Rotuman language


Rotuman, also referred to as Rotunan, Rutuman or Fäeag Rotuma, is an Austronesian language spoken by the indigenous people of the South Pacific island group of Rotuma, an island with a Polynesian-influenced culture that was incorporated as a dependency into the Colony of Fiji in 1881. Classification of Rotuman is difficult because of the large number of loan words from Samoan and Tongan, as a result of much cultural exchange over the history of the Pacific. Linguist Andrew Pawley groups the language with the West Fijian languages in a West Fijian–Rotuman branch of the Central Pacific subgroup of Oceanic languages.
The Rotuman language has sparked much interest with linguists because the language uses metathesis to invert the ultimate vowel in a word with the immediately preceding consonant, resulting in a vowel system characterized by umlaut, vowel shortening or extending and diphthongisation.
Unlike its Pacific neighbours, Rotuman is typically considered an AVO language.

Phonology

FrontBack
Close
Mid
Open

Rotuman has no phonemic vowel length and is underlyingly a language of open syllables. Thus, only consonant + vowel syllables exist in the underlying syllable structure, although phonological processes provide for more variation. A minimal word constraint that disallows words of less than two moras also alters this underlying representation. Except for words from non-lexical categories, a word like is realized as. That constraint applies before word compounding : + → . Vowels are also lengthened when both final and stressed.
Non-high vowels are raised when they are followed by a syllable with a high vowel.
Generally speaking, when is followed by within a metrical foot, it is fronted to.
completeincompletegloss
'post...'
'to sleep...'
'lazy'

An important aspect of Rotuman morphonology is what could be called the "incomplete" and "complete" phases although they have also been referred to as "long" and "short" forms, "primary" and "secondary" forms, "absolute" and "construct" cases, and "proper and original" and "altered or construct" forms. The complete phase applies to semantically-definite or specific terms. Otherwise, in normal conversation, the incomplete phase applies to all but the last morpheme of a word and all but the last word of a phrase. That can lead to syllable-final consonants in the language, which has an underlying all-open syllable system.
iiCjɛCjɔCjuCiC
ɛeCɛCjaCɛCɛC
aæCæCaCaCɔC
ɔøCœCwaCɔCoC
uyCwɛCwɔCwɔCuC

The above table shows that metathesis and deletion are important parts of incomplete phase formation. The final vowel and the immediately-preceding consonant metathesize from V1CV2#, to V1V2C# where V1 is any underlying penultimate vowel, V2 is any underlying ultimate vowel, C is any consonant, and # is the word, phrase, or morpheme boundary.
After metathesis, "V2 is deleted if V1 is not further back than V2 and if V2 is not lower than V1" or if the two vowels are identical. Further processes of elision result in coalescence or spreading of features: back vowels are fronted before front vowels of equal or greater height before the latter are deleted.
In addition, the → rule takes effect again, now outside of the moraic foot, and can occur with a following and both. Also, becomes after a syllable with a high vowel. When V1 is higher than V2, it is devocalized to the corresponding semivowel; for front vowels and for back vowels.
Word stress is associated with left-dominant bimoraic feet. The penultimate mora of nonderived words carries the stress. Other than the nominalizing suffix and the causative suffix, stress is assigned before additional morphemes are affixed and before incomplete phase morphonology.

Orthography

Upon missionary contact, various orthographies abounded on the island of Rotuma. The French Catholic missionaries devised an orthography based on their own alphabet, and the primarily-English Wesleyan Methodist preachers developed their own orthography to write in Rotuman. The prevalent one used today is one from the Australian Methodist Reverend C. M. Churchward, whose knowledge of linguistics devised the Tongan orthography as well. Here is the alphabet, as it appears in Churchward's seminal work, "Rotuman Grammar and Dictionary":
For the variations to the vowels a, o and i, Churchward's dictionary treats these letters as if no variation between the species occurred within the base letter: the word päega, meaning seat, appears before pạri meaning banana, which, in turn, appears before pau, meaning very much.
In addition, there are instances of all original vowels above appearing with a macron, indicating
that they are longer, although vowel length is arguably a phonological process.
Because Churchward's alphabet was created before a sufficient analysis of Rotuman phonology, it is not purely phonemic. George Milner proposed a more phonemic spelling without diacritics, which incorporates the understanding of vowel allophony as having to do with metathesis

Samples

This is the Rotuman language version of the Lord's prayer, as found in the translation of the Bible published in 1975. It is written using the diacritics of Churchward's orthography: