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Daakaka language

Austronesian language spoken in Vanuatu

Daakaka
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Ambrym
Native speakers	1,000 (2012)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic North-Central Vanuatu Central Vanuatu Daakaka
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bpa
Glottolog	daka1243
Area where Daakaka is spoken on Ambrym
Daakaka is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Daakaka [ⁿdaːkaka] (also known as Dakaka, South Ambrym and Baiap) is a native language of Ambrym, Vanuatu. It is spoken by about one thousand speakers in the south-western corner of the island.

Most children in the region still acquire Daakaka as a first language, but it is under threat by significant socio-economic changes and the dominant use of Vanuatu's official languages, Bislama, English and French, in education and in official contexts.^[1]

The system of consonantal phonemes is fairly typical for the region. Voiced stops are prenasalized. The difference between bilabial consonants with and without a labio-velar release is relevant only before front vowels.

There are seven phonemically distinct vowel qualities, with one long and one short vowel phoneme for each variety, plus a marginally phonemic ə [ə]. The distinction between mid and open-mid vowels is only phonemic after alveolar consonants, as in tee [tɛː] "axe" vs. téé [teː] "see".

The four major word classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Only nouns can stand in argument position, only verbs and some adjectives can be used as predicates without the copula i, only adjectives can be used as attributes to nouns without further modification. The two biggest word classes by far are nouns and verbs.

There are three subclasses of nouns. The biggest subclass consists of 'general nouns' such as em "house" or myaop "volcano"; in contrast to the other two classes, these nouns do not need to specify a possessor, they cannot be inflected and they cannot be directly followed by another noun phrase. 'Inflected nouns' always indicate their possessor by a person-number ending:

nose.of-1S.POSS

kus-uk

nose.of-1S.POSS

"my nose"

Transitiveorrelational nouns also obligatorily specify an inalienable possessor, but this possessor is given by a subsequent noun phrase, not by an inflectional ending. Known, definite, non-human possessors can also be indicated by the suffix -sye or its allomorph -tye:

shell.of

tuwu

bush.nut

bwee tuwu

shell.of bush.nut

"the shell of the bush nut"

shell.of-3S(n-hum).POSS

bwee-tye

shell.of-3S(n-hum).POSS

"its shell"

Among verbs, there are several subgroups which differ either in terms of transitivity or in terms of the number of their internal argument (the subject of an intransitive verb or the object of a transitive verb).

There are three degrees of transitivity: verbs can be either intransitive, semitransitiveortransitive. Intransitive verbs such as oko "walk" never take an object noun phrase. Semitransitive verbs can optionally be followed by an object noun phrase with indefinite reference; by contrast, transitive verbs are always interpreted to have a definite object.

While most verbs are neutral with regard to the number of their arguments, some verbs can take only singular arguments and some (pluractional) verbs can only take non-singular arguments. For example, mur, tesi and medap all mean "fall down", but only medap can have either a singular or a plural subject. By contrast, mur can only take a singular subject, while the subject of tesi always refers to more than one entity (starred examples, in red cells, are ungrammatical):

A simple assertive clause always contains a subject pronoun, a TAM marker and a predicate - except for third person singular subjects, for which there is no subject pronoun. Predicates can consist of a verb, an adjective or a copula plus noun phrase (NP) or adverbial phrase.

Third person pronouns may be preceded by a subject NP. A few examples are given below:

Subject pronoun + TAM + VP

1S=

kueli

return

me

come

na=m kueli me

1S= return come

"I have returned"

Subject NP + TAM + Adjective

green pigeon

ma

REAL

kekei

small

sini ma kekei

{green pigeon} REAL small

"the green pigeon is small"

Subject NP + TAM + Copula + NP

CL3-1S.POSS

naana

mother

mw=i

REAL=COP

tyotyo

snake

s-ok naana mw=i tyotyo

CL3-1S.POSS mother REAL=COP snake

"my mother is a snake"

There are two kinds of personal pronouns, subject pronouns and non-subject pronouns. Subject pronouns end in a vowel and are followed directly by a TAM marker. They are obligatory in assertive clauses. Non-subject pronouns are used as topics or objects of verbs or prepositions. Each pronoun represents a combination of a person and a number value. There are four person values: first person inclusive (including both the speaker and the listener), first person exclusive (including only the speaker, not the listener), second person (including the listener) and third person (including neither speaker nor listener). The four number values are singular (one person), dual (two persons), paucal (few persons) and plural (an arbitrarily large number of persons).

• von Prince, Kilu (January 2015). A Grammar of Daakaka. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 978-3-11-034259-8.

• Database of audio recordings in Daakaka (Sesivi) - basic Catholic prayers Archived 2016-11-12 at archive.today
• Kilu von Prince. 2017. Daakaka dictionary. Dictionaria 1. 1-2167. [access to raw data set: doi:10.5281/zenodo.3668861]