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South Vanuatu languages
Subgroup of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The nine South Vanuatu languages form a family of the Southern Oceanic languages,[1] spoken in Tafea Province (Tanna, Aneityum, Futuna, Erromango, and Aniwa) of Vanuatu.
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Languages
- Erromango family
- Southern: Sie, Sorung†
- Northern: Ifo (Utaha)†, Ura
(See Erromanga language#Linguistic situation for a description)
- Tanna family
- Southern: Kwamera (South Tanna), Southwest Tanna
- Northern: Lenakel (West Tanna), Whitesands (Weasisi, East Tanna), North Tanna
- Aneityum
- Aneityum (Anejom̃)
François (2015)
François (2015:18–21) lists the following names and locations for the 9 South Vanuatu languages.
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Proto-South Vanuatu
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Proto-South Vanuatu was reconstructed by John Lynch in 2001.
The language, compared to Proto-Oceanic, went through a series of vowel reductions, leading to the creation of a new vowel written as *ə, such as in *na-waiR "fresh water" resulting in Proto-South Vanuatu *nə-wai of the same meaning.
However, it also preserves some, but not all final consonants. For example, *tanum "to plant, bury" is reflected in Proto-South Vanuatu as *(a)-tenum "to bury", but *taŋis "to cry" is instead reflected as *(a)-taŋi.
Vowels
The vowels of Proto-South Vanuatu, according to Lynch, are:
Consonants
The consonants of Proto-South Vanuatu, according to Lynch, are:
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References
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