Olrat language

Olrat
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Gaua
Native speakers	3 (2012)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic Vanuatu Northern Vanuatu East Vanuatu Olrat
Language codes
ISO 639-3	olr
Glottolog	None

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

The three remaining speakers of Olrat live on the middle-west coast of Gaua.^[2] They merged into the larger village of Jōlap where Lakon is dominant, after they left their inland hamlet of Olrat in the first half of the 20th century.^[1]

Alexandre François identifies Olrat as a distinct language from its immediate neighbor Lakon, on phonological,^[3] grammatical,^[4] and lexical^[5] 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/.^[6]

Olrat vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Near-close	i ∙ iː		u ∙ uː
Close-mid	ɪ ∙ ɪː		ʊ ∙ ʊː
Open-mid	ɛ ∙ ɛː		ɔ ∙ ɔː
Open		a ∙ aː

Historically, the phonologization of vowel length originates in the compensatory lengthening of short vowels when the voiced velar fricative /É£/ was lost syllable-finally.^[7]

References

1. François (2012).
2. List of Banks islands languages.
3. François (2005)
4. François (2007)
5. François (2011)
6. François (2005:445), François (2011:194).
7. François (2005:461).

Bibliography

• François, Alexandre (2005), "Unraveling the History of the Vowels of Seventeen Northern Vanuatu Languages", Oceanic Linguistics 44 (2): 443–504, doi:10.1353/ol.2005.0034
• François, Alexandre (2007), "Noun articles in Torres and Banks languages: Conservation and innovation", in Siegel, Jeff; Lynch, John; Eades, Diana, Language Description, History and Development: Linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley, Creole Language Library 30, Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 313–326
• François, Alexandre (2011), "Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence", Journal of Historical Linguistics 1 (2): 175–246, doi:10.1075/jhl.1.2.03fra.
• 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

External links

• Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Olrat on Gaua.
• A book of traditional stories, monolingual in Olrat language (site of linguist A. François)
• Access to audio recordings in Olrat language (section of the Pangloss Collection of LACITO-CNRS)
• Petition to create ISO code for Olrat