Lovono

In earlier times, the island group of Vanikoro used to be divided into three tribal territories, each with its distinctive language: Teanu in the northeast, Lovono in the west, Tanema in the south [map]. During the 20^th century, the latter two languages became almost extinct, and replaced with Teanu.
The Lovono tribe used to be based in a now abandoned village of the northern coast of Banie. This village was named “Lovono” in Teanu, and “Alavana” in the local Lovono language. Written sources from the 19^th century (Dillon 1830, Gaimard 1834) called the place Vanou or Whanou. When that ancient site was abandoned, its population moved to the new villages of Lale [NW] and Lovoko [N].
When the French naturalist Gaimard published in 1834 his first word lists of Vanikoro’s three languages, he focused on the western language Lovono, which he actually called “Vanikoro”.
Teanu, Lovono and Tanema, the three indigenous languages of Vanikoro, are all Oceanic: they thus belong to the vast Austronesian family that covers most islands in the Pacific. Within the Oceanic family (≈500 languages), Vanikoro languages belong to “Temotu” – a smaller subgroup with about ten languages, located in the province of the same name.

2. The Lovono corpus

2.1 Fieldwork

The linguist Alexandre François visited Vanikoro twice, both times as part of a multidisciplinary project.

In 2005, the expedition Lapérouse 2005 brought a hundred participants on a quest to search for the remains of the French navigator Jean François de Lapérouse, whose two ships were destroyed in 1788 on the shores of Vanikoro. While underwater archaeologists were diving for actual remains from the shipwrecks, François walked the island, learning its languages, and recording stories about the French navigators who first visited Vanikoro.

François came back in 2012, as part of a scientific expedition by geologists, who were exploring the impact of sea level rise and of seismic activity on Vanikoro. The linguist then made more recordings of the island’s two dying languages, Lovono and Tanema.

On those occasions, François recorded mostly Rubenson Lono (1933-2020), who was then the last fluent speaker of Lovono. Rubenson’s late wife was herself one of the last speakers of Tanema, the other dying language of Vanikoro. The son they had together, Lainol Nalo, inherited the language of his mother rather than his father’s; as a result, in 2012, Rubenson Lono was the last speaker of Lovono, while his son Lainol is now the last speaker of Tanema.

2.2 The corpus

The Lovono archive includes three narratives from the oral tradition of Vanikoro. They were all told by Rubenson Lono.

One recording is a version of the story of Lapérouse (in Lovono, Toñaki ie Laperus “the ship of Lapérouse”): part 1, part 2. Lono explains how the two ships were magically destroyed by the Gods of the island.

Among other stories (not translated yet) is that of the origin of the kauri tree – a myth we also recorded in the main language Teanu.

 

3. Notes on the language

3.1 Orthography

The orthography proposed for transcribing the Lovono texts follows this alphabetical order:

{ a  b  bw  d  e  g  i  k  l  m  mw  n  ng  ñ  o  p  pw  r  s  t  u  v  w }.

Each of these letters or digraphs corresponds to one phoneme in the language.

The phoneme inventory of Lovono includes 18 phonemic consonants. Table 1 lists the phonemes themselves (using IPA); the orthographic convention is shown in brackets. For example, the letter ‹ g › in the orthography encodes the prenasalized velar stop /ᵑɡ/ – e.g. vegure [feᵑgure] ‘red ant’.

Table 1 – The 18 phonemic consonants of Lovono

	labiovelarized	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar
voiceless stop	pʷ  ‹pw›	p, β ‹p›	t  ‹t›		k  ‹k›
prenasalized stop	ᵐbʷ  ‹bw›	ᵐb  ‹b›	ⁿd  ‹d›		ᵑɡ  ‹g›
nasal	mʷ ‹mw›	m  ‹m›	n  ‹n›	ɲ  ‹ñ›	ŋ  ‹ng›
fricative		v~f ‹v›	s  ‹s›
lateral			l  ‹l›
rhotic			r  ‹r›
glide	w  ‹w›

 

• The phoneme /v/ can surface as voiced [v], but also as voiceless [f], especially word-initially: e.g. tava [tava] ‘four’, but visipure [fisipure] ‘thunderbolt’.
• There is no phonemic palatal glide y [j]: it only exists as an allophone of /i/ before another vowel: e.g. nepie [ne.pi.e] ~ [ne.pje] ‘fire’.

