Ske language
Encyclopedia
Ske is an endangered language
of south-western Pentecost island
in Vanuatu
. Ske belongs to the East Vanuatu languages
, a branch of the Austronesian languages
family.
The Ske area comprises fourteen small villages centred around Bwaravet in south-western Pentecost, from Levizendam in the north to Hotwata in the south and extending inland to Vanliamit. Historically the language's area extended to parallel areas of the east coast, but this part of the island is now depopulated.
Due to intermarriage between language areas, an increasing number of people in Ske-speaking villages now speak Apma
, Sa
or Bislama as a first language, and local chiefs fear for the future of Ske. A closely related neighbouring language, Sowa
, has already been totally displaced by Apma.
The number of Ske speakers was estimated at 600 in the year 2000, although this may be an overestimate, since not everybody in the Ske area is fluent in the language.
There is no significant dialectal variation within modern Ske, although there are noticeable differences between the Ske of older and younger speakers. Doltes, the extinct dialect of Hotwata village, is sometimes regarded as a Ske dialect, but appears to have been closer to Sa
.
There is no local tradition of writing in Ske, and until recently the language was virtually undocumented. However, linguist Kay Johnson of SOAS
is currently studying the language. Prior to her arrival, the only records of Ske were short vocabulary lists collected by David Walsh in the 1960s, Catriona Hyslop in 2001 and Andrew Gray in 2007.
), p, r, s, t, bilabial v, w, z, and labiovelar bw, mw, pw and vw.
Geminate consonants
occur where two identical consonants have been brought together by the historical loss of an intervening vowel, for example in -kkas "to be sweet" (compare Sowa
kakas).
Prenasalization of consonants
occurs, so that b is pronounced mb, and d is pronounced nd.
Unlike neighbouring languages such as Apma
, Ske permits a variety of voiced consonants
to occur at the end of syllables, although when they occur at the end of an utterance they are often followed by an 'echo' of the previous vowel. Thus ingg "you", for example, is often pronounced inggi.
In addition to the five standard vowels (a, e, i, o and u), Ske has mid-high vowels ê (intermediate between e and i) and ô (intermediate between o and u), like in Sowa
and Sa
languages. Vowels do not appear to be distinguished for length.
As in Pentecost's other languages, syllables ending with a consonant take stress in precedence to other syllables. In Ske this usually results in stress falling on the final syllable of a word.
A notable characteristic of Ske is the dropping of unstressed vowels. For example, the word "its eye" is usually realized in Ske as mzan (although in some phrases it is mezn). Dropping of vowels in Ske has resulted in a language rich in consonants, in contrast to related languages such as Raga
.
Due to the presence of consonant clusters within syllables and other phonological features not typical of East Vanuatu languages, speakers of neighbouring languages consider Ske difficult to speak and learn.
and number
. They are not distinguished by gender
. The basic pronouns are:
. Plural
ity is indicated by placing the pronoun niêr ("them") or a number after the noun.
Nouns may be either free, or directly possessed. Directly possessed nouns are suffixed to indicate whom an item belongs to. For example:
Possession may also be indicated by the use of possessive classifiers, separate words that occur before or after the noun and take possessive suffixes. These classifiers are:
The possessive suffixes are as follows:
A verb may be transformed into a noun by the addition of a nominalising suffix -an:
Modifiers generally come after a noun:
, aspect
and mood
of an action. In idealised form, these verb markers are:
In practice, speakers' usage of certain markers may differ slightly from this paradigm, with ti "you" often being used in the past tense as well as the future, for example.
There is a pattern of verb-consonant mutation
whereby v at the start of a verb changes to b, and vw to bw. This mutation occurs in imperfective aspect (present tense), and in irrealis mood (future tense):
(Among a few older speakers there is also mutation of z to d, but most Ske speakers today use only the d forms.)
Hypothetical phrases are marked with mô:
Negative phrases are preceded by kare ("not"), or a variant:
Transitive
and intransitive
verb forms are distinguished. Transitive verbs are commonly suffixed with -nê:
Ske makes extensive use of stative verb
s for descriptive purposes.
Ske has a copular verb, vê or bê.
Verbs in Ske can be linked together in serial verb construction
s.
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
of south-western Pentecost island
Pentecost Island
Pentecost Island is one of the 83 islands that make up the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. It lies due north of capital Port Vila. Pentecost Island is known as Pentecôte in French and Pentikos in Bislama. The island was known in its native languages by names such as Vanu Aroaroa, although these...
in Vanuatu
Vanuatu
Vanuatu , officially the Republic of Vanuatu , is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and southeast of the Solomon Islands, near New Guinea.Vanuatu was...
. Ske belongs to the East Vanuatu languages
East Vanuatu languages
-Languages:A 2008 analysis of the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database included seven East Vanuatu languages. Three, the Paama–Ambrym languages, were found to form a separate family...
, a branch of the Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
family.
The Ske area comprises fourteen small villages centred around Bwaravet in south-western Pentecost, from Levizendam in the north to Hotwata in the south and extending inland to Vanliamit. Historically the language's area extended to parallel areas of the east coast, but this part of the island is now depopulated.
