Iaai language
| Iaai | |
|---|---|
| Hwen iaaiCategory:Articles containing Iaai-language text | |
| Pronunciation | [jaːi]Category:Pages with Iaai IPA |
| Region | Ouvéa Island, New Caledonia |
Native speakers | 4,100 (2009 census)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | iai |
| Glottolog | iaai1238 |
 Iaai is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Iaai (Iaai pronunciation: [jaːi]Category:Pages with Iaai IPA) is a language of Ouvéa Island (New Caledonia). It shares the island of Ouvéa with Fagauvea, a Polynesian outlier language.
Iaai is the sixth-most-spoken language of New Caledonia, with 4,078 speakers as of 2009.[2] It is taught in schools in an effort to preserve it.
The language has been studied by linguists Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre and Anne-Laure Dotte.
Phonology
Iaai is remarkable for its large inventory of unusual phonemes, in particular its consonants, with a rich variety of voiceless nasals and approximants.[3]
Vowels
Iaai has ten vowel qualities, all of which may occur long and short. There is little difference in quality depending on length.[4]
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||
| Close | i iː | y yː | u uː | ||
| Close mid | e eː | ø øː | ɤ ɤː | o oː | |
| Open mid | [œ] [œː] | ɔ ɔː | |||
| Open | æ æː | ä äː | |||
Iaai constitutes one of the few cases of front rounded vowels attested outside of their geographic stronghold in Eurasia,[5] even if other cases have since been reported in the Oceanic family.[6]
The vowel /ø øː/Category:Pages with plain IPA is only known to occur in six words. In all of these but /ɲ̊øːk/Category:Pages with plain IPA "dedicate", it appears between a labial (b, m) and velar (k, ŋ) consonant.
After the non-labiovelarized labial consonants and the vowel /y yː/Category:Pages with plain IPA, the vowel /ɔ ɔː/Category:Pages with plain IPA is pronounced [œ œː]Category:Pages with plain IPA.
The open vowels only contrast in a few environments. /æ æː/Category:Pages with plain IPA only occurs after the plain labial consonants and the vowel /y yː/Category:Pages with plain IPA, the same environment that produces [œ œː]Category:Pages with plain IPA. /a aː/Category:Pages with plain IPA does not occur after /ɥ ɥ̊ y yː/Category:Pages with plain IPA, but does occur elsewhere, so that there is a contrast between /æ æː/Category:Pages with plain IPA and /a aː/Category:Pages with plain IPA after /b p m m̥ f/Category:Pages with plain IPA.
The vowels /i e ø a o u/Category:Pages with plain IPA are written with their IPA letters. /y/Category:Pages with plain IPA is written û, /æ/Category:Pages with plain IPA is written ë, /ɔ/Category:Pages with plain IPA is written â, and /ɤ/Category:Pages with plain IPA is written ö. Long vowels, which are twice as long as short vowels, are written double.
Consonants
Iaai has an unusual voicing distinction in its sonorants, as well as several coronal series. Unlike most languages of New Caledonia, voiced stops are not prenasalized.[4]
| Labial | Denti- alveolar |
Alveolar | Retroflex | Pre-palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain / palatalized | labiovelarized | ||||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p (pʲ) | t̪ | ʈ (ʈ͡ʂ) | c (c͡ç) | k | |||
| voiced | (b) (bʲ) | bʷ (bˠʷ) | d̪ | ɖ (ɖ͡ʐ) | ɟ (ɟ͡ʝ) | ɡ | |||
| Nasal | voiceless | m̥ (m̥ʲ) | m̥ʷ (m̥ˠʷ) | n̪̊ | ɳ̊ | ɲ̊ | ŋ̊ | ||
| voiced | m (mʲ) | mʷ (mˠʷ) | n̪ | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | θ | s | ʃ | x | |||
| voiced | ð | ||||||||
| Approximant | voiceless | ɥ̊ (ɸʲ) | ʍ | l̥ | h | ||||
| voiced | ɥ (βʲ) | w | l | ||||||
| Flap | ɽ | ||||||||
Unlike many languages with denti-alveolar stops, Iaai /t̪, d̪/Category:Pages with plain IPA are released abruptly, and /t̪/Category:Pages with plain IPA has a very short voice onset time. However, the apical post-alveolar and laminal palatal stops /ʈ, ɖ, c, ɟ/Category:Pages with plain IPA have substantially fricated releases [ʈᶳ, ɖᶼ, cᶜ̧, ɟᶨ]Category:Pages with plain IPA, and may be better described as sounds between proper stops and affricates.
