Documentation of an Oceanic language of New Ireland: Lavatbura-Lamasong

Beach at Lamasong Bay. Photo by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli, 2024. Click on image to access collection.

Language	Lavatbura-Lamasong
Depositor	Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
Affiliation	Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale, University of Naples L’Orientale
Location	Papua New Guinea
Collection ID	0758
Grant ID	MDP0453
Funding Body	ELDP
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/60d419be-fb27-4c93-8a95-615283c80ba0

Summary of the collection

The deposit is the result of the documentation of the Lavatbura-Lamasong language and culture, funded by the ELDP project “Documentation of two Oceanic languages of New Ireland: Lavatbura-Lamasong and Konomala”. The deposit contains at present a variety of recordings in the Lamasong variety of the Lavatbura-Lamasong language; the deposited materials encompass both recordings of naturalistic language use on a variety of topics, as well as recordings featuring the elicitation of grammatical topics. Most sessions in the collection include a video and an audio recording. At present, roughly 2 hours of recorded materials also include a time-aligned transcription and translation into English and Tok Pisin.

Group represented

The group represented in this collection are the people living in the area between the main villages of Lavatbura and Lamasong, in Central New Ireland. The community lives predominantly in coastal villages, and their principal sources of income is gardening, fishing, working in palm oil plantations and the selling of copra. Erosion of the linguistic competencies is a consequence of several factors: mixed marriages; schooling of children in schools outside of the language area; high levels of internal migration among different language groups paired with an increase in the knowledge of Tok Pisin, the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea, and a decrease in multilingualism in local vernaculars.

River in Lamasong. Photo by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli, 2024.

Language information

Lavatbura-Lamasong (Austronesian, Oceanic, Meso-Melanesian, Central New Ireland; alternative spelling: Lavatbura-Lamusong) is spoken in the villages of Lamasong and Lavatbura, as well as in other smaller villages in-between. It is, to date, undocumented; there is little to none description, just some data about noun phrases in Ross (1988) and an established orthography (Nicholas et al. 2000), but no other linguistic work on it. It belongs to the Madak chain together with Barok (described in a grammar; Du 2010) and Madak (only described in two short papers; Lee 2005a,b). The language is defined by its own speakers as “transitional” between Nochi (Northern New Ireland), spoken on the north of Lamusong (described in a short grammar; Erickson 1992), and Madak. The Lamasong and Lavatbura varieties are quite distinct, though mutually intellegible. Aim of the project is also to define as clearly as possible language boundaries, taking into account not only Lavatbura-Lamasong, but also Madak and Nochi.

Collection contents

In its current version, the corpus contains 14 hours of recorded language use, of which 4h and 30 minutes of naturalistic language use, and 9h and 30 minutes of grammatical elicitation. Of the deposited data, 2h have time-aligned transcription and translation into English and Tok Pisin.
The naturalistic language use documented in the corpus includes, among others:
– life stories, community histories, legends, and traditional stories;
– explanation and demonstration of practices related to cooking and gardening;
– narratives regarding socio-cultural practices (marriage conventions; social organization into clans; funerary practices) and linguistic practices (such as the declining use of Lavatbura-Lamasong);
– songs.

References

Beaumont, Clive H. 1972. New Ireland languages: a review. In C.H. Beaumont, D.T. Tryon and Stephen A. Wurm. Papers in linguistics of Melanesia no. 3 (Pacific Linguistics A-35). 1-41. Canberra: Australian National University.

Beaumont, Clive H. 1976. Austronesian languages: New Ireland. In Stephen A. Wurm, ed. Austronesian languages: New Guinea area languages and language study 2 (Pacific Linguistics C-39). 387-397. Canberra: Australian National University.

Du, Jingyi. 2010. Towards a Grammar of the Usen Dialect of the Barok language New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (Ph.D. thesis). La Trobe University.

Lithgow, David and Oren R. Claasen. 1968. Languages of the New Ireland District. Port Moresby: Department of Information and Extension Services.

Nicholas, Gertrude; Rosa Siko, Sophie Martin, Clarry Sedun and Frederika Siko. 2000. Lamasong Orthography. SIL PNG: Ukarumpa

Ross, Malcolm. 1988. Proto-Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. (Pacific Linguistics: Series C, 98.) Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

Frowein, Friedel. 2011. A Grammar of Siar, An Oceanic Language of New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea (Ph.D. thesis). La Trobe University.

Lee, Robert. 2005a [1976-1988]. Ms. Madak sentences. SIL PNG: Ukarumpa https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/31018

Lee, Robert. 2005b [1976-1988]. Ms. Madak noun phrases. SIL PNG: Ukarumpa https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/31115

Lee, Robert. 1989. The Madak verb phrase. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 20, 65-114.

Acknowledgement and citation

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Mazzitelli, Lidia Federica. 2023. Documentation of an Oceanic language of New Ireland: Lavatbura-Lamasong. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/b320f868-7215-4f14-beff-0ec2832f92e7. Accessed on [insert date here].