Due to intermarriage between language areas, an increasing number of people in Ske-speaking villages now speak Apma
Apma language
Apma is the language of central Pentecost island in Vanuatu. Apma belongs to the East Vanuatu languages, a branch of the Austronesian languages family....
, Sa
Saa language
Sa or Saa language is an Austronesian language spoken in southern Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. It had an estimated 2,500 speakers in the year 2000.- Dialects and range:Sa has numerous dialects, with no well-established names or boundaries...
or Bislama as a first language, and local chiefs fear for the future of Ske. A closely related neighbouring language, Sowa
Sowa language
Sowa was the original language of south-central Pentecost island in Vanuatu. In recent times it has been totally displaced by Apma, a neighbouring language. Sowa is very closely related to Ske, another south Pentecost language....
, has already been totally displaced by Apma.
The number of Ske speakers was estimated at 600 in the year 2000, although this may be an overestimate, since not everybody in the Ske area is fluent in the language.
There is no significant dialectal variation within modern Ske, although there are noticeable differences between the Ske of older and younger speakers. Doltes, the extinct dialect of Hotwata village, is sometimes regarded as a Ske dialect, but appears to have been closer to Sa
Saa language
Sa or Saa language is an Austronesian language spoken in southern Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. It had an estimated 2,500 speakers in the year 2000.- Dialects and range:Sa has numerous dialects, with no well-established names or boundaries...
.
There is no local tradition of writing in Ske, and until recently the language was virtually undocumented. However, linguist Kay Johnson of SOAS
School of Oriental and African Studies
The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London...
is currently studying the language. Prior to her arrival, the only records of Ske were short vocabulary lists collected by David Walsh in the 1960s, Catriona Hyslop in 2001 and Andrew Gray in 2007.
Phonology
The consonants of Ske are b, d, g, h, k, l, m, n, ng (as in English "singer"), ngg (prenasalized g, which may be written as g with a macronMacron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
), p, r, s, t, bilabial v, w, z, and labiovelar bw, mw, pw and vw.
Geminate consonants
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
occur where two identical consonants have been brought together by the historical loss of an intervening vowel, for example in -kkas "to be sweet" (compare Sowa
Sowa language
Sowa was the original language of south-central Pentecost island in Vanuatu. In recent times it has been totally displaced by Apma, a neighbouring language. Sowa is very closely related to Ske, another south Pentecost language....
kakas).
Prenasalization of consonants
Prenasalized consonant
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent that behave phonologically like single consonants. The reasons for considering these sequences to be single consonants is in their behavior, not in their actual composition...
occurs, so that b is pronounced mb, and d is pronounced nd.
Unlike neighbouring languages such as Apma
Apma language
Apma is the language of central Pentecost island in Vanuatu. Apma belongs to the East Vanuatu languages, a branch of the Austronesian languages family....
, Ske permits a variety of voiced consonants
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
to occur at the end of syllables, although when they occur at the end of an utterance they are often followed by an 'echo' of the previous vowel. Thus ingg "you", for example, is often pronounced inggi.
In addition to the five standard vowels (a, e, i, o and u), Ske has mid-high vowels ê (intermediate between e and i) and ô (intermediate between o and u), like in Sowa
Sowa language
Sowa was the original language of south-central Pentecost island in Vanuatu. In recent times it has been totally displaced by Apma, a neighbouring language. Sowa is very closely related to Ske, another south Pentecost language....
and Sa
Saa language
Sa or Saa language is an Austronesian language spoken in southern Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. It had an estimated 2,500 speakers in the year 2000.- Dialects and range:Sa has numerous dialects, with no well-established names or boundaries...
languages. Vowels do not appear to be distinguished for length.
As in Pentecost's other languages, syllables ending with a consonant take stress in precedence to other syllables. In Ske this usually results in stress falling on the final syllable of a word.
A notable characteristic of Ske is the dropping of unstressed vowels. For example, the word "its eye" is usually realized in Ske as mzan (although in some phrases it is mezn). Dropping of vowels in Ske has resulted in a language rich in consonants, in contrast to related languages such as Raga
Raga language
Raga is the language of northern Pentecost island in Vanuatu. Raga belongs to the East Vanuatu languages, a branch of the Austronesian languages family...
.
Due to the presence of consonant clusters within syllables and other phonological features not typical of East Vanuatu languages, speakers of neighbouring languages consider Ske difficult to speak and learn.
Pronouns
Personal pronouns are distinguished by personGrammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
and number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
. They are not distinguished by gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
. The basic pronouns are:
| Person | Ske | English |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | nô | "me" |
| 2nd person singular | ingg | "you" (singular) |
| 3rd person singular | ni | "him / her / it" |
| 1st person dual (inclusive) | indaru | "us" (you and me, two of us) |
| 1st person dual (exclusive) | nggmwamaru | "us" (me and another) |
| 2nd person dual | nggmiaru | "you (two)" |
| 3rd person dual | niêraru | "them (two)" |
| 1st person plural (inclusive) | ind | "us" (you and me) |
| 1st person plural (exclusive) | ngmwam | "us" (me and others) |
| 2nd person plural | nggmi | "you" (plural) |
| 3rd person plural | niêr | "them" |
Nouns
Nouns in Ske are generally not preceded by articlesArticle (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
. Plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
ity is indicated by placing the pronoun niêr ("them") or a number after the noun.
