NIUEAN LANGUAGE

The 'Niuean language' or 'Niue language' (Niuean: ''ko e vagahau Niuē'') is a Polynesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages. It is most closely related to Tongan and slightly more distantly to other Polynesian languages such as Māori, Sāmoan, and Hawaiian. Together, Tongan and Niuean form the Tongic subgroup of the Polynesian languages. Niuean also has a number of influences from Samoan and Eastern Polynesian languages.

Contents

Speakers

Dialects

Phonology

Vowels

Rearticulation

Syllable structure

Stress

Glottal stop

Orthography

Alphabet

History

Grammar

Typology

Pronouns

Numbers

Morphology

Suppletion

Reduplication

Affixes

Compound words

References

See Also

External links

Speakers

Niuean is spoken by 2,240 people on Niue Island (97.4% of the inhabitants) as of 1991, as well as by speakers in the Cook Islands, New Zealand, and Tonga, for a total of around 8,000 speakers. There are thus more speakers of Niuean outside the island itself than on the island. Most inhabitants of Niue are bilingual in English.

Dialects

Niuean consists of two main dialects, the older 'motu' dialect from the north of the island and the 'tafiti' dialect of the south. The words mean, respectively, ''the people of the island'' and ''the strangers'' (or ''people from a distance'').
The differences between the dialects are mainly in vocabulary or in the form of some words.
Examples of differences in vocabulary are 'volu' (Tafiti) vs 'matā' (Motu) for ''scrape, scraper'' and 'lala' (Tafiti) vs 'kautoga' (Motu) for ''guava (plant)''; examples of differences in form include 'hafule' (T) / 'afule' (M), 'aloka'/'haloka', 'nai'/'nei', 'ikiiki'/'likiliki', and 'malona'/'maona'.

Phonology

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Plosive
Fricative
Nasal
Liquid

is an allophone of before front vowels (both long and short and ; this most likely arose from the affrication of to before these vowels and subsequent change of to . While older foreign borrowings (such as ''tī'' from English ''tea'') underwent this change along with (or perhaps by analogy with) native words, words borrowed into Niuean after this development retain the original (for example, ''telefoni'' and ''tikulī'' from ''telephone'' and ''degree'').
and are marginal phonemes, only appearing in foreign borrowings. Some speakers substitute and , respectively.

Vowels

	front		central		back
	long	short	long	short	long	short
high
mid
low

Vowel length is distinctive in Niuean; vowels are either long or short. Furthermore, two adjacent identical vowels (whether short-short, short-long, long-short, or long-long) form a ''rearticulated vowel''; the sound is distinct from one long vowel.
Both short and long vowels can occur in any position.
All short vowels may combine with one another to form diphthongs. The possible diphthongs are:

★

★

★

★

★

Rearticulation

'Rearticulation' is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels, as opposed to diphthongs which are written as two letters but pronounced as one sound. These two vowels may be the same or be different ones.
Rearticulation typically occurs across morpheme boundaries, for example, when a suffix ending with a vowel comes before a root beginning with that same vowel. It may also occur, rarely, within monomorphemic words (words that consist of only one morpheme) as a result of the elision of a historical intervocalic consonant.
Two adjacent identical short vowels are always rearticulated, as are combinations of any two long vowels or a short and a long vowel; two adjacent different short vowels may be rearticulated or form a diphthong, and this has to be determined from the morphology or history of the word.

Syllable structure

The basic structure of a Niuean syllable is (C)V(V); all syllables end in a vowel or diphthong, and may start with at most one consonant. Consonant clusters in borrowed words are broken up with epenthetic vowels, e.g. English ''tractor'' becomes 'tuleketā'.

Stress

The stress on a Niuean word is nearly always on the penult (second-to-last syllable), though multi-syllable words ending in a long vowel put primary stress on the final long vowel and secondary stress on the penult. Long vowels in other positions also attract a secondary stress.

Glottal stop

The Niuean language does not contain the glottal stop which is present in its closest relative, Tongan; this has caused some distinct words to merge. For example, Tongan 'ta'u' ''year'' and 'tau' ''fight'' have merged in Niuean as 'tau'.

