Niuean language


Niuean is a Polynesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages. It is most closely related to Tongan and slightly more distantly to other Polynesian languages such as Māori, Samoan, and Hawaiian. Together, Tongan and Niuean form the Tongic subgroup of the Polynesian languages. Niuean also has a number of influences from Samoan and Eastern Polynesian languages.

Speakers

Niuean was spoken by 1600 people on Niue Island in 1991, as well as by speakers in the Cook Islands, New Zealand, and Tonga, for a total of around 8,000 speakers. There are thus more speakers of Niuean outside the island itself than on the island. Most inhabitants of Niue are bilingual in English.
In the early 1990s 70% of the speakers of Niuean lived in New Zealand.

Dialects

Niuean consists of two main dialects, the older Motu dialect from the north of the island and the Tafiti dialect of the south. The words mean, respectively, the people of the island and the strangers.
The differences between the dialects are mainly in vocabulary or in the form of some words.
Examples of differences in vocabulary are volu vs matā for scrape, scraper and lala vs kautoga for guava ; examples of differences in form include hafule / afule, aloka/haloka, nai/nei, ikiiki/likiliki, and malona/maona.

Phonology

is an allophone of before front vowels underwent this change along with native words, words borrowed into Niuean after this development retain the original .
and are marginal phonemes, only appearing in foreign borrowings. Some speakers substitute and, respectively.

Vowels

is distinctive in Niuean; vowels are either long or short. Furthermore, two adjacent identical vowels form a rearticulated vowel; the sound is distinct from one long vowel.
Both short and long vowels can occur in any position.
All short vowels may combine with one another to form diphthongs. The possible diphthongs are:

Hiatus

Hiatus is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels, as opposed to diphthongs, which are written as two letters but pronounced as one sound. These two vowels may be the same or be different ones.
Hiatus typically occurs across morpheme boundaries, such as when a suffix ending with a vowel comes before a root beginning with that same vowel. It may also occur, rarely, within monomorphemic words as a result of the elision of a historical intervocalic consonant.
Two adjacent identical short vowels are always pronounced separately, as are combinations of any two long vowels or a short and a long vowel; two adjacent different short vowels may undergo hiatus or form a diphthong. This must be determined from the morphology or etymology of the word.

Syllable structure

The basic structure of a Niuean syllable is V; all syllables end in a vowel or diphthong, and may start with at most one consonant. Consonant clusters in borrowed words are broken up with epenthetic vowels, e.g. English tractor becomes tuleketā.

Stress

The stress on a Niuean word is nearly always on the penult, though multi-syllable words ending in a long vowel put primary stress on the final long vowel and secondary stress on the penult. Long vowels in other positions also attract a secondary stress.

Glottal stop

The Niuean language does not contain the glottal stop, which is present in its closest relative, Tongan. This has caused some distinct words to merge. For example, Tongan ta and tau have merged in Niuean as tau.

Orthography

Niuean orthography is largely phonemic; that is, one letter stands for one sound and vice versa.

Alphabet

The traditional alphabet order, given with the traditional names of the letters, is ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, fā, gā, hā, kā, lā, mō, nū, pī, tī, vī, rō, sā. Note that rō and sā as introduced letters are ordered at the end.
Sperlich uses an alphabetical order based on English for his dictionary: a, ā, e, ē, f, g, h, i, ī, k, l, m, n, o, ō, p, s, t, u, ū, v. He recommends that consonants be named consistently with a following ā: fā, gā, hā, kā, lā, mā, nā, pā, tā, vā, rā, sā.
Vowel length can be marked with a macron; however, this is not always done.

History

As with many languages, writing was brought to Niue in connection with religion, in this case with Christianity by missionaries educated in Samoa. This has led to some Samoan influences in morphology and grammar and also to a noticeable one in spelling: as in Samoan, the sound is written g, rather than ng as in Tongan and some other Polynesian languages with this sound.

Grammar

Typology

Niuean can be considered a VSO language; however, one analysis of Niuean uses ergative terminology, in which case it may be better to speak of verb–agent–patient word order.
Because the unmarked case is the absolutive, Niuean transitive verb constructions often appear passive in a literal translation.
Compare
and
The first example sentence could also be translated into English as the nominative–accusative construction "He saw the crab".

Pronouns

Niuean pronouns are differentiated by person and number. Furthermore, first person non-singular pronouns distinguish inclusive and exclusive forms, including and excluding the listener, respectively. However, they are not differentiated by gender or case; for example, ia means both he and she, him and her.
The Niuean pronouns are:
singulardualplural
first person autauatautolu
first person aumauamautolu
second personkoemuamutolu
third personialaualautolu

Note that the endings of the dual and plural forms resemble the numbers 2 and 3, ua and tolu.

Numbers

Some numbers in Niuean are:
1taha10hogofulu100taha e teau1000taha e afe
2ua20uafulu200ua teau2000ua afe
3tolu30tolugofulu300tolu teau3000tolu afe
4fa*40fagofuluetc.etc.etc.etc.
5lima50limagofulu----
6onoetc.etc.----
7fitu------
8valu------
9hiva------

and Sperlich give fā for four; however, Kaulima & Beaumont
Tens and ones combine with ma, e.g. hogofulu ma taha, 11; tolugofulu ma ono, 36.
The numbers from one to nine can take the prefix toko- when used to count persons; for example, tokolima five .
Numbers are used as verbs, for example:
or
or

Morphology

comprises the ways in which words are built up from smaller, meaningful sub-units, or how words change their form in certain circumstances.

Suppletion

Suppletion concerns closely related words which are based on very different forms, for example fano to go and ō to go. This can be compared to English go and went, which are forms of the same verb yet differ in form.

Reduplication

is frequently used in Niuean morphology to derive different nouns. Reduplication is the process of taking the entire morpheme, or sometimes only the first or last syllable or two, and repeating it.
This is used for several purposes, including:
An example of a whole-morpheme reduplication indicating a plural verb is molemole to have passed by, to be gone from mole to have passed by, to be gone; an example of a whole-morpheme reduplication indicating a frequentative verb is molomolo to keep squeezing from molo to squeeze, to compress.
Examples of part-morpheme reduplication are gagau to bite from gau to chew, gegele to make a crying sound from gele to start to cry , and molūlū to be very soft, to be very weak from molū to be soft, to be weak''.
Reduplication is also frequently employed together with [|affixes].

Affixes

es are frequently used for a variety of purposes; there is also one circumfix, fe- -aki, which is used to form reciprocal verbs.
A common suffix is -aga, which is a nominaliser: it forms nouns from verbs.
A common prefix with faka-, with a variety of meanings, the most common being a causative one.
Words may also have more than one prefix or suffix, as fakamalipilipi to break, from faka-, ma-, and a [|reduplicated] lipi to break.

Compound words

Many words are simply formed by joining together other words, for example vakalele aeroplane from vaka canoe and lele fly. Diane Massam has extensively studied a special type of compounding which she has termed pseudo noun incorporation, a type of noun incorporation.