The labial approximants are placed in their respective columns following their phonological behaviour (their effects on following vowels), but there is evidence that all members of these series are either labial-palatal or labial-velar. /ɥ̊, ɥ/Category:Pages with plain IPA are sometimes pronounced as weak fricatives [ɸʲ, βʲ]Category:Pages with plain IPA.
In many cases, words with voiced and voiceless approximants are morphologically related, such as /liʈ/Category:Pages with plain IPA "night" and /l̥iʈ/Category:Pages with plain IPA "black". /h/Category:Pages with plain IPA- and vowel-initial words have a similar relationship. The voiceless sonorant often marks object incorporation. However, many roots with voiceless sonorants have no voiced cognate.
The labialized labials are more precisely labio-velarized labials. There is evidence that non-labialized labial consonants such as /m/Category:Pages with plain IPA are palatalized /pʲ/Category:Pages with plain IPA, /mʲ/Category:Pages with plain IPA, etc., but this is obscured before front vowels. If this turns out to be the situation, it would parallel Micronesian languages which have no plain labials.
Notes
- ↑ Iaai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)Category:Pages containing links to subscription-only contentCategory:Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
- ↑ Dotte 2013.
- ↑ The main sources about the phonology of Iaai are Ozanne-Rivierre (1976); Maddieson and Anderson (1994).
- 1 2 See Maddieson & Anderson (1994).
- ↑ Maddieson, Ian. Front Rounded Vowels, in Martin Haspelmath et al. (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures, pp. 50-53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-925591-1. (online version).
- ↑ See for example Löyöp, Lemerig, Vurës of northern Vanuatu, p.194 of: 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, hdl:1885/29283, S2CID 42217419.
References
- Dotte, Anne-Laure (2013), Le iaai aujourd'hui. Évolutions sociolinguistiques et linguistiques d'une langue kanak de Nouvelle-Calédonie (Ouvéa, Îles Loyauté). Doctoral thesis. Université Lumière-Lyon2, Lyon, France. 528 pp.
- Dotte, Anne-Laure (2017). "Dynamism and change in the possessive classifier system of Iaai". Oceanic Linguistics. 56 (2): 339–363. doi:10.1353/ol.2017.0017. ISSN 1527-9421. S2CID 148949180. Retrieved 2023-07-20.
- Maddieson, Ian; Anderson, Victoria (1994), "Phonetic Structures of Iaai" (PDF), UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 87: Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages II: 163–182Category:CS1: long volume value
- Miroux, Daniel (2011), Parlons Iaai, Ouvéa, Nouvelle-Calédonie (in French), Paris: L'HarmattanCategory:CS1 French-language sources (fr).
- Ozanne-Rivierre, Françoise (1976), Le Iaai : langue mélanésienne d'Ouvéa (Nouvelle-Calédonie). Phonologie, morphologie, esquisse syntaxique (in French), Paris: Société d'études linguistiques et anthropologiques de FranceCategory:CS1 French-language sources (fr).
- Ozanne-Rivierre, Françoise (1984), Dictionnaire iaai (in French), Paris: Société d'études linguistiques et anthropologiques de FranceCategory:CS1 French-language sources (fr).
- Ozanne-Rivierre, Françoise (2003), "L'aire coutumière iaai", in Cerquiligni, Bernard (ed.), Les Langues de France (in French), Paris: PUFCategory:CS1 French-language sources (fr).
- Ozanne-Rivierre, Françoise (2004), "Spatial deixis in Iaai (Loyalty Islands)", in Senft, Gunter (ed.), Spatial deixis in Oceanic languages, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- Tryon, Darrell T. Iai grammar. B-8, xii + 137 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1968. doi:10.15144/PL-B8
External links
- (in French)Category:Articles with French-language sources (fr) Five stories in Iaai, collected by F. Ozanne-Rivierre, and presented in bilingual format (Pangloss Collection of LACITO-CNRS).
- Presentation of Iaai, including an extensive bibliography.
- Database of audio recordings in Iaai - basic Catholic prayersCategory:All articles with dead external linksCategory:Articles with dead external links from August 2024Category:Articles with permanently dead external links[permanent dead link]
- Iaai Grammar at the Internet Archive
