Tolomako (also called Bigbay) is a language of 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, ...

subgroup of Austronesian languages. It is spoken on Santo island 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 ...

Characteristics

It distinguishes four numbers for its personal pronouns: singular, dual, trial, plural. Its verbs have no tense or aspect marking, but two moods,

realis A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...

and

irrealis In linguistics, irrealis moods (abbreviated ) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods. Every ...

. Substantives and numerals also have the same two moods. E.g. Tolomako proper is characterized by having dentals where the mother language had labials before front vowels. It shares this feature with Sakao, but not with its dialect Tsureviu, which is otherwise very close. Thus: When labials do occur preceding front vowels they seem to be reflexes of older labiovelars: Compare with Fijian ŋata "snake" (spelt gata). It is possible that Tolomako is a very simplified daughter-language or pidgin of the neighboring language Sakao. However, Tolomako is more likely a sister language of Sakao, not a pidgin. It cannot be phonologically derived from Sakao, whereas Sakao can be from Tolomako to some extent. Comparing Tolomako with its close dialect of Tsureviu allows researchers to reconstruct an earlier state, from which most of Sakao can be regularly derived. This earlier state is very close to what can be reconstructed of Proto-Vanuatu. Thus Tolomako is a very

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

language, whereas Sakao has undergone drastic innovations in its phonology and grammar, both in the direction of increased complexity.

Phonology

Tolomako has a simple syllable structure, maximally consonant-vowel-vowel: V, CV, VV, CVV. However, in older materials, it permitted closed syllables, such as ''kanam'' "you (exclusive)" versus ''kanamu''.

Deixis

There are three degrees of

deixis In linguistics, deixis (, ) is the use of general words and phrases to refer to a specific time, place, or person in context, e.g., the words ''tomorrow'', ''there'', and ''they''. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their de ...

, here/this, there/that, yonder/yon.

Nouns

Tolomako has inalienably possessed nouns, which are regularly derived:

Syntax

Tolomako

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

is isolating. It has a single

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

, ''ne,'' for all relationships of space and time; below it is used to distinguish the

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ai ...

of a verb from the instrument used.

Literature

Tolomako was unwritten until the arrival of missionaries from the New Hebrides Mission. James Sandilands translated Matthew, Jonah and Malachi from the Bible into Tolomako and these were published as "Na taveti tahonae hi Iesu Kristo, Matiu moulia..." by the

British and Foreign Bible Society The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world. The Soc ...

in 1904. A missionary with the New Hebrides Mission, Charles E. Yates translated the book of Acts into Tolomaku and this was published by the Melbourne Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1906. Charles E. Yates then worked on the Gospel of John, the Letter to the Philippians and the 1st and 2nd Letters to Timothy. With the help of fifteen of his teaching staff they translated "Na Taveti Tahonai hi Jon na Varisula" and 750 copies were published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1909.

References

External links

A 1992 mailing list message from Jacques Guy, describing some of his fieldwork on the language
citing Tolomako as a counterexample to the thesis that all languages are equally complex {{Austronesian languages Espiritu Santo languages Languages of Vanuatu Definitely endangered languages