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The language
Lehali is spoken by a small community of farmers living on the west coast of Ureparapara – an island locally known as Noypēypay.
The language is mentioned in some sources (e.g. Tryon 1976) under the name “Lehali”, even though this doesn’t correspond to a place name. This is probably a variant of “Loli”, the community’s main village.
The phylogenetic affiliation of Lehali is the same as the other 138 languages spoken in Vanuatu: it is an Oceanic language – and thus a member of the vast Austronesian family that covers most islands in the Pacific. Within the northern Vanuatu “linkage”, Lehali forms a linguistic link between Lo-Toga on the one hand, and Löyöp on the other hand.
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The Lehali corpus
The island of Ureparapara is difficult to access, due to the lack of regular trips by air or by sea. Alexandre François was able to collect data on the Lehali language through unplanned encounters with Lehali speakers who lived on other islands.
For example, many teenagers from Ureparapara come spend their school years in the neighbouring island of Motalava, where they become bilingual (Lehali - Mwotlap). As François stayed on Motalava, they taught him the basics of the Lehali language.
Another encounter was with Stanley Lengson, also a native Lehali speaker, who lived on Motalava as an English teacher. François elicited grammatical data from him, and recorded traditional narratives in Lehali.
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Notes on the language
3.1 Orthography
The orthography proposed for transcribing the Lehali texts follows this alphabetical order:
{ a ä d e ē ë g h i k l m n n̄ n̄w o ō ö p q s t u v w y }.
Each of these letters corresponds to one phoneme in the language.
Lehali has 16 phonemic consonants. The following chart lists the phonemes themselves (using IPA); the orthographic convention is shown in brackets. For example, the letter ‹q› in the orthography encodes the labiovelar stop /kʷ/.
Table 1 – The 16 phonemic consonants of Lehali
| |
labiovelar
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bilabial
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alveolar
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velar
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glottal
|
|
voiceless stop
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kʷ ‹q›
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p ‹p›
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t ‹t›
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k ‹k›
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|
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prenasalized voiced stop
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|
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ⁿd ‹d›
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|
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fricative
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β [β,v] ‹v›
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s ‹s›
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ɣ ‹g›
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h ‹h›
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nasal
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ŋʷ ‹n̄w›
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m ‹m›
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n ‹n›
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ŋ ‹n̄›
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lateral
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l ‹l›
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approximant
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w ‹w›
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j ‹y›
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Lehali has 10 vowels, all short.
Table 2 – The 10 vowels of Lehali
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front
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back
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closed
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i ‹i›
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u ‹u›
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near-closed
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ɪ ‹ē›
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ʊ ‹ō›
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central
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ə ‹ë›
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open-mid
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ɛ ‹e›
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ɔ ‹o›
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near-open
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æ ‹ä›
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ɒ̝ ‹ö›
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open
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a ‹a›
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Unprefixed words conform to the syllabic template (C)V(C): nönnöy [nɒn.nɒj] ‘yesterday’; mätēl [mætɪl] ‘the three of us’ (1ex:trial); susn̄wäy [sus.ŋʷæj] ‘child’; yēpyäp [jɪp.jæp] ‘evening’.
C‑ prefixes are extrasyllabic, and commonly cause word-initial consonant clusters:
Table 3 – Five common prefixes in Lehali
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prefix
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example
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IPA
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meaning
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n‑ ‘article’
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n‑lokven
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[nlɔkvɛn]
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‘a woman’
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m‑ ‘Perfect’
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m‑den
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[mⁿdɛn]
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‘was thinking’
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n‑ ‘Aorist’
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n‑n̄wol
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[nŋʷɔl]
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‘goes back’
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t‑ ‘Future’
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t‑gel
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[tɣɛl]
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‘will sit’
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t‑ ‘ablative’
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t‑Loyēp
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[tlɔjɪp]
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‘from the Löyöp area’
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3.2 Pronominal indexing
The personal pronouns of Lehali distinguish four numbers: singular, dual, trial, plural. They also strictly encode the contrast between ‘inclusive we’ [=you & me & others] and ‘exclusive we’ [me & others]. Thus the pronoun ginyo “1inclusive: dual” means ‘you & me’, whereas mäyo “1exclusive: dual” will read as ‘one person (other than you) + myself’, i.e. ‘me & him/her’.
The free pronouns, listed in the next table, can serve as subjects, objects of verbs, objects of prepositions.
Table 4 – The free personal pronouns of Lehali
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singular
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dual
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trial
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plural
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1 inclusive
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ginyo
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gēntēl
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gen
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1 exclusive
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nö, nök
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mäyo
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mätēl
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kēmäm
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2
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nek
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moyo
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mētēl
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kimi
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3
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ke
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koyo
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keytēl
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key
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(1)
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Nö
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ne-glal
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nek,
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pa
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nek
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tet
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ne‑glal
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nö
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tä
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1sg
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stat‑know
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2sg
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but
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2sg
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neg₁
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stat‑know
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1sg
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neg₂
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‘I know you, but you don't know me.’
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(2)
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Koyo
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dä
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öttö
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mi
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kēmäm.
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3du
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prospective
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stay
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with
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1exc:pl
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‘They (two) will stay with us.’
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| |
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Useful references
For more on the languages of Northern Vanuatu, visit http://alex.francois.online.fr. The following selected publications help understand Lehali in its context:
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.
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.
François, Alexandre, Michael Franjieh, Sébastien Lacrampe & Stefan Schnell. 2015. The exceptional linguistic density of Vanuatu. In A. François, S. Lacrampe, M. Franjieh & S. Schnell (eds), The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity. Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, 5. Canberra: Asia Pacific Linguistics Open Access. 1–21.
Here is how you can cite the present archive:
François, Alexandre. 2021. Archive of audio recordings in the Lehali language. Pangloss collection. Paris: CNRS.
https://doi.org/10.24397/pangloss-0002597