Volow

 

Volow has receded historically in favour of Mwotlap, the now dominant language on the island. Volow and Mwotlap are linguistically very close, to the point of almost being mutually intelligible; yet they form two separate languages, with differences in phonology, morphology, lexicon.

The last fluent speaker of Volow, and last storyteller, was named Wanhan – who passed away in 1986. The language is now only remembered by a single speaker named René Wolman (photo). The youngest son of the late Wanhan, Wolman used to spend time with his father in the gardens, and thus got to hear the language spoken. René says he is not confident enough to speak Volow fluently, but he understands the language perfectly, and still can translate individual sentences. In the terminology of linguists, René Wolman would be described as a “passive” speaker; or (to quote Nicholas Evans) the “last hearer” of Volow. He has now shifted to using Mwotlap as his daily language.

2. The Volow archive

The last fluent speaker of Volow, namely Wanhan, was recorded in 1969 by the French anthropologist Bernard Vienne. Even though Vienne was not a linguist and was unable to understand the language, he knew he was recording its last speaker, and thus understood the value of these archives.

Thirty years later, Vienne handed a copy of his tapes to Alex François, who was doing linguistic fieldwork on the same island, focusing on the main language Mwotlap. In 2003, François repatriated the audio recordings to Wanhan’s family, particularly to his son René Wolman; they were deeply moved to hear again a voice which had long disappeared.

The audio recordings included two stories told in Volow. René Wolman helped François transcribe and understand them, while also answering all necessary questions about the linguistic aspects of the language. He also took the linguist to the bush, to explore the ruins of the ancient village Dagmel that is mentioned in the story – including stone walls and megaliths dating back several generations, when the language was still actively spoken.

3. The two Volow texts

The two audio recordings were recorded by †Bernard Vienne in 1969, and transcribed by Alex François in 2003. The first text is here provided with a transcription and a French translation.

1.  

1.The dignitary and the abandoned child

https://doi.org/10.24397/pangloss-0003316

Story told by †Wanhan, in 1969.

• Summary :

An orphan infant is rescued and adopted by a dignitary (a village chief). Many years later, as the orphan has become an adult, his adoptive father dies, and comes back in the shape of a ghost. The dignitary’s ghost provides the orphan with wealth, and also with a woman and a child of his own. Yet the orphan rejects that baby, and asks his new wife to kill him.

Instead, the wife saves the child and hides him in the forest for many years; he will be raised by the mother’s brother, his uncle. Along the years, the uncle provides his nephew with all the honorific grades of a dignitary, and assigns him a high social status. His father (Orphan) finally begs him to be forgiven for having one day requested that he’d be killed.

1.  

2.The servant taken away by the sea

https://doi.org/10.24397/pangloss-0003317

Story told by †Wanhan, in 1969.

• Summary :

A chief regularly sends his servant Ēm̄am̄ to draw sea water for cooking, yet forbids him to go to the place where women bathe. Yet one day the servant breaks the ban, and is carried away by the sea; he ends up stranded in a remote place, reserved for women (Wōtes). Finally he is found, and brought back to the village.

4. The language

   1. The orthography used in the dictionary

The Volow texts in this archive are transcribed in the language’s orthography.

Volow’s alphabetical order is: { a b d e ē g ḡ h i l m m̄ n n̄ o ō (p) q̄ s t u v w y }. Each of these letters corresponds to one phoneme in the language.

Volow has 16 phonemic consonants. The following chart lists the phonemes themselves (using IPA); the orthographic convention is shown in brackets. For example, letter ‹q̄› in the orthography encodes the prenasalized labiovelar stop /ᵑᵐg͡bʷ/.

Table 1 – The 16 phonemic consonants of Volow

	Labiovelar	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Voiceless stop		[p] ‹p›	t  ‹t›
Prenasalized voiced stop	ᵑᵐg​͡bʷ  ‹q̄›	ᵐb ‹b›	ⁿd ‹d›	ᵑg  ‹ḡ›
Fricative		β [β,v,p] ‹v›	s  ‹s›	ɣ  ‹g›	h  ‹h›
Nasal	ŋ​͡mʷ ‹m̄›	m  ‹m›	n  ‹n›	ŋ  ‹n̄›
Lateral			l  ‹l›
Approximant	w  ‹w›		j  ‹y›

 

The voiceless bilabial [p] is not a phoneme: it is the phonetic realization of /β/ syllable-finally. Although it is not phonemic, it is transcribed in the orthography as ‹p›:  e.g. /βah/ [βah] is spelled vah, but /haβ/ [hap] is hap. No word begins with ‹p›. The language lacks the consonants /k/ and /r/.

Volow has 7 vowels, all short.

Table 2 – The 7 vowels of Volow

	Front	Back
Close	i  ‹i›	u  ‹u›
Near-close	ɪ  ‹ē›	ʊ  ‹ō›
Open-mid	ɛ  ‹e›	ɔ  ‹o›
Open	a  ‹a›

 

Unprefixed words conform to the syllabic template (C)V(C): ḡemtēl [ᵑgɛm.tɪl] ‘the three of us’ (1ex:trial); womdō [wɔm.ⁿdʊ] ‘orphan’; lemyepyep [lɛm.jɛp.jɛp] ‘in the evening’.

C‑ prefixes are extrasyllabic, and commonly cause word-initial consonant clusters:

Table 3 – Five common prefixes in Volow

prefix	example	IPA	meaning
n‑ ‘article’	n‑leq̄evēn	[nlɛ.ᵑᵐg͡bʷɛ.βɪn]	‘a woman’
m‑ ‘Perfect’	m‑gelwo	[mɣ̞ɛlwɔ]	‘grew up’
n‑ ‘Stative’	n‑q̄agq̄ag	[nᵑᵐg͡bʷaɣ̞.ᵑᵐg͡bʷaɣ̞]	‘is white’
l‑ ‘locative’	l‑ḡēlē‑n̄	[lᵑgɪlɪŋ]	‘in my back’
t‑ ‘ablative’	t‑Q̄ayn̄in̄	[tᵑᵐg͡bʷaj.ŋiŋ]	‘from Bwaynging village’

 

1. 2. Pronominal indexing

The personal pronouns of Volow 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 dō(yō) “1inclusive: dual” means ‘you & me’, whereas ḡemyō “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 Volow

	singular	dual	trial	plural
1 inclusive		dō,  dōyō	dētēl	gēn
1 exclusive	ne,  nen̄	ḡemyō	ḡemtēl	ḡem(em)
2	nēn̄	ḡomyō	ḡomtēl	ḡimi
3	ḡē	ḡōyō	ḡēytēl	ḡēy

 

(1)	Ne	n‑gilal	nēn̄,	ba	nēn̄	ti-gilal	te	ne.
	1sg	stat‑know	2sg	but	2sg	neg₁‑ know	neg₂	1sg
	‘I know you, but you don't know me.’

 

(2)	Ḡōyō	ḡo	togtog	mi	ḡemem.
	3du	prospective	stay	with	1exc:pl
	‘They (two) will stay with us.’

 

5. Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the people of Aplow village, particularly the family of †Wanhan: particularly René Wolman, Henry Nin, Singa, Amstrong.

6. Useful references

For more on the languages of Northern Vanuatu, visit http://alex.francois.online.fr. The following selected publications help understand Volow in its context:

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.

Vienne, Bernard. 1984. Gens de Motlav. Idéologie et pratique sociale en Mélanésie. Paris: Société des Océanistes.

 

Here is how you can cite the present archive:

François, Alexandre & Bernard Vienne. 2020. Archive of audio recordings in the Volow language. Pangloss collection. Paris: CNRS.