Daakaka (also known as ''Dakaka'', ''South Ambrym'' and ''Baiap'') is a native language of

Ambrym Ambrym is a volcanic island in Malampa Province in the archipelago of Vanuatu. Volcanic activity on the island includes lava lakes in two craters near the summit. Etymology Ambrym (also known as ''Ambrin'', ''"ham rim"'' in the Ranon lang ...

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 ...

. It is spoken by about one thousand speakers in the south-western corner of the island.

Vitality

Most children in the region still acquire Daakaka as a first language, but it is under threat by significant socio-economic changes and the dominant use of Vanuatu's official languages,

Bislama Bislama (; ; also known by its earlier French name, ) is an English-based creole language and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" (citizens who live in Port Vila and Luganvil ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

and French, in education and in official contexts.Unless indicated otherwise, all information comes from von Prince (2012).

Phonology

Consonants

The system of consonantal phonemes is fairly typical for the region.

Voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...

stops Stop may refer to: Places *Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dr ...

are

prenasalized Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather ...

. The difference between bilabial consonants with and without a labio-velar release is relevant only before front vowels.

Vowels

There are seven phonemically distinct

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 ...

qualities, with one long and one short vowel

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 ...

for each variety, plus a marginally phonemic . The distinction between mid and open-mid vowels is only phonemic after alveolar consonants, as in ''tee'' "axe" vs. ''téé'' "see".

Word classes

The four major word classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Only nouns can stand in argument position, only verbs and some adjectives can be used as predicates without the copula ''i'', only adjectives can be used as attributes to nouns without further modification. The two biggest word classes by far are nouns and verbs.

Nouns

There are three subclasses of nouns. The biggest subclass consists of 'general nouns' such as ''em'' "house" or "volcano"; in contrast to the other two classes, these nouns do not need to specify a possessor, they cannot be inflected and they cannot be directly followed by another noun phrase. '

Inflected In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...

nouns' always indicate their possessor by a person-number ending: Transitive or relational nouns also obligatorily specify an inalienable possessor, but this possessor is given by a subsequent noun phrase, not by an inflectional ending. Known, definite, non-human possessors can also be indicated by the suffix ''-sye'' or its

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...

''-tye'':

Verbs

Among verbs, there are several subgroups which differ either in terms of transitivity or in terms of the number of their internal argument (the subject of an intransitive verb or the object of a transitive verb).

Transitivity

There are three degrees of transitivity: verbs can be either intransitive, semitransitive or transitive. Intransitive verbs such as ''oko'' "walk" never take an object noun phrase. Semitransitive verbs can optionally be followed by an object noun phrase with

indefinite Indefinite may refer to: * the opposite of definite in grammar ** indefinite article ** indefinite pronoun * Indefinite integral, another name for the antiderivative * Indefinite forms in algebra, see definite quadratic forms * an indefinite matr ...

reference; by contrast, transitive verbs are always interpreted to have a definite object.

Pluractionality

While most verbs are neutral with regard to the

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ...

of their arguments, some verbs can take only singular arguments and some (

pluractional In linguistics, pluractionality, or verbal number, if not used in its aspectual sense, is a grammatical aspect that indicates that the action or participants of a verb is/are plural. This differs from frequentative or iterative aspects in that ...

) verbs can only take non-singular arguments. For example, , and all mean "fall down", but only can have either a singular or a plural subject. By contrast, can only take a singular subject, while the subject of always refers to more than one entity (starred examples, in red cells, are ungrammatical):

Clauses

Basic clause structure

A simple assertive clause always contains a subject pronoun, a TAM marker and a predicate - except for third person singular subjects, for which there is no subject pronoun. Predicates can consist of a verb, an adjective or a copula plus

noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently o ...

(NP) or adverbial phrase. Third

person A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...

pronouns may be preceded by a subject NP. A few examples are given below: ; Subject pronoun + TAM + VP ; Subject NP + TAM + Adjective ; Subject NP + TAM + Copula + NP

Personal Pronouns

There are two kinds of personal pronouns, subject pronouns and non-subject pronouns. Subject pronouns end in a vowel and are followed directly by a TAM marker. They are obligatory in assertive clauses. Non-subject pronouns are used as topics or objects of verbs or prepositions. Each pronoun represents a combination of a person and a number value. There are four person values: first person inclusive (including both the speaker and the listener), first person exclusive (including only the speaker, not the listener), second person (including the listener) and third person (including neither speaker nor listener). The four number values are singular (one person), dual (two persons), paucal (few persons) and plural (an arbitrarily large number of persons).

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Database of audio recordings in Daakaka (Sesivi) - basic Catholic prayers
*Kilu von Prince. 2017
Daakaka dictionary
''Dictionaria'' 1. 1-2167. ccess to raw data set: /small> {{Austronesian languages Languages of Vanuatu Paama–Ambrym languages