Nouns may be either free, or directly possessed. Directly possessed nouns are suffixed to indicate whom an item belongs to. For example:
- dlongg = my voice
- dlom = your voice
- dlon = his/her voice
- dlon subu = the chief's voice
Possession may also be indicated by the use of possessive classifiers, separate words that occur before or after the noun and take possessive suffixes. These classifiers are:
- no- for general possessions (nongg tobang, "my basket")
- bliê- for things that are cared for, such as crops and livestock (bliêd bô, "our pig")
- a- for things to be eaten (am bwet, "your taro")
- ma- for things to be drunk (mar ri, "their water")
- biê- for fire (biêm ab, "your fire")
- diê- for fruits that are cut open (diên valnga, "his bush nut")
- mwa- for buildings (mwan im, "his house")
- na- for associations, over which the possessor has no control (vnô nangg, "my home island")
The possessive suffixes are as follows:
| Person | Ske | English |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | -ngg | "of mine" |
| 2nd person singular | -m | "of yours" (singular) |
| 3rd person singular | -n | "of his/hers/its" |
| 1st person dual (inclusive) | -ndiaru | "of ours" (yours and mine, two of us) |
| 1st person dual (exclusive) | -mwaru | "of ours" (mine and another's) |
| 2nd person dual | -miaru | "of yours" (two of you) |
| 3rd person dual | -raru | "of theirs" (two of them) |
| 1st person plural (inclusive) | -nd | "of ours" (yours and mine) |
| 1st person plural (exclusive) | -mwam | "of ours" (mine and others') |
| 2nd person plural | -mi | "of yours" (plural) |
| 3rd person plural | -r | "of theirs" |
| Generic | -nggze | - |
A verb may be transformed into a noun by the addition of a nominalising suffix -an:
Modifiers generally come after a noun:
Verbs
Verbs are preceded by markers providing information on the subject and the tenseGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
, aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
and mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
of an action. In idealised form, these verb markers are:
| Person | Subject marker - imperfective (present tense) |
Subject marker - perfective (past tense) |
Subject marker - irrealis (future tense) |
English |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | mwa | ni | mwande | "I" |
| 2nd person singular | kmwê | ki | ti | "you" (singular) |
| 3rd person singular | m or mwe | a | de | "he" / "she" / "it" |
| 1st person dual (inclusive) | ta | kra | tra | "we" (you and I, two of us) |
| 1st person dual (exclusive) | mwamra | mwara | mwandra | "we" (another and I) |
| 2nd person dual | mwira or mwria | kria | dria | "you" (two) |
| 3rd person dual | mra or bra or bria | ara | dra | "they" (two) |
| 1st person plural (inclusive) | pe | kve | tve | "we" (you and I) |
| 1st person plural (exclusive) | mwambe | mwave | mwandve | "we" (others and I) |
| 2nd person plural | bi | kvie | dvie | "you" (plural) |
| 3rd person plural | be | ave | dve | "they" |
In practice, speakers' usage of certain markers may differ slightly from this paradigm, with ti "you" often being used in the past tense as well as the future, for example.
There is a pattern of verb-consonant mutation
Consonant mutation
Consonant mutation is when a consonant in a word changes according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment.Mutation phenomena occur in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all modern Celtic languages...
whereby v at the start of a verb changes to b, and vw to bw. This mutation occurs in imperfective aspect (present tense), and in irrealis mood (future tense):
(Among a few older speakers there is also mutation of z to d, but most Ske speakers today use only the d forms.)
Hypothetical phrases are marked with mô:
Negative phrases are preceded by kare ("not"), or a variant:
- kare
Transitive
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
and intransitive
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
verb forms are distinguished. Transitive verbs are commonly suffixed with -nê:
- mwa rôh = I move
- mwa rôhnê vet = I move the stone
Ske makes extensive use of stative verb
Stative verb
A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
s for descriptive purposes.
Ske has a copular verb, vê or bê.
Verbs in Ske can be linked together in serial verb construction
Serial verb construction
The serial verb construction, also known as serialization, is a syntactic phenomenon common to many African, Asian and New Guinean languages...
s.
Sample phrases
| English | Ske |
|---|---|
| Where are you going? | Kmwê mba êmbeh? |
| I'm going to... | Mwa mba... |
| Where have you come from? | Ki me êmbeh? |
| I've come from... | Ni me... |
| Where is it? | Mdu êmbeh? |
| It's here | Mdu ene |
| Come here! | Ti me ene! |
| Go away! | Ti suk! |
| What's your name? | Siam ne siên? |
| My name is... | Siangg ne... |
| Where are you from? | Ingg azô ze êmbeh? |
| I am from... | Nô azô ze... |
| How much? / How many? | Avih? |
| one | alvwal |
| two | aru |
| three | aziôl |
| four | aviêt |
| five | alim |
| Thank you | Kmwê mbariêv |
| It's just fine | Ambis ngge |