Documentation of Mavea

Language	Mavea
Depositor	Valérie Guérin
Affiliation	University of Hawai’i Manoa
Location	Vanuatu
Collection ID	0015
Grant ID	IGS0031
Funding Body	ELDP
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/489b45c1-1a4f-416b-bba6-ab5830bf3e9a

 

Summary of the collection

This collection consists of annotated audio recordings of speakers of Mavea (alternatively, Mafea), spoken in Vanuatu.

 

Group represented

Mavea speaking community, located on Mavea Island, and Deproma, Espiritu Santo Island, Vanuatu.

 

Language information

Mavea, also known as Mafea, is an Austronesian Oceanic (Southern Oceanic) language spoken on the eponymous island Mafea, off the southeastern coast of the island Espiritu Santo. The exact number of Mafea speakers remains to be determined. According to a survey by Lynch and Crowley published in 2000, there were approximately 250 speakers at the time. However, Lynch and Crowley also note that Mafea speakers have started migrating to the more economically prosperous island of Espiritu Santo. Such a geographical shift may lead to an irreversible linguistic shift.

Mafea Island once hosted two distinct dialects, Mafea and Aore (Ethnologue). Due to geographical relocation, the latter is now extinct. It is unclear how many speakers remain on Mafea Island and maintain their traditional heritage.

 

Special characteristics

Languages in Vanuatu have been divided into two major subgroups – Northern Central and Southern (Clark 1985). Clark estimated that the Northern Central subgroup consists of approximately 94 languages, 28 of which are spoken on Santo. Clark subdivided these 28 languages into 3 smaller subgroups: Northwest, South, and East, and affiliated Mafea with the “South Santo” subgroup. Tryon’s (1976) linguistic survey indicates that Mafea is indeed related to Tutuba, spoken on the Southeastern coast of mainland Santo. To a lesser extent, Mafea is also affiliated with Malo, spoken on the eponymous island off the southern coast of Santo, and Tangoa, spoken in Southern Santo. However, the inclusion of Mafea in this subgroup rests on a holistic approach. It is based on Tryon’s (1976) lexicostatistic analysis of the languages of Vanuatu, and on the use of linguolabial consonants as an areal feature of the South of Santo (and northwest Malakula), which are extremely rare cross-linguistically.

Interestingly, Mafea is located at the border of two of Clark’s linguistic subgroups—South Santo and East Santo—the latter group being well-known for its phonological complexity (Guy 1974). Due to its pivotal geographic situation, Mafea could be considered the end of a dialectal chain, linking the Southern and Eastern language groups. Its geographic position may have fostered lexical and grammatical innovations.

At the time fieldwork was conducted, any definite conclusions regarding the classification of Mafea in the South Santo subgroup had yet to be established. The paucity of data on Mafea and other Santo languages makes it difficult to define such a subgroup, and, at the time of fieldwork, one could only speculate about the linguistic affiliation of Mafea.

In the realm of language analysis, the PI isolated interesting morpho-syntactic features in verbal agreement, verbal complementation, a complex system of possession, and a complex counting system, to name a few. The PI also found that linguo-labial consonants which are extremely rare cross-linguistically (an areal feature of the South of Santo and northwest Malakula), are retained by a few elders only. These segments have disappeared from the speech of the younger generations of speakers; they have usually been reanalysed as fricatives or stops.

During the PI’s fieldwork conducted in 2005, they had concluded that the language contains three linguo-labials. They are represented in the orthography as p̋, v̋, and m̋.

 

Collection contents

The collection contains over 160 audio files, many of which come with time-aligned transcriptions and gloss in English.

Genres include narratives, chronicles, and personal histories.

 

Collection history 

The collection is a result of fieldwork conducted by the PI, Valérie Guérin, between June 2005 and December 2007 on Mafea Island with Mafea-speaking communities. While collecting and transcribing stories, the PI developed a writing system that was read with great ease by the main consultant, educated in the capital city, Port Vila. The PI also confirms that Mafea is related to Tutuba, spoken on the eponymous island, off the Southeastern coast of mainland Santo, and affiliated to a lesser extent to Malo, Tangoa, and Tamambo spoken in Southern Santo.

 

Acknowledgement and citation

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

Guérin, Valérie, 2006. Documentation of Mavea. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0001-0762-5. Accessed on [insert date here].