Orthography

Niuean orthography is largely phonemic; that is, one syllable stands for one sound and ''vice versa''.

Alphabet

The traditional alphabet order, given with the traditional names of the letters, is 'ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, fā, gā, hā, kā, lā, mō, nū, pī, tī, vī, rō, sā'. Note that 'rō' and 'sā' as introduced letters are ordered at the end.
Sperlich (1997) uses an alphabetical order based on English for his dictionary: 'a, ā, e, ē, f, g, h, i, ī, k, l, m, n, o, ō, p, s, t, u, ū, v' ('r' is left out since no words start with this letter). He recommends that consonants be named consistently with a following ā: 'fā, gā, hā, kā, lā, mā, nā, pā, tā, vā, rā, sā'.
Vowel length can be marked with a macron; however, this is not always done.

History

As with many languages, writing was brought to Niue in connection with religion, in this case with Christianity by missionaries educated in Samoa. This has led to some Samoan influences in morphology and grammar and also to a noticeable one in spelling: the sound (IPA) is written 'g', rather than 'ng' as in Tongan and other Polynesian languages with this sound. (McEwen (1970) uses 'ng' in his dictionary; however, this feature of his spelling was not popular, particularly since it conflicted with the spelling used in the Niuean Bible.)

Grammar

Typology

Niuean can be considered a VSO language; however, one analysis of Niuean uses ergative terminology, in which case it may be better to speak of Verb Agent Patient word order.
Because the unmarked case is the absolutive, Niuean transitive verb constructions often appear passive in a literal translation.
Compare
:''Kua kitia e ia e kalahimu''
:TENSE see AGENT he ARTICLE crab
:"The crab was seen by him"
and
:''Kua kitia e kalahimu''
:TENSE see ARTICLE crab
:"The crab was seen"
The first example sentence could also be translated into English as the nominative-accusative construction "He saw the crab".

Pronouns

Niuean pronouns are differentiated by person and number. Furthermore, first person non-singular (dual and plural) pronouns distinguish 'inclusive' and 'exclusive' forms, including and excluding the listener, respectively. However, they are not differentiated by gender or case; for example, 'ia' means both ''he'' and ''she'', ''him'' and ''her'' (inanimates ['it'] are not usually pronominalised).
The Niuean pronouns are:

	singular	dual	plural
first person (inclusive)	au	taua	tautolu
first person (exclusive)		maua	mautolu
second person	koe	mua	mutolu
third person	ia	laua	lautolu

Note that the endings of the dual and plural forms resemble the numbers 2 and 3, 'ua' and 'tolu'.

Numbers

Some numbers in Niuean are:

1	taha	10	hogofulu	100	taha e teau	1000	taha e afe
2	ua	20	uafulu	200	ua (e) teau	2000	ua (e) afe
3	tolu	30	tolugofulu	300	tolu (e) teau	3000	tolu (e) afe
4	fa ★	40	fagofulu	etc.	etc.	etc.	etc.
5	lima	50	limagofulu
6	ono	etc.	etc.
7	fitu
8	valu
9	hiva

(
★ Note: Both McEwen (1970) and Sperlich (1997) give 'fā' for four; however, Kaulima & Beaumont (1994) give 'fa' with a short vowel.)
Tens and ones combine with 'ma', e.g. 'hogofulu ma taha', 11; 'tolugofulu ma ono', 36.
The numbers from one to nine (and occasionally higher numbers) can take the prefix 'toko-' when used to count persons; for example, 'tokolima' ''five (for people)''.
Numbers are used as verbs, for example:
:''Ne taha e fufua moa i loto he kato''
:PAST one ART egg chicken LOC inside GEN basket
:"There was one egg in the basket"; literally, "Was one an egg inside the basket"
or
:''Tolu e tama fuata ne oatu ke takafaga''
:three ART child youth REL go GOAL hunt
:"Three young men went out hunting"; literally, "Three (were) the young men who went out to hunt"
or
:''Ko e tau maaga ne fa''
:PRED ART PLUR village REL four
:"There were (are) four villages"; literally, "The villages, which were four"

Morphology

Morphology comprises the ways in which words are built up from smaller, meaningful sub-units, or how words change their form in certain circumstances.

