Olrat language

Olrat is a moribund Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.

Olrat
Ōlrat
Pronunciation[ʊlrat]
Native toVanuatu
RegionGaua
Native speakers
3 (2012)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3olr
Glottologolra1234
ELPOlrat
Not to be confused with OLRAT.

Name

The name Olrat (spelled natively as Ōlrat [ʊlrat]) is an endonym. Robert Codrington mentions a place south of Lakon village under the Mota name Ulrata.[2] A few decades later, Sidney Ray mentions the language briefly in 1926 under the same Mota name ‒ but provides no linguistic information.[3] Preliminarily, the two forms can be derived from the Proto-Torres-Banks form *ul(i,u)rata.

The language
A. François with †Maten Womal, the last storyteller of Olrat (Gaua, Vanuatu, 2003)

In 2003, only three speakers of Olrat remained, who lived on the middle-west coast of Gaua.[4] Their community had left their inland hamlet of Olrat in the first half of the 20th century, and merged into the larger village of Jōlap where Lakon is dominant.[1]

Alexandre François identifies Olrat as a distinct language from its immediate neighbor Lakon, on phonological,[5] grammatical,[6] and lexical[7] grounds.

Phonology

Olrat has 14 phonemic vowels. These include 7 short /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and 7 long vowels /iː ɪː ɛː aː ɔː ʊː uː/.[8]

Olrat vowels
 FrontBack
Near-close i ⟨i⟩ ∙ iː ⟨ii⟩u ⟨u⟩ ∙ uː ⟨uu⟩
Close-mid ɪ ⟨ē⟩ ∙ ɪː ⟨ēē⟩ʊ ⟨ō⟩ ∙ ʊː ⟨ōō⟩
Open-mid ɛ ⟨e⟩ ∙ ɛː ⟨ee⟩ɔ ⟨o⟩ ∙ ɔː ⟨oo⟩
Open a ⟨a⟩ ∙ aː ⟨aa⟩

Historically, the phonologization of vowel length originates in the compensatory lengthening of short vowels when the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ was lost syllable-finally.[9]

Grammar

The system of personal pronouns in Olrat contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural).[10]

Spatial reference in Olrat is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages.[11]

References
  1. François (2012).
  2. See page 378 of: Codrington, R. H. (1885). The Melanesian Languages. Vol. 47. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 25–60.
  3. Sidney Ray (1926), A Comparative Study of the Melanesian Island Languages, CUP, page 428.
  4. List of Banks islands languages.
  5. François (2005)
  6. François (2007)
  7. François (2011)
  8. François (2005:445), François (2011:194).
  9. François (2005:461).
  10. François (2016).
  11. François (2015).

Bibliography
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