Vurës language

Vurës
Vureas
Pronunciation	[βyˈrœs]
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Vanua Lava
Native speakers	2,000 (2016)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic Vanuatu North Vanuatu Torres–Banks Vurës
Language codes
ISO 639-3	msn (shared with Mwesen)
Glottolog	vure1239
ELP	Vurës
Vurës is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

A Vurës speaker, recorded in Vanuatu.

Vurës (Vureas, Vures) is an Oceanic language spoken in the southern area of Vanua Lava Island, in the Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu, by about 2000 speakers.

Vurës was described by linguist Catriona Malau, in the form of a grammar and a dictionary.

Name

The name Vurës [βyˈrœs] is named after the bay located in southwestern Vanua Lava in the language itself. In Mota, the bay is referred to as Vureas [βureas]. Cognates in other Torres-Banks languages include Mwotlap Vuyes [βuˈjɛs]. These come from a reconstructed Proto-Torres–Banks form *βureas(i,u), with an unknown final high vowel.

Dialectology

Vurës shows enough similarities with the neighbouring language Mwesen that the two have sometimes been considered dialects of a single language, sometimes called Mosina (after the name of Mwesen village in the language Mota). And indeed, a 2018 glottometric study has calculated that Vurës and Mwesen share 85% of their historical innovations, revealing a long history of shared development between these two lects.

However, studies have shown that Mwesen and Vurës have various dissimilarities, e.g. in their vowel systems, in their noun articles, in their pronoun paradigms — enough to be considered clearly distinct.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial- velar	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	k͡pʷ ⟨q⟩		t̪ ⟨t⟩		k ⟨k⟩	(ʔ)
	prenasal		ᵐb ⟨b⟩	ⁿd̪ ⟨d⟩
Nasal		ŋ͡mʷ ⟨m̄⟩	m ⟨m⟩		n ⟨n⟩	ŋ ⟨n̄⟩
Fricative			β ⟨v⟩		s ⟨s⟩	ɣ ⟨g⟩
Liquid	rhotic				r ⟨r⟩
	lateral				l ⟨l⟩
Semivowel		w ⟨w⟩

• /r/ is also heard as a tap [ɾ] in free variation.
• A glottal stop /ʔ/ only rarely occurs in some words.
• /β/ is heard as [p̚] before a voiceless stop.
• /k͡pʷ/ is heard as [k͡p] when preceding another consonant.
• Stop sounds /t̪ k/ are aspirated [t̪ʰ kʰ] before vowels.

Vowels

Vurës has 9 phonemic vowels. These are all short monophthongs /i e ɛ a œ ø y ɔ o/:

Vurës vowels

	Front		Back
	plain	round
Close	i ⟨i⟩	y ⟨u⟩	(ʊ) ⟨u⟩
Close-mid	e ⟨ē⟩	ø ⟨ö⟩	o ⟨ō⟩
Open-mid	ɛ ⟨e⟩	œ ⟨ë⟩	ɔ ⟨o⟩
Open	a ⟨a⟩

• [ʊ] is only a marginal sound that occurs in a small amount of words, mostly borrowings.
• The vowel inventory also includes a diphthong [i​͡a] ⟨ia⟩.

References

Bibliography

• Malau, Catriona (2016). A Grammar of Vurës, Vanuatu. Pacific Linguistics, 651. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 978-1-5015-0364-1.
• Malau, Catriona (2021). A Dictionary of Vurës, Vanuatu. Asia-Pacific Linguistics (1st ed.). Canberra: ANU Press. ISBN 978-1-76046-460-8. Retrieved 2021-07-10.
• François, Alexandre (2005), "Unraveling the history of the vowels of seventeen northern Vanuatu languages", Oceanic Linguistics, 44 (2): 443–504, doi:10.1353/ol.2005.0034, S2CID 131668754
• François, Alexandre (2007), "Noun articles in Torres and Banks languages: Conservation and innovation", 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, doi:10.1075/cll.30.30fra
• François, Alexandre (2009), "Verbal aspect and personal pronouns: The history of aorist markers in north Vanuatu", in Pawley, Andrew; Adelaar, Alexander (eds.), Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history: A festschrift for Bob Blust, vol. 601, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 179–195
• François, Alexandre (2011), "Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence", Journal of Historical Linguistics, 1 (2): 175–246, doi:10.1075/jhl.1.2.03fra, hdl:1885/29283.
• François, Alexandre (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages", International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2012 (214): 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022, S2CID 145208588
• François, Alexandre (2016), "The historical morphology of personal pronouns in northern Vanuatu", in Pozdniakov, Konstantin (ed.), Comparatisme et reconstruction : tendances actuelles, Faits de Langues, vol. 47, Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 25–60
• Kalyan, Siva; François, Alexandre (2018), "Freeing the Comparative Method from the tree model: A framework for Historical Glottometry" (PDF), in Kikusawa, Ritsuko; Reid, Laurie (eds.), Let's talk about trees: Tackling Problems in Representing Phylogenic Relationships among Languages, Senri Ethnological Studies, 98, Ōsaka: National Museum of Ethnology, pp. 59–89.

External links

• Vurës—English dictionary, by Catriona Malau.
• Audio recordings in the Vurës language, in open access, by A. François (Pangloss Collection, CNRS).