Nese is a moribund Oceanic

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

known by no more than twenty people in the Matanvat area of the northwest tip of the island of

Malakula Malakula, also spelled Malekula, is the second-largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, in Melanesia, a region of the Pacific Ocean. Location Malakula is separated from the islands of Espiritu Santo and Malo Island, Ma ...

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...

. It is now rarely spoken, having been replaced as a primary mode of communication by Bislama. Nese is one of the few languages to have linguolabial consonants.

Name

The name ''Nese'' literally means "what".

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Grammar

Some nouns are required to be possessed, typically those expressing

inalienable possession In linguistics, inalienable possession ( abbreviated ) is a type of possession in which a noun is obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or nominal affixes in an inalienable possession relationship cannot exist independently or be "al ...

. These are followed by a possessive suffix marking the person and number of the possessor For those nouns where possession is optional, a possessive pronoun attaches to a possessive classifier, which has different forms if the possessed noun is intended to be eaten, or if it is intended to be drunk. Verbs are marked for the person and number of both their subject and object. The subject prefixes co-occur with overt arguments, while the object suffixes cannot. An irrealis marker follows the subject prefix in appropriate contexts, though it is fused into a portmanteau morpheme with the first person singular marker. The language has no class of adjectives that can be distinguished from intransitive

stative verbs In linguistics, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static, or unchanging ...

, which may occur within the noun phrase, or function as a predicate. Independent

pronouns In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not con ...

, as well as the pronominal markers appearing on verbs and possessed nouns, distinguish three

persons A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who 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 ...

, two

numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic 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 can ...

(singular and plural), and make an inclusive/exclusive distinction in the first person plural. Some prepositions take the same object suffixes that verbs do to mark their complement, while others do not. "te" is used as a subordinator for complement and relative clauses, while it combines with other words to mark adverbial clauses, combining with a purposive preposition for adverbial purpose clauses, but a different, non-preposition word for temporal adverbial clauses.

Revitalization

Some speakers have initiated language revitalization activities such as informal teaching by elders to children, and use of Nese songs in church. Nese is also taught in the Matanvat kindergarten, though not as the primary language of instruction.

References

External links

Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database wordlist
Malekula languages Languages of Vanuatu Definitely endangered languages {{SOceanic-lang-stub