Dorig language
Austronesian language spoken in Vanuatu
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Dorig (formerly called Wetamut) is a threatened Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.
The language's 300 speakers live mostly in the village of Dorig [ⁿdʊˈriɰ], on the south coast of Gaua. Smaller speaker communities can be found in the villages of Qteon (east coast) and Qtevut (west coast).
Name
The name Dorig is derived from the name of the village where it is spoken.[3]: 74
Phonology
Dorig has eight phonemic vowels. These include seven short monophthongs /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and one long vowel /aː/.[4]
Dorig has 15 consonant phonemes.[5][6]
The phonotactic template for a syllable in Dorig is: /CCVC/ — e.g. /rk͡pʷa/ ‘woman’ (< *rVᵐbʷai); /ŋ͡mʷsar/ ‘poor’ (< *mʷasara); /wrɪt/ ‘octopus’ (< *ɣurita).[3]: 76 Remarkably, the consonant clusters of these /CCVC/ syllables are not constrained by the Sonority Sequencing Principle. Historically, these /CCVC/ syllables reflect former trisyllabic, paroxytone words */CVˈCVCV/, after deletion of the two unstressed vowels:[7] e.g. POc *kuRíta ‘octopus’ > *wərítə > /wrɪt/.
Grammar
Basic syntax
Basic constituent order in Dorig is SVO.[3]: 77
The language has no copula (or verb be): its non-verbal predicates involve a direct juxtaposition {Subject | Predicate}.[8][3]: 99
Referential expressions
Pronouns
The system of personal pronouns in Dorig contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural).[9]
Noun phrases
Dorig has four articles:[3]: 110
- i 'personal article' reserved to human nouns with high individuation such as proper names or kin terms;
- na 'common article' for common nouns that are inalienably possessed;
- o 'common article' for common nouns that are unbound;
- tuar 'indefinite article'.
Tense–Aspect–Mood and negation
The Dorig system of Tense–Aspect–Mood also incorporates the dimension of polarity (affirmation vs. negation), yielding a single “TAMP paradigm” (for “Tense-Aspect-Mood-Polarity”).[3]: 77 That paradigm consists of 21 TAMP categories, e.g. Negative Potential (v)te-… late, positive Potential s(o)-… lala, (positive) Perfect m(e)-…[3]: 80 The 14 TAMP positive morphemes come along 7 negative ones, a phenomenon known as paradigmatic asymmetry.[3]: 85
The seven negative TAMP markers of Dorig form part of a total of 16 grammatical constructions encoding negation.[3]: 119
Spatial reference
Spatial reference is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages.[10]