the two consonants. François (2000). For example, the root ''tron̄'' ("drunk") can form the following: * ''me-tron̄'' ɛt.rɔŋ(" egot drunk"): the consonants ''t'' and ''r'' belong to two different syllables; * ''toron̄'' ɔ.rɔŋ("
hey are Hey or Hey! may refer to: Music * Hey (band), a Polish rock band Albums * ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014 * ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980 * ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title ...
getting drunk"): the insertion of a vowel between ''t'' and ''r'' is necessary to prevent the syllable from starting with two consecutive consonants.


Vowel copying

Vowel copying 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 the stems and allow their vowel to be copied, while the stems and do not.


Syntax

Mwotlap is an SVO language: the word order of a sentence is fixed and is always subject-verb-complement-adverbial. The system of
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 dif ...
s contrasts
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 ...
, and distinguishes four
numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
(singular, dual,
trial In law, a trial is a coming together of Party (law), parties to a :wikt:dispute, dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence (law), evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to Adjudication, adjudicate claims or d ...
, 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 is based on a system of geocentric (
absolute Absolute may refer to: Companies * Absolute Entertainment, a video game publisher * Absolute Radio, (formerly Virgin Radio), independent national radio station in the UK * Absolute Software Corporation, specializes in security and data risk manage ...
) directionals, which is in part typical of
Oceanic languages The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...
, and in part innovative. François (2003), François (2015: 175-176).


References

*Pages from: François, Alexandre (2001)
Contraintes de structures et liberté dans l'organisation du discours. Une description du mwotlap, langue océanienne du Vanuatu
PhD dissertation, Université Paris-IV Sorbonne. 1078 pp.


Sources


Main references

* François, Alexandre (2001)

PhD dissertation, Université Paris-IV Sorbonne. 1078 pp. * * *.


Other references

* * * * * * * * . * * *.


External links

*

* ttps://pangloss.cnrs.fr/corpus/Mwotlap?lang=en&mode=pro&seeMore=true Presentation of the Mwotlap language, with links to audio recordings in open access by A. François (''
Pangloss Collection The Pangloss Collection is a digital library whose objective is to store and facilitate access to audio recordings in endangered languages of the world. Developed by the LACITO centre of CNRS in Paris, the collection provides free online access to ...
'',
CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...
)
.
Access to several stories in Mwotlap
(with English and French translations, by A. François).

A Liturgy for Melanesia in Mwotlap (1970) {{Austronesian languages Banks–Torres languages Languages of Vanuatu Torba Province