Sikaiana is a

Polynesian language The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...

, spoken by about 730 people on

Sikaiana Sikaiana (formerly called the Stewart Islands) is a small atoll NE of Malaita in Solomon Islands in the south Pacific Ocean. It is almost in length and its lagoon, known as Te Moana, is totally enclosed by the coral reef. Its total land s ...

in the Solomon Islands.

Introduction

History

According to legend, the island was founded by Tui Atafu, who killed off all the indigenous people and proclaimed himself chief. Some say that Tui Atafu was from an island called

Atafu Atafu, formerly known as the Duke of York Group, is a group of 52 coral islets within Tokelau in the south Pacific Ocean, north of Samoa. With a land area of , it is the smallest of the three islands that constitute Tokelau. It is an atoll and su ...

in the Tokelau islands, while others speculate he came from Tonga. But later, Sikaiana was invaded by Tongans, leaving many people who lived on Sikaiana dead. In the late 1920s ritual houses were burned and missionaries from the Melanesian Mission came to Sikaiana and completely converted almost everyone on the island to Christianity. They burnt down the ritual houses because they believed that people would still have faith in other religions if it were still there. The people were eager to learn to read and write since it offered educational and employment opportunities off the island, which helped contribute to the success of the missionaries (Donner, 2012).

Population

The Sikaiana language is a Polynesian outlier language spoken on Sikaiana in the Central Solomons, about ninety miles east of the Malaita Island in Polynesia. There are about 730 speakers of this language left in the world, a very low number for any language.

Classification

Sikaiana is an Austronesian language in the Ellicean family. Its sister languages include

Kapingamarangi Kapingamarangi is an atoll and a municipality in the state of Pohnpei of the Federated States of Micronesia. It is by far the most southerly atoll or island of the country and of the Caroline Islands, south of the next southerly atoll, Nukuoro, ...

, Nukumanu,

Nukuoro Nukuoro is an atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia. It is a municipality of the state of Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia. It is the secondmost southern atoll of the country, after Kapingamarangi. They both are Polynesian outliers ...

, Nukuria, Ontong Java, Takuu, and Tuvaluan.

Sounds

Consonants

Sikaiana uses nine different consonants which are reflexes of the Proto-Polynesian language. The consonants include /p/, /t/, /k/, /f~h/, /v/, /s/, /m/, /n/, and /l/. In most situations, and are in free variation, but in many words, only can be used (Donner 2012). There is also a length distinction for consonants. This sometimes occurs as a result of a non-pronunciation of a vowel. For example, ''hahai'' changes to ''hhai'' because the first /a/ is simply omitted. Double consonants can also be used as a form of reduplication, showing agreement in verbs with plural subjects, or to mark repeated actions (Donner 2012).

Vowels

There are five vowel phonemes in Sikaiana which include /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/. The phonemes /u/ and /i/ are realized as the glides and respectively, usually when preceding /a/. Like the consonants, the vowel phonemes are all reflexes from the Proto-Polynesian language. Vowel length is distinctive in Sikaiana. For example, the word for ‘shell tool’ is ''aha'', while the word for ‘cyclone’ is ''ahaa''. Such a slight difference in the pronunciation can make a big difference in the meaning of the word, although some native speakers who were born after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

don't know what the original forms of the words are (Donner 1996).

Grammar

Basic word order

The basic constituent order for Sikaiana is subject verb object. Although the order may vary, this pattern is always used for short, simple statements. Object subject verb and object verb subject are not used in any oceanic language, which means that it will not be used in Sikaiana (Lichtenberk, 2012). In the Sikaiana grammar system, sentences that start with a noun usually do not lead with a preposition, but for noun phrases that follow a verb phrase, it may or may not lead with a preposition (Donner, 2012). As for nouns and noun phrases, there must always be a preceding article except if it is a noun of place, names, or free pronouns. The articles that usually precede a noun is either ''te'' or ''n'' The use of these articles makes nouns easily distinguishable from other parts of speech (Donner, 2012).

Morphology

Sikaiana uses extensive

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

to transform words to better express more complex sentences. Like many other Polynesian languages, Sikaiana has two types of nominal possession markers. There is an alienable marker which is ''a'', and an inalienable marker, ''o''. Pronominal possessive markers differ slightly. The alienable marker for a pronoun is ''ana'' and the inalienable possession marker is ''ona''. Pronouns in Sikaiana include singular, first person inclusive, first person exclusive, second person, and third person. In order to nominalize verbs in Sikaiana, the suffix ''ana'' is added to a verb to nominalize it. There are also length distinction morphemes used. For example, ''taku'' means ‘my’, and ''takuu'' means ‘axe’.

Vocabulary

Sikaiana is very similar to the Proto-Polynesian language, so many words that are present in Polynesian languages are also in the Sikaiana language. For example, ''hale'' in Sikaiana means house, and the same word is also house in Hawaiian.

Endangerment

Vitality

The people of Sikaiana speak the Sikaiana language or Central Solomon Pidgin English. After WWII, many people from Sikaiana migrated to Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands in search of jobs and education (Donner, 2002). This means that there was a decrease in the use of the language, since Sikaiana was not the language mainly used in that area. A decrease in the advantages of using the Sikaiana language increases the endangerment of it.

Materials

Although there is a decrease in the number of speakers of the Sikaiana language, there is a dictionary which was put together by

Arthur Capell Arthur Capell (28 March 1902 – 10 August 1986) was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages. Early life Capell was born in Newtown, New South Wales ...

in 1935 which covers vocabulary, grammar, typology, and brief history of the Sikaiana language. It may be possible for someone to learn how to speak Sikaiana if they read and studied the whole dictionary. Some other sources are by William Donner, who visited Sikaiana in the 1970s and 1980s, and wrote many things regarding history, language change, culture, and emigration of the Sikaiana people. Most of Donner's work was published in the Journal Pacific Studies.

References

External links

Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Sikaiana
1932 Anglican liturgical document in Sikaiana.

A Liturgy for Melanesia in the Language of Sikaiana (1984), digitized by Richard Mammana
A Sikaiana dictionary
that also includes grammar of the Sikaiana language (2012) * Paradisec has two collections of Arthur Cappell's materials
AC1AC2
that include Sikaiana language materials. {{Austronesian languages Ellicean languages Polynesian languages Endangered Austronesian languages