Volow (formerly known as ''Valuwa'' or ''Valuga'') is an Oceanic language variety that used to be spoken in the area of

Aplow Aplow, ''Valuwa'', or ''Valuga'', is a village located on the eastern part of Mota Lava, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacif ...

, in the eastern part of the island of Motalava,

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 ...

Name

The name ''Volow'' is originally a placename: it corresponds to the area known today as

, but in the former language Volow rather than in Mwotlap. Now that the Volow dialect has ceased to be used, the name ''Volow'' has been forgotten by the modern population. The place is only known through its Mwotlap name ''Aplow''; as for the language variety, it is often referred to, in the Mwotlap language, as ''na-vap te-Plōw'' “the language of Aplow”. The language variety is sometimes also referred to as ''na-vap ta Dagmel'' “the language of Dagmel” (in Mwotlap), after the name of an ancient, now abandoned, village.

Sociolinguistics

Volow has receded historically in favor of the now dominant language Mwotlap. It is now only remembered by a single passive speaker, who lives in the village of

— the new name of what was previously known as Volow. The similarity of Volow with Mwotlap is such that the two communalects may be considered

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 ...

s of a single language.

Phonology

Volow phonemically contrasts 16 consonants and 7 vowels. François (2021).

Consonants

: This consonant inventory includes a typologically rare consonant: a rounded, prenasalised

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

:. e.g. “woman” (spelled ''n-leq̄evēn'' in the local orthography). Amongst the 17

Torres–Banks languages The Torres–Banks languages form a linkage of Southern Oceanic languages spoken in the Torres Islands and Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu. Languages François (2011) recognizes 17 languages spoken by 9,400 people in 50 villages, including 1 ...

, Volow is the only one to have preserved the voicing of the proto-phonemes ''*ᵑg'' > /ᵑɡ/ and ''*ᵐbʷ'' > /ᵑᵐɡ͡bʷ/, which are reconstructed for its ancestor Proto-Torres-Banks. All its neighbours (including Mwotlap) devoiced these to /k/ and /k͡pʷ/ respectively.

Vowels

The seven vowels of Volow are all short

monophthong A monophthong ( ) is a pure vowel sound, or one whose articulation at beginning and end is relatively fixed, with the tongue moving neither up nor down and neither forward nor backward towards a new position of articulation. A monophthong can be ...

s:. :

Notes

External links

Presentation of the Volow language
by linguist A. François. Access to the Volow corpus (''

Pangloss Collection The Pangloss Collection is a digital library whose objective is to store and facilitate access to audio recordings in endangered languages of the world. Developed by the LACITO centre of CNRS in Paris, the collection provides free online access ...

'' of CNRS). * . — Traditional narrative, presented in bilingual format (Volow transcription, French translation). This story was recorded by anthropologist Bernard Vienne in 1969 from the last fluent speaker Wanhand ��1986 it was transcribed and translated by A. François in 2003, with the help of Wanhand's son, and published online in 2017.

References

* * * . * * * * {{Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages Banks–Torres languages Languages of Vanuatu Torba Province Endangered Austronesian languages Critically endangered languages