Suppletion

'Suppletion' concerns closely related words (often singular and plural forms of nouns or verbs) which are based on very different forms, for example 'fano' ''to go'' (used with a singular subject) and 'ō' ''to go'' (used with a plural subject). This can be compared to English ''go'' and ''went'', which are forms of the same verb yet differ in form.

Reduplication

Reduplication is frequently used in Niuean morphology to derive different nouns. Reduplication is the process of taking the entire morpheme, or sometimes only the first or last syllable or two, and repeating it.
This is used for several purposes, including:

★ forming a "plural" verb from a "singular" one (that is, a verb form used when the subject is plural, as opposed to the form used when the subject is singular)

★ forming a "frequentative" form of a verb (an action that is carried out several times)
An example of a whole-morpheme reduplication indicating a plural verb is 'molemole' ''to have passed by, to be gone'' from 'mole' ''to have passed by, to be gone''; an example of a whole-morpheme reduplication indicating a frequentative verb is 'molomolo' ''to keep squeezing'' from 'molo' ''to squeeze, to compress''.
Examples of part-morpheme reduplication are 'gagau' ''to bite'' from 'gau' ''to chew'' (first part of the syllable reduplicated), 'gegele' ''to make a crying sound'' from 'gele' ''to start to cry (of babies'') (first syllable reduplicated), and 'molūlū' ''to be very soft, to be very weak'' from 'molū' ''to be soft, to be weak'' (last syllable reduplicated).
Reduplication is also frequently employed together with affixes.

Affixes

Affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are frequently used for a variety of purposes; there is also one circumfix, 'fe- -aki' (sometimes 'fe- -naki' or 'fe- -taki'), which is used to form reciprocal verbs ("to ... one another").
A common suffix is '-aga', which is a nominaliser: it forms nouns from verbs.
A common prefix with 'faka-', with a variety of meanings, the most common being a causative one (e.g. 'ako' ''to learn'', 'fakaako' ''to teach'').
Words may also have more than one prefix or suffix, as 'fakamalipilipi' ''to break'' (used with a plural object), from 'faka-', 'ma-', and a reduplicated 'lipi' ''to break''.

Compound words

Many words are simply formed by joining together other words, for example 'vakalele' ''aeroplane'' from 'vaka' ''canoe'' and 'lele' ''fly'' (i.e. literally, ''flying canoe''). Diane Massam has extensively studies a special type of compounding which she has termed pseudo noun incorporation, a type of noun incorporation.

References

★ Kaulima, Aiao & Beaumont, Clive H. (1994). ''A First Book for Learning Niuean''. Auckland, New Zealand: Beaumont and Kaulima. ISBN 0-9583383-0-2.

★ Kaulima, Aiao & Beaumont, Clive H. (2000). ''Learning Niuean, Book 2. Tohi Ako Vagahau Niue''. Auckland, New Zealand: Beaumont and Kaulima. ISBN 0-9583383-9-6.

★ McEwen, J. M. (1970). ''Niue Dictionary''. Wellington, New Zealand: Department of Maori and Island Affairs. No ISBN.

★ Seiter, William J. (1980). ''Studies in Niuean Syntax''. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-8240-4560-2.

★ Sperlich, Wolfgang B. (1997). ''Tohi vagahai Niue - Niue language dictionary: Niuean–English, with English–Niuean finderlist''. Honolulu, Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-1933-0.

★ Tregear, Edward & Smith, S. Percy (1907). ''A Vocabulary and Grammar of the Niue Dialect of the Polynesian Language''. Wellington: Government Printer.

★ Anon. et al. (2003). ''Ko e Tohi Tapu | The Holy Bible in Niue''. Suva, Fiji: The Bible Society in the South Pacific. ISBN 0-564-00077-9.

See Also

External links

★ Ethnologue Entry for Niuean

★ Niuean Basic Vocabulary List

★ Support Proposal for Wikipedia in Niuean Language