Loniu is an
Austronesian language spoken along the southern coast of
Los Negros Island
Los Negros Island is the third largest of the Admiralty Islands. It is significant because it contains the main airport of Manus Province on its eastern coastline, at Momote. It is connected to Lorengau, the capital of the province, on Manus Is ...
in the
Manus Province, immediately east of
Manus Island in
Manus Province,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. Loniu is spoken in the villages of
Loniu and Lolak, and there are estimated to be 450–500 native speakers, although some live in other Manus villages or on the mainland of PNG.
Loniu generally fits with most of the observations made about Oceanic languages, specifically the
Admiralty Islands languages.
The six morphosyntactic features of 'Type B' Oceanic Languages (which include the Admiralties languages) as noted by Ross are found in Loniu. The language is essentially SVO and contains prepositions.
Phonology
Consonant Phonemes
Vowel Phonemes
References
Notes
Sources
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External links
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Kaipuleohone Kaipuleohone is a digital ethnographic archive that houses audio and visual files, photographs, as well as hundreds of textual material such as notes, dictionaries, and transcriptions relating to small and endangered languages. The archive is stored ...
's
Robert Blust
Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Bl ...
collection includes
written and
recorded materials from Loniu
Manus languages
Languages of Manus Province
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