Big Nambas language

Big Nambas
	V'ənen Taut
Pronunciation	[ˈð̼ənɛn tautʰ]
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Northwest Malekula
Native speakers	3,400 (2001)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic Central Vanuatu Malakula Western Big Nambas; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nmb
Glottolog	bign1238[2]

Big Nambas (native name V'ənen Taut) is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by about 1,800 people (as of 1983) in northwest Malekula, Vanuatu. Approximately nineteen villages in the Big Nambas region of the Malekula Interior use the language exclusively with no variation in dialect. It was studied in-depth over a period of about 10 years by missionary Dr. Greg. J. Fox, who published a grammar and dictionary in 1979.

Phonology

The consonant phonemes of Big Nambas are as shown in the following table:

		Bilabial	Linguolabial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal		m	n̼ / m̺	n
Plosive	voiced			ⁿd
Plosive	voiceless	p	t̼ / p̺	t	k
Fricative	voiced	β	ð̼ / β̺		ɣ
Fricative	voiceless			s
Liquid	rhotic			r
Liquid	lateral			l

Big Nambas has a 5-vowel system with the following phonemes:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u uː
Mid	e	ə
Open		a aː

Big Nambas has a complex syllable structure with a large amount of consonant clusters possible. Additionally, clusters of up to four vowels are permitted. Stress in Big Nambas is phonemic, but partly predictable. The consonants /t β r l n/ all exhibit phonemic gemination when two identical ones occur between syllables. Linguolabial consonants are often marked with an apostrophe in the orthography to distinguish them from their bilabial counterparts.

Grammar

Big Nambas is a synthetic head-marking language.

gollark: I stuck a self-sustaining triple fusion reactor unit inside one.

gollark: You can compress an infinite amount of volume into the 13x13x13 space inside one block.

gollark: Compact Machines exists.

gollark: Depends, sometimes it's *not*.

gollark: What you *can* do is wirelessly charge from your base, via various mods.

References

Big Nambas at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Big Nambas". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Bibliography

Fox, G. J. (1979). Big Nambas Grammar. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 0-85883-183-X.

External links

V'enen Taut recordings

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[e18-1] Big Nambas at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

[Glottolog-2] Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Big Nambas". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.