Mota language
| Mota | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Vanuatu |
| Region | Mota island |
Native speakers | 750 (2012)[1] |
|
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
mtt |
| Glottolog |
mota1237[2] |
Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu.[3]
History
During the period 1840-1940, Mota was used as a missionary lingua franca throughout areas of Oceania included in the Melanesian Mission, an Anglican missionary agency. Mota was used on Norfolk Island, in religious education; on other islands with different vernacular languages, it served as the language of liturgical prayers, hymns, and some other religious purposes.
Robert Henry Codrington compiled the first dictionary of Mota (1896), and worked with George Sarawia and others to produce a large number of early publications in this language.
Phonology
Mota has 5 phonemic vowels, /i e a o u/.[4]
Notes
- ↑ François (2012): 88).
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Mota". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Mota.
- ↑ François (2005:445, 460).
References
- Codrington, Robert H.; Palmer, Jim (1896), A Dictionary of the Language of Mota, Sugarloaf Island, Banks' Islands, with a short grammar and index, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
- François, Alexandre (2005), "Unraveling the history of the vowels of seventeen northern Vanuatu languages" (PDF), Oceanic Linguistics 44 (2): 443–504, doi:10.1353/ol.2005.0034
- François, Alexandre (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages", International Journal of the Sociology of Language 214: 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022