Volow language

Volow
Valuwa
Aplow
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Mota Lava island, Banks Islands
Extinct	1986[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic Vanuatu Northern Vanuatu East Vanuatu Mwotlap Volow
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	volo1238[2]

Volow (pronounced [βʊˈlʊw]; formerly known as Valuwa or Valuga) is an Oceanic language variety which used to be spoken in the area of Aplow, in the eastern part of the island of Motalava, in Vanuatu.^[3]

Sociolinguistics

Volow has receded historically in favour of the now dominant language Mwotlap.^[1] It is now only remembered by a single passive speaker, who lives in the village of Aplow — the new name of what was previously known as Volow.

The similarity of Volow with Mwotlap is such that the two communalects may be considered dialects of a single language.

Phonology

Volow, like Mwotlap, has 7 phonemic vowels, which are all short monophthongs:^[4][5]

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Near-close	ɪ	ʊ
Open-mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	a

The language also has a typologically rare consonant: a rounded, prenasalised voiced labial-velar plosive [ᵑᵐɡ͡bʷ]:^[5] e.g. [n.lɛᵑᵐɡ͡bʷɛβɪn] “woman”^[6] (spelled n-leq̄evēn in the local orthography).

Notes

1. François (2012:87)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Volow". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. List of Banks islands languages.
4. François (2005a:445).
5. François (2005b:116).
6. François (2013:191).

References

• François, Alexandre (2005a), "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 (2005b), "A typological overview of Mwotlap, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu", Linguistic Typology 9 (1): 115–146, doi:10.1515/lity.2005.9.1.115

• 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
• François, Alexandre (2013), "Shadows of bygone lives: The histories of spiritual words in northern Vanuatu", in Mailhammer, Robert, Lexical and structural etymology: Beyond word histories, Studies in Language Change 11, Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton, pp. 185–244, ISBN 978-1-61451-058-1