| Sakau | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Vanuatu | |||
| Region | Big Bay, Espiritu Santo Island | |||
| Native speakers | 4000 (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Austronesian
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | sku | |||
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Sakao is a language of the Santo subgroup of Oceanic languages. It is spoken on the northeast horn of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. It is named after Sakao Island, an islet off the northeastern shore of Espiritu Santo, almost opposite Port-Olry. However, this is not the native name of that island, which is called Laðhi by Sakao speakers. It is likely that an early explorer asked his non-Sakao speaking guide "What do you call that island?" and the guide answered "sakao," which means "coral reef" in many Austronesian languages.
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Sakao has undergone considerable phonological decay and innovations, which make it utterly unintelligible to its closely related neighbours of Espiritu Santo. Thus for instance, comparing it with its close relative Tolomako:
| sakao | tolomako | |
|---|---|---|
| "louse" | nøð | na ɣutu |
| "chicken" | nɔð | na toa |
| "four" | jɛð | βati |
| "to blow" | hy | suβi |
The main dialects of Sakao are Northern, or Port-Olry dialect, and Southern, or Hog-Harbour dialect. The Southern dialect is the more conservative one. It is characterized by the loss of most pretonic and posttonic vowels, resulting in consonant clusters unusual for an Oceanic language. The Northern dialect is characterized by its extensive use of epenthetic vowels, which have achieved phonemic status, resulting in what looks superficially like vowel harmony; the loss of the initial 'n' of nouns, except in monosyllabic nouns (this n being a reflex of the common Austronesian article na, fused to the nouns in Sakao); and the diphthonguization of some word-final vowels
Thus for instance Port-Olry has /œmœɣœɛ/ "fog, mist" where Hog-Harbour has /nmɣœ/.
Unless otherwise indicated, examples given here are in the Northern, Port-Olry, dialect.
Like Tolomako, Sakao distinguishes four numbers for its personal pronouns. However, they are not singular, dual, trial, plural, but singular, dual, paucal, plural. The Sakao paucal derives from the Tolomako trial, thus Tolomako i γire-tolu "they three", Sakao jørðœl "they, from three to ten" (ðœl is regularly derivable from tolu). One says in Sakao jørðœl løn "the five of them" which is, etymologically, "they three, five."
Substantives are not inflected for number, except kinship terms which distinguish singular and plural: ðjœɣ "my mother/aunt," rðjœɣ "my aunts;" walðyɣ "my child," raalðyɣ "my children." Likewise all demonstratives (pronouns, adjectives, even locatives): wa "this one," warɨr "these ones;" aðœŋœn mam "this person," aðœŋœn mamɨr "these persons;" ðað "here," ðaðɨr "in several places around here."
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It is not clear if Sakao even has syllables; that it, whether trying to divide Sakao words into meaningful syllables is even possible. If it is, Sakao syllables would appear to be V (a vowel or diphthong) surrounded by any number of consonants: V /i/ "thou", CCVCCCC (?) /mhɛrtpr/ "having sung and stopped singing thou kept silent" [m- 2nd pers., hɛrt "to sing", -p perfective, -r continuous].
Sakao has seven degrees of deixis.
Sakao has inalienably possessed nouns, many of which are irregularly inflected:
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Here "mouth" is variably œsɨŋœ-, ɔsɨŋɔ-, œsœŋ- and "hair" variably uly-, ulœ-, nøl-.
Sakao has a suffix -ɨn that increases the valence of a verb: it makes intransitive verbs transitive, and transitive verbs ditransitive. It the latter case, one argument may be the direct object and the other an instrument; the word order of the arguments is free, leaving context to disambiguate which is which:
| mɨ-jil-ɨn | a-ra | a-mas |
| S/he-hits-trans | art-pig | art-club |
This could also be mɨjilɨn amas ara.
The Sakao strategy involves polysynthetic syntax, as opposed to the isolating syntax of its neighbor Tolomako. For instance, the word 'pig' above could be incorporated into the verb, leaving a single external argument:
| mɨ-jil-ra-p-ɨn | a-mas |
| s/he-hit-pig-pfv-trans | art-club |
Sakao polysynthesis can also involve compound verbs, each with its own instrument or object:
| mɔ-sɔn-nɛs-hɔβ-r-ɨn | a-ða | ɛ-ðɛ |
| s/he-shoots-fish-follows-cont-trans | art-bow | art-sea |
Here aða "the bow" is the instrumental of sɔn "to shoot", and ɛðɛ "the sea" is the direct object of hoβ "to follow", which since they are combined into a single verb, are marked as ditransitive with the suffix -ɨn. Because sɔn "to shoot" has the incorporated object nɛs "fish", the first consonant geminates for ssɔn; ssɔn-nɛs, being part of one word, then reduces to ssɔnɛs.