Wuvulu-Aua language

The Wuvulu-Aua language is an Austronesian language which is spoken on the Wuvulu and Aua Islands and in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea.

Although Wuvulu-Aua has a grammatical structure, word order, and tenses which are similar to other Oceanic languages, it has an unusually complex morphology. Wuvulu Island, in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea, is about 10 feet (3.0 m) above sea level. Wuvulu and Aua Islands are part of the Admiralty Islands, part of the Bismarck Archipelago, which includes other provinces such as New Ireland, East New Britain, and Morobe. Wuvulu is spoken by an estimated 1,600 people in Manus Province; there are approximately 1,000 speakers of the language on Wuvulu, and 400 on Aua. The remaining speakers of Wuvulu inhabit other islands in Papua New Guinea.

Wuvulu is most similar to Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, and other Oceanic languages surrounding the Admiralty Islands. Wuvulu-Aua is one of only three languages in the Western subgroup of the Admiralty Islands languages. The other two languages are Seimat and Kaniet, the latter of which is now extinct.

There are three dialects of Wuvulu which are unique to the clans on the islands. The Onne and Auna dialects are spoken on Wuvulu, and the Aua dialect is spoken on Aua. Each dialect differs in phoneme, distinguishing them from one another. The islands of Wuvulu and Aua also have a lexical and phonological distinction.

Wuvulu-Aua is part of the Austronesian language family. It also belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian language group, one of the major Austronesian language families. Based on location, Wuvulu-Aua is in the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian family. More specifically, it is part of the Oceanic Western Admiralty Island language family. Wuvulu-Aua is made up of two languages (Wuvulu and Aua), which vary in the pronunciation of consonants such as /r/.

Most researchers believe that the Proto-Eastern Malayo Polynesian (PEMP) language originated in the Bird's Head Peninsula of northwestern New Guinea. PEMP developed different descendant languages; one was Proto-Oceanic (PO), which reached the northern coasts of New Guinea and Indonesia and Wuvulu. About thirty-one languages in the Admiralty subgroup of Oceanic languages are derived from PO; twenty-eight languages belong to the Eastern Admiralty subgroup, and three other languages (Wuvulu-Aua, Seimat, and the extinct Kaniet) belong to the Western Admiralty subgroup.

Wuvulu-Aua has a small phoneme inventory, consisting of 20 phonemes. There are ten vowels (five vowels and five long counterparts) and 10 consonants. There are two front vowels (/i/ and /e/) and two back vowels (/o/ and /u/); /a/ is the only central vowel. High, mid, and low vowels are fairly even in terms of frequency; high vowels are the most frequent, and mid vowels are the least frequent.

Wuvulu's five long-vowel phonemes have the same phonetic quality as their standard-vowel counterparts, but are longer in duration. There are 20 possible diphthongs of the five basic vowels: eight falling pairs (/ia/, /ie/, /io/, /ea/, /ua/, /uo/, /ue/ and /oa/), eight rising pairs (/ai/, /au/, /ei/, /eu/, /oi/, /ou/, /ae/ and /ao/), and four level pairs: /iu/, /eo/, /ui/ and /oe/. The terms rising, falling and level refer to the rise (or fall) of the sonority of the diphthongs. Three vowel pairs common in other languages do not exist in Wuvulu: eo, oe, and ae. Previous research suggests that diphthongs are not phonemic in Wuvulu.