Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota island, 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 incl ...

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 language (named after the island) is one of the most conservative Torres–Banks languages, and the only one to keep its inherited five-vowel system intact while also preserving most final vowels.

History

During the period 1840-1940, Mota was used as a missionary '' lingua franca'' throughout areas of

Oceania Oceania (, , ) is a region, geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of ...

included in the Melanesian Mission, an Anglican missionary agency. Mota was used on

Norfolk Island Norfolk Island (, ; Norfuk: ''Norf'k Ailen'') is an external territory of Australia located in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and New Caledonia, directly east of Australia's Evans Head and about from Lord Howe Island. Together w ...

, in religious education; on other islands with different

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

languages, it served as the language of liturgical prayers, hymns, and some other religious purposes. Elizabeth Fairburn Colenso translated religious material into the language.

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 t ...

compiled the first dictionary of Mota (1896), and worked with George Sarawia and others to produce a large number of early publications in this language.

Phonology

Phoneme inventory

Mota phonemically contrasts 14 consonants and 5 vowels, /i e a o u/. François (2021). These 19 phonemes form the smallest phonemic inventory among the Torres-Banks languages.

Phonotactics

Proto-Torres–Banks, the ancestor of all Torres–Banks languages including Mota, is reconstructed as a language with

open 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 " ...

s of type , and no closed syllable . That phonotactic profile has been preserved in many words of modern Mota (e.g. ''salagoro'' “secret enclosure for initiation rituals”, ''ran̄oran̄o'' “''

Acalypha hispida ''Acalypha hispida'', the chenille plant, is a flowering shrub which belongs to the family Euphorbiaceae, the subfamily Acalyphinae, and the genus ''Acalypha''. ''Acalypha'' is the fourth largest genus of the family Euphorbiaceae, and contains m ...

''”), unlike surrounding languages which massively created closed syllables. That said, modern Mota also reflects the regular loss of unstressed high vowels *i and *u ‒ a process already incipient in the earliest attestations of the language (circa 1860) and completed in modern Mota. As a result, many modern Mota words now feature final consonants and/or

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education f ...

s: e.g. ''pal'' (< ''palu'') "to steal"; ''snaga'' (< ''sinaga'') "vegetable food"; ''ptepte'' (< ''putepute'') "to sit".

Literature

The New Testament was translated by Robert Henry Codrington, John Palmer, John Coleridge Patteson and L. Pritt all of the Melanesian Mission. The Bible was published in 1912 and then revised in 1928. The New Testament (O Vatavata we Garaqa) was further revised by W.G. Ivens of the Anglican Melanesian Mission and published in 1931 by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS). The Anglican Prayer Book was produced in Mota in 1947.

Notes

References

* * * *

External links

Portions of the Book of Common Prayer
in Mota
Texts in Mota
from

Project Canterbury Project Canterbury (sometimes abbreviated as PC) is an online archive of material related to the history of Anglicanism. It was founded by Richard Mammana, Jr. in 1999 with a grant from Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold Frank T ...

Audio recordings in the Mota language
in open access, by A. François (source: '' Pangloss Collection'' of

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 31,63 ...

). * Materials on Mota are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections
AC1
an
AC2
held by Paradisec.

Mota New Testament is on YouVersion. Languages of Vanuatu Banks–Torres languages Torba Province {{SOceanic-lang-stub