Maskelynes (), or Kuliviu (Uliveo), 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 ...

spoken on the Maskelyne Islands off south

Malekula Malakula, also spelled Malekula, is the second-largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, in Melanesia, a region of the Pacific Ocean. Location Malakula is separated from the islands of Espiritu Santo and Malo by the B ...

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...

Phonology

Consonants

* are in

free variation In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers. Sociolinguists argue that describing such ...

as unreleased or unvoiced word-finally or before a consonant ** is also in free variation as

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

word-finally, especially among young speakers * is realized as a voiceless among some speakers, especially young * are unreleased word-finally or before a consonant (though has never been recorded before a consonant) * lose their labialization word-finally when not followed by a vowel and before ** is in free variation as trilled (tapped in Peskarus) before and sometimes before * is before voiced consonants * are [] before voiceless consonants and word-finally * is in free variation with for some speakers * are vocalic when in Syllable nucleus, nucleus following

Vowels

* is near-close between front consonants * is Close-mid vowel, close-mid word-finally * is after labiovelarized consonants or before * are realised as single morphemes, * is realised as front between front consonants, and near-close when proceeded or preceded by back consonants * is front between front consonants

Voiceless vowel

A voiceless occurs at the ends of words. It is uncertain if it is an

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

of or a separate phoneme

Phonotactics

Possible syllable structures in Maskelynes: (C/S)V(S)(C)

Orthography

Grammar

Verbs

The verbs of Maskelynes are

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

, mostly being modified by

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

es, though the stem of a verb can stand on its own. These prefixes encode for, in order of appearance in verb: 1. tense-aspect-modes; 2. subject, person and number; 3. various

modes Mode ( meaning "manner, tune, measure, due measure, rhythm, melody") may refer to: Arts and entertainment * MO''D''E (magazine), a defunct U.S. women's fashion magazine * ''Mode'' magazine, a fictional fashion magazine which is the setting fo ...

, including

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. Most ...

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. They ar ...

; 4. two tense-modes; 5. reduplication. The object of a sentence is encoded by a suffix. Examples of verbal agglutination:

Reduplication

Reduplication in Maskelynes has various usages, and can encode for e.g.

plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

ity, habituality,

iterative aspect In linguistics, the iterative aspect ( abbreviated ), also called " semelfactive", "event-internal pluractionality", or "multiplicative", is a grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal a ...

, etc.

References

External links

Resources in and about the Maskelynes language
at

OLAC OLAC, the Open Language Archives Community, is an initiative to create a unified means of searching online databases of language resources for linguistic research. The information about resources is stored in XML format for easy searching. OLAC wa ...

* Paradisec ha
a number of collections that include Maskelynes language materials

at

Omniglot Omniglot () is an online encyclopedia focused on languages and writing systems. Etymology The name "Omniglot" comes from the Latin prefix (meaning "all") and the Greek root (, meaning "tongue"). History The website was launched by British ...

Bibliography

* {{Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages Malekula languages Languages of Vanuatu