Olrat language

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Olrat
Native toVanuatu
RegionGaua
Native speakers
3 (2012)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3olr
Glottologolra1234
ELPOlrat
Not to be confused with OLRAT.

Olrat is a moribund Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.

The language

A. François with †Maten Womal, the last storyteller of Olrat (Gaua, Vanuatu, 2003)

The three remaining speakers of Olrat live on the middle-west coast of Gaua.[2] They merged into the larger village of Jōlap where Lakon is dominant, after they left their inland hamlet of Olrat in the first half of the 20th century.[1]

Alexandre François identifies Olrat as a distinct language from its immediate neighbor Lakon, on phonological,[3] grammatical,[4] and lexical[5] grounds.

Phonology

Olrat has 14 phonemic vowels. These include 7 short /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and 7 long vowels /iː ɪː ɛː aː ɔː ʊː uː/.[6]

Olrat vowels
  Front Back
Near-close i ∙ iː u ∙ uː
Close-mid ɪ ∙ ɪː ʊ ∙ ʊː
Open-mid ɛ ∙ ɛː ɔ ∙ ɔː
Open a ∙ aː

Historically, the phonologization of vowel length originates in the compensatory lengthening of short vowels when the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ was lost syllable-finally.[7]

Grammar

The system of personal pronouns in Olrat contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural).[8]

Spatial reference in Olrat is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b François (2012).
  2. ^ List of Banks islands languages.
  3. ^ François (2005)
  4. ^ François (2007)
  5. ^ François (2011)
  6. ^ François (2005:445), François (2011:194).
  7. ^ François (2005:461).
  8. ^ François (2016).
  9. ^ François (2015).

Bibliography

  • François, Alexandre (2007), "Noun articles in Torres and Banks languages: Conservation and innovation" (PDF), in Siegel, Jeff; Lynch, John; Eades, Diana (eds.), Language Description, History and Development: Linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley, Creole Language Library 30, Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 313–326
  • François, Alexandre (2011), "Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence" (PDF), Journal of Historical Linguistics, 1 (2): 175–246, doi:10.1075/jhl.1.2.03fra.
  • François, Alexandre (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages" (PDF), International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 214 (214): 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022
  • François, Alexandre (2015). "The ins and outs of up and down: Disentangling the nine geocentric space systems of Torres and Banks languages" (PDF). In Alexandre François; Sébastien Lacrampe; Michael Franjieh; Stefan Schnell (eds.). The languages of Vanuatu: Unity and diversity. Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics. pp. 137–195. ISBN 978-1-922185-23-5.
  • François, Alexandre (2016), "The historical morphology of personal pronouns in northern Vanuatu" (PDF), in Pozdniakov, Konstantin (ed.), Comparatisme et reconstruction : tendances actuelles, Faits de Langues, vol. 47, Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 25–60

External links

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