Dorig language
Dorig (formerly called Wetamut) is an Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.
| Dorig | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Vanuatu |
| Region | Gaua |
Native speakers | 300 (2012)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wwo |
| Glottolog | weta1242 |
| ELP | Dorig[2] |
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).
Phonology
Dorig has 8 phonemic vowels. These include 7 short monophthongs /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and one long vowel /aː/.[4]
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i i | u u |
| Near-close | ɪ ē | ʊ ō |
| Open-mid | ɛ e | ɔ o |
| Open | a a ∙ aː ā | |
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.[5]
Grammar
The system of personal pronouns in Dorig contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural).[6]
Spatial reference is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages.[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, S2CID 131668754
- François, Alexandre (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
- 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, 2012 (214): 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022, S2CID 145208588
- François, Alexandre (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.
- François, Alexandre (2016), "The historical morphology of personal pronouns in northern Vanuatu" (PDF), in Pozdniakov, Konstantin (ed.), Comparatisme et reconstruction : tendances actuelles, Faits de Langues, 47, Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 25–60
External links
- Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Dorig on Gaua.
- Audio recordings in Dorig language, in open access, by A. François (source: Pangloss Collection).
- A story in Dorig, with audio recording and translation.