Proto-Torres-Banks (abbr. PTB) is the reconstructed ancestor of the seventeen languages of the

Torres Torres may refer to: People *Torres (surname), a Spanish and Portuguese surname *Torres (musician), singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott **Torres (album), ''Torres'' (album), 2013 self-titled album by Torres Places Americas *Torres, Colorado, an un ...

and

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 ...

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 ...

. Like all indigenous languages of Vanuatu, it belongs to the

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, ...

branch of the Austronesian languages.

Descendants

Proto-Torres-Banks is the shared ancestor of the following modern languages: Hiw,

Lo-Toga Lo-Toga is an Oceanic language spoken by about 580 people on the islands of Lo and Toga, in the Torres group of northern Vanuatu. The language has sometimes been called ''Loh'' (''sic'') or ''Toga'', after either of its two dialects. Name Th ...

, Lehali, Löyöp,

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 ...

Mwotlap Mwotlap (pronounced ; 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 ...

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' ...

, Vera'a, Vurës, Mwesen,

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 ...

, Nume, Dorig,

Koro Koro may refer to: Geography *Koro Island, a Fijian island * Koro Sea, in the Pacific Ocean * Koro, Ivory Coast *Koro, Mali * Koro, Wisconsin, United States, an unincorporated community Languages *Koro language (India), an endangered language spo ...

, Olrat, Lakon, and Mwerlap.

Reconstruction

Proto-Torres-Banks, as reconstructed with the

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...

from the attested

daughter language In historical linguistics, a daughter language, also known as descendant language, is a language descended from another language, its mother language, through a process of genetic descent. If more than one language has developed from the same pro ...

s, evidently represented an early,

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

chain of

dialects in the northern part of

, as evidenced by the pattern of loss and retention of the

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 ...

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–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 l ...

, but rather a part of the early North-Central Vanuatu linkage with some dialectal variation across different island groups, before they eventually disintegrated into mutually unintelligible languages. François (2011). Elements of the

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattest ...

have been proposed by linguist A. François: vowels and consonants, personal pronouns, space system, vocabulary. François (2005: 489-502; 2013).

Phonology

Phoneme inventory

Proto-Torres-Banks had 5

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, /i e a o u/, François (2005). and 16 consonants: : : Following the loss of final POc consonants, syllable structure in Proto-Torres-Banks was

open Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999 * ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001 * ''Open'' (YF ...

, i.e. (C)V with optional consonant: e.g. POc *matiruʀ "to sleep" > PTB ''*matiru''; POc *laŋit "sky" > PTB ''*laŋi'' "wind". No descendant language preserves this situation today, but it can still be found in other related languages such as

Gela Gela (Sicilian and ; grc, Γέλα) is a city and (municipality) in the Autonomous Region of Sicily, Italy; in terms of area and population, it is the largest municipality on the southern coast of Sicily. Gela is part of the Province of Cal ...

and Uneapa.

Evolution of vowels

In all of the descendant languages except for

, vowel hybridization occurred (a form of

metaphony In historical linguistics, metaphony is a class of sound change in which one vowel in a word is influenced by another in a process of assimilation. The sound change is normally "long-distance" in that the vowel triggering the change may be se ...

). Later, a process of

vowel deletion In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...

took place whereby every second vowel, being unstressed, was dropped. This resulted in an increase in the number of vowel phonemes – a process known as

transphonologization In historical linguistics, transphonologization (also known as rephonologization or cheshirization, see below) is a type of sound change whereby a phonemic contrast that used to involve a certain feature X evolves in such a way that the contrast ...

. Thus, words which initially had 4 syllables were reduced to 2 syllables (e.g. POc ''*RapiRapi'' "evening" > ''*raβiˈraβi'' > /rɛβrɛβ/ ); *CVCV disyllables were reduced to a single CVC syllable (e.g. POc ''*roŋoR'' "to hear" > ''*roŋo'' > /rɔŋ/); words with 3 syllables ended up with 2, including *CVCVV which became *CVCV (e.g. POc ''*panua'' "island, land" > ''*βanua'' > /βanʊ/). In

, only single high vowels were dropped: e.g. ''*tolu'' "three" > /tol/. In the 1880s, Codrington reported cases when Mota had preserved high vowels (e.g. /siwo/ "down"; /tolu/ "three"), which have since disappeared from today's Mota (e.g. /swo/; /tol/). In Hiw,

and Vera'a, the final vowel was retained as a schwa when it was originally lower than the one under stress: e.g. POc ''*ikan'' "fish" > ''*íɣa'' > /ɪɣə/, /iɣə/. In Vera'a, the schwa became an

echo vowel An echo vowel, also known as a synharmonic vowel, is a paragogic vowel that repeats the final vowel in a word in speech. For example, in Chumash, when a word ends with a glottal stop and comes at the end of an intonation unit, the final vowel is r ...

that is found phrase-finally, but disappears in phrase-medial position: e.g. POc ''*pulan'' "moon" > ''*βula'' > ''*βulə'' > /fulʊ/ (/ful/ in phrases).

Examples of reconstructions

Regular sound changes from Proto-Oceanic

The historical sound changes that took place from Proto-Oceanic (POc) to Proto-Torres-Banks (PTB) were intricate, yet largely regular. Some have been reconstructed explicitly, whether on vowels or on consonants; François (2016: 31). others are implicit in published lists of lexical reconstructions. Pervasive phonological sound changes include: * The loss of all final POc consonants, such as POc ''*manuk'' "bird" > ''*manu''. This sound change resulted in the language having only open syllables.Cases such as POc *saqat "bad" > /sæt/ can be explained by the addition of a paragogic vowel in ( François 2005: 479-480); thus POc ''*saqat'' "bad" > ''*saqat-i'' > ''*sati'' > /sæt/. * The

labialization Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...

of POc ''*p'', ''*ᵐb'' and ''*m'' before ''*o'' or ''*u'', resulting in ''*w'' (< ''*βʷ''), ''*ᵐbʷ'' and ''*mʷ'' (especially in Torres and northern Banks languages). Considering each POc proto-phoneme sequentially, the reflexes can be listed in the following table.

Grammar

Example sentence

A reconstructed sentence (from François 2009:191):

Notes

References

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Proto-Torres-Banks language Languages of Vanuatu Banks–Torres languages Torres-Banks Torba Province