Bilua (also known as Mbilua or Vella Lavella) is the most populous
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...
spoken in the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its ca ...
.
It is a
Central Solomon language spoken by about 9,000 people on the island of
Vella Lavella
Vella Lavella is an island in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. It lies to the west of New Georgia, but is considered one of the New Georgia Group. To its west are the Treasury Islands.
Environment
The island of Vella Lavella i ...
. It is one of the four non-
Austronesian languages spoken in the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its ca ...
.
Classification
"Bilua is sometimes grouped with the other Central Solomons languages and beyond (Wurm 1975b) but closer inspection shows that a genealogical relation is not demonstrable (Dunn and Terrill 2012, Terrill 2011)" (Hammarström, forthcoming).
Phonology
The consonant and vowels sounds of Bilua.
Consonants
The voiced stops and affricate sounds /b d ɡ dʒ/ can occur as prenasalized allophones, when occurring intervocalically
��b ⁿd ᵑɡ ⁿdʒ Other consonant allophones include
tʃfor /β dʒ/.
Vowels
Four vowel sounds /i u e o/ have allophones but only in diphthongs as
� ɛ ɔ ʊ
Verb construction
Sample Verbs
Noun classification
Bilua has a masculine-feminine
gender system with no neuter nouns. Truly males are always male and truly female are always female.
Numerals
References
Further reading
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External links
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Paradisec
The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel- ...
open access collection o
recordings of Bilua.Bilua words 1 - 209, two textsbr /
Word Listbr /
Texts 1 - 11br /
Texts 12 - 20br /
Texts 21 - 27br /
Texts 28 - 39br /
Texts 40 - 49br /
Texts 50 - 62br /
Texts 64 - 66br /
Texts 67 - 68br /
Texts 69 - 72br /
ConversationThe Endangered Language ProjectBilua Grammar
{{Authority control
Languages of the Solomon Islands
Central Solomon languages