Nukulaelae dialect
| Nukulaelae dialect | |
|---|---|
| Nukulaelae Tuvaluan | |
| te 'gana Nukulaelae | |
| Pronunciation | te ˈŋːa.na nu.ku.la.e.ˈla.e |
| Native to | Nukulaelae, Tuvalu |
| Region | Polynesia |
| Ethnicity | Nukulaelae islanders |
Native speakers | 310 |
Austronesian
| |
| Latin script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
The Nukulaelae dialect is a dialect part of the southern Tuvaluan dialect cluster.[1] One of its distinctive features is the presence of a separate /h/ phoneme, a feature not associated with other southern dialects like te 'gana māsani (the dialects of Vaitupu and Funafuti) or the dialect of Nukufetau.[2] There are 310 speakers of Tuvaluan in the Nukulaelae atoll.[3] All Nukulaelae residents also have at least passive knowledge of the Samoan language, a closely related Polynesian language, and there are at least 222 texts that are specifically in the Nukulaelae dialect of the Tuvaluan language.[3] Despite the isolated geographical position of Nukulaelae, most residents are literate.[3]
Phonology and Phonotactics[2]
The Nukulaelae phonology is quasi-identical to that of other southern Tuvaluan dialects, except for the addition of an extra fricative:
| Short | Long | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| front | back | front | back | |
| close | i | u | iː | uː |
| mid | e | o | eː | oː |
| open | a | aː | ||
| Labial | Coronal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||
| Stop | p | t | k | ||
| Fricative | f | v | s | h | |
| Approximant | l | ||||
Word order[4]
The most common word order in the Tuvaluan language (including Nukulaelae) is OVS, although the standard word order is VSO.
When personal names or a first person pronoun is the agent of a transitive clause, the word order is SVO. In intransitive imperative sentences, the word order must be VS. Subordinate clauses do not allow any nominal constituents to precede the verb.
References
- ↑ "The Tuvaluan Language". tuvalu.aa-ken.jp (in 日本語). Retrieved 2025-02-25.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Besnier, Niko (2000). Tuvaluan: A Polynesian Language of the Central Pacific. ISBN 978-0-415-02456-3. Search this book on
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Besnier, Niko (December 1988). "The Linguistic Relationships of Spoken and Written Nukulaelae Registers". Language. 64 (4): 707–736. doi:10.2307/414565. JSTOR 414565.
- ↑ Niko Besnier: Word Order in Tuvaluan
 | This article is a stub. You can help EverybodyWiki by expanding it. |
This article "Nukulaelae dialect" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Nukulaelae dialect. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