 

Lovono has five vowels, all short.

Table 2 – The five vowels of Lovono

	front	back
close	i  ‹i›	u  ‹u›
mid	ɛ  ‹e›	ɔ  ‹o›
open	a  ‹a›

 

Lovono words are included in my online Teanu–English dictionary, with equivalents in Lovono and Tanema: visit it here.

1.  

3.2 Pronominal indexing

The personal pronouns of Lovono distinguish three numbers: singular, dual, plural. Free pronouns can serve as subject, object of transitive verbs, object of prepositions. In addition, all verbs require a subject prefix, which distinguishes realis vs. irrealis mood.

Table 4 – Pronominal forms in Lovono

		free pronouns	subject, realis	subject, irrealis
sing	1	ngane	ni-	ka-
	2	ago	nu-	ku-
	3	ngani	i-	ki-
dual	1 incl.	gita	la(i)‑	ja-
	1 excl.	gema	(nu)ba-	ba(i)-
	2	gamila	(nu)ba-	ba(i)-
	3	dea	la(i)‑	sa-
plural	1 incl.	gitu	le(pe)-	kape-
	1 excl.	gamitu	nupe-	pe-
	2	gaipa	nupe-	pe-
	3	detu	le(pe)‑	se(pe)‑

 

(1)	Nupe‑mage	mene? –	Gamitu	nupe‑lu	ne	amenonga	iemitore,	nupe‑ngoa	nane.
	2pl:R‑come	where	1e:pl	1e:pl:R‑stay	loc	garden	poss:1e:pl	1e:pl:R‑plant	yam

 “Where are y'all coming from? – We were in our garden, we were planting yams.”

 

4. Useful references

François, Alexandre. 2005. A toponymic map of Vanikoro. Electronic publication. Paris: CNRS. 

François, Alexandre. 2008. Mystère des langues, magie des légendes. In Le mystère Lapérouse ou le rêve inachevé d’un roi, édité par l'Association Salomon. Paris: de Conti, Musée national de la Marine. 230‑233.

François, Alexandre. 2009. The languages of Vanikoro: Three lexicons and one grammar. In Bethwyn Evans (ed). Discovering history through language: Papers in honour of Malcolm Ross. Pacific Linguistics 605. Canberra: Australian National University. 103-126.

François, Alexandre. 2014. Person syncretism and impersonal reference in Vanikoro languages. Paper read at Syntax of the World's Languages (SWL6), Università di Pavia. 

François, Alexandre. 2021. Online Teanu–English dictionary, with equivalents in Lovono and Lovono. Electronic publication. Paris: CNRS  [https://tiny.cc/Vanikoro-dict].

Gaimard, Joseph. 1834. Vocabulaires des idiomes des habitans de Vanikoro. In Jules Dumont d'Urville (ed.). Voyage de découvertes de l'Astrolabe, exécuté par ordre du Roi, pendant les années 1826-1827-1828-1829, sous le commandement de M. J. Dumont d'Urville, Capitaine de vaisseau — Philologie 1, 165–174. Paris: Ministère de la Marine.

Tryon, Darrell. 1994. Language contact and contact-induced language change in the Eastern Outer Islands, Solomon Islands. In Tom Dutton & Darrell Tryon (eds.), Language Contact and Change in the Austronesian World, 611–648. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

 

More information on Vanikoro languages: https://tiny.cc/Vanikoro-lgs.

Here is how you can cite the present archive:

François, Alexandre. 2021. Archive of audio recordings in the Lovono language. Pangloss collection. Paris: CNRS.