Olrat language

Olrat
Native to Vanuatu
Region Gaua
Native speakers
 3 (2012)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 olr
Glottolog None

Olrat is a moribund Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.

The language

A. François with †Maten Womal, the last storyteller of Olrat (Gaua, Vanuatu, 2003).

The three remaining speakers of Olrat live on the middle-west coast of Gaua.[2] They merged into the larger village of Jōlap where Lakon is dominant, after they left their inland hamlet of Olrat in the first half of the 20th century.[1]

Alexandre François identifies Olrat as a distinct language from its immediate neighbor Lakon, on phonological,[3] grammatical,[4] and lexical[5] grounds.

Phonology

Olrat has 14 phonemic vowels. These include 7 short /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and 7 long vowels /iː ɪː ɛː aː ɔː ʊː uː/.[6]

Olrat vowels
 FrontCentralBack
Near-close i ∙ iː u ∙ uː
Close-mid ɪ ∙ ɪː ʊ ∙ ʊː
Open-mid ɛ ∙ ɛː ɔ ∙ ɔː
Open  a ∙ aː 

Historically, the phonologization of vowel length originates in the compensatory lengthening of short vowels when the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ was lost syllable-finally.[7]

References

Bibliography

  • François, Alexandre (2005), "Unraveling the History of the Vowels of Seventeen Northern Vanuatu Languages" (PDF), Oceanic Linguistics, 44 (2): 443–504, doi:10.1353/ol.2005.0034
  • François, Alexandre (2007), "Noun articles in Torres and Banks languages: Conservation and innovation", in Siegel, Jeff; Lynch, John; Eades, Diana, Language Description, History and Development: Linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley (PDF), Creole Language Library 30, Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 313–326
  • François, Alexandre (2011), "Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence" (PDF), Journal of Historical Linguistics, 1 (2): 175–246, doi:10.1075/jhl.1.2.03fra .
  • François, Alexandre (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages" (PDF), International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 214: 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022


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