Dorig (formerly called Wetamut) is an Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.
The language’s 300 speakers live mostly in the village of Dorig (IPA: [ⁿdʊˈriɰ]), on the south coast of Gaua. Smaller speaker communities can be found in the villages of Qteon (east coast) and Qtevut (west coast).
Dorig's immediate neighbours are Koro and Mwerlap.[2]
Name
The name Dorig, spelled Dōrig, is derived from the name of the village where it is spoken. The term is related to Dōlav (the Dorig name of a village that is called in Lakon as Jōlap [t͡ʃʊlap]), with the -rig and -lav parts meaning "small" and "big" respectively. The element dō is obscure; hence the only term that can be reconstructed for Proto-Torres-Banks is *-riɣi.
Phonology
Dorig has 8 phonemic vowels. These include 7 short monophthongs /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and one long vowel /aː/.[3]
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i ⟨i⟩ | u ⟨u⟩ |
| Near-close | ɪ ⟨ē⟩ | ʊ ⟨ō⟩ |
| Open-mid | ɛ ⟨e⟩ | ɔ ⟨o⟩ |
| Open | a ⟨a⟩, aː ⟨ā⟩ | |
Dorig has 15 consonant phonemes.[4][5]
| Labiovelar | Bilabial | Alveolar | Dorsal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stop | k͡pʷ ⟨q⟩ | t ⟨t⟩ | k ⟨k⟩ | |
| Prenasalized stop | ᵐb ⟨b⟩ | ⁿd ⟨d⟩ | ||
| Nasal | ŋ͡mʷ ⟨m̄⟩ | m ⟨m⟩ | n ⟨n⟩ | ŋ ⟨n̄⟩ |
| Fricative | β ~ ɸ ⟨v⟩ | s ⟨s⟩ | ɣ ⟨g⟩ | |
| Rhotic | r ⟨r⟩ | |||
| Lateral | l ⟨l⟩ | |||
| Approximant | w ⟨w⟩ |
The phonotactic template for a syllable in Dorig is: /CCVC/ — e.g. /rk͡pʷa/ ‘woman’; /ŋ͡mʷsar/ ‘poor’; /wrɪt/ ‘octopus’. Remarkably, the consonant clusters of these /CCVC/ syllables are not constrained by the Sonority Sequencing Principle.[6]
Grammar
The system of personal pronouns in Dorig contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural).[7]
Spatial reference is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages.[8]
References
- ^ François (2012): 88).
- ^ List of Banks islands languages.
- ^ François (2005:445)
- ^ François (2022).
- ^ François (2010:396)
- ^ François (2010:407)
- ^ François (2016).
- ^ François (2015).
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, S2CID 131668754
- —— (2010), "Phonotactics and the prestopped velar lateral of Hiw: Resolving the ambiguity of a complex segment" (PDF), Phonology, 27 (3): 393–434, doi:10.1017/s0952675710000205
- —— (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.
- —— (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages" (PDF), International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2012 (214): 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022, S2CID 145208588
- —— (2015). "The ins and outs of up and down: Disentangling the nine geocentric space systems of Torres and Banks languages" (PDF). In Alexandre François; Sébastien Lacrampe; Michael Franjieh; Stefan Schnell (eds.). The languages of Vanuatu: Unity and diversity. Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics. pp. 137–195. hdl:1885/14819. ISBN 978-1-922185-23-5.
- —— (2016), "The historical morphology of personal pronouns in northern Vanuatu" (PDF), in Pozdniakov, Konstantin (ed.), Comparatisme et reconstruction : tendances actuelles, Faits de Langues, vol. 47, Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 25–60
- —— (2022). "Presentation of the Dorig language, and audio archive". Pangloss Collection. Paris: CNRS. Retrieved 28 Sep 2022.
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