Big Nambas ( native name ''V'ənen Taut'') is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by about people () in northwest Malekula,

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 ...

. Approximately nineteen villages in the Big Nambas region of the Malekula Interior use the language exclusively with no variation in dialect. It was studied in-depth over a period of about 10 years by missionary Dr. Greg. J. Fox, who published a grammar and dictionary in 1979. A Big Nambas translation of the Holy Bible has been completed recently by Andrew Fox.

Phonology

The

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s of Big Nambas are as shown in the following table: * are aspirated word finally. is not noted as behaving likewise. * are rounded before the front vowels * The voiced fricatives are devoiced word initially and finally. * is realized as word finally or when adjacent to , and as when adjacent to word medially. Big Nambas has a 5-

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

system with the following

s: Big Nambas has a complex syllable structure with a large amount of consonant clusters possible. Additionally, clusters of up to four vowels are permitted (eg. nauei "water"). Stress in Big Nambas is phonemic, but partly predictable. The consonants /t β r l n/ all exhibit phonemic

gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

when two identical ones occur between syllables. Linguolabial consonants are often marked with an apostrophe in the

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mo ...

to distinguish them from their bilabial counterparts.

Grammar

Big Nambas is a synthetic, head-marking language.

Nouns

Nouns in Big Nambas are capable of phrasal expansion. There are three

noun classes In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some a ...

in Big Nambas: # Obligatorily possessed nouns, most commonly constituent parts of any object (body parts, tree parts, ordinals,

possessive A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...

) # Optionally possessed nouns, with the subclasses: ## Nouns taking the third singular possessives ''nan'' or ''nen'' ## Nouns taking the prefix ''ar-'' "all" ## Title nouns (names and kinship terms) # Unpossessed nouns (personal and interrogative pronouns) Big Nambas features a system of complex nouns, formed by derivation. Derived nouns can be of one of five types: # Abstract nouns, formed by suffixing -ien to verb stems (eg. tkar "be pregnant" vs. tkar-ien "pregnancy") # Articled nouns, formed by prefixing na- or n- to a verb stem beginning with a vowel (i-u "it rains" vs. n-u "(the) rain") # Ordinal nouns, formed by prefixing the nominalizer ni- and suffixing the possessive -a (tl "three" vs. ni-tl-a "the third of") # Determinative nouns, formed by prefixing ter- to some adjective stems (p'arei "long" vs. ter-p'arei "the long one") # Reverential nouns, formed by suffixing -et to some nouns (nut "place" vs. nutet "a sacred place", cf. nap' "fire" vs. nep'et "sacred fire") Nouns in Big Nambas may be compounded by following them with a verb stem.

References

Bibliography

External links

V'enen Taut recordings

Video about the language
Malekula languages Languages of Vanuatu {{SOceanic-lang-stub