Rapa Nui language
Rapa Nui or Rapanui, also known as Pascuan or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.
The island is home to a population of just under 6,000 and is a special territory of Chile. According to census data, there are about 3,700 people on the island and on the Chilean mainland who identify as ethnically Rapa Nui. Census data does not exist on the primary known and spoken languages among these people. In 2008, the number of fluent speakers was reported as low as 800. Rapa Nui is a minority language and many of its adult speakers also speak Spanish. Most Rapa Nui children now grow up speaking Spanish and those who do learn Rapa Nui begin learning it later in life.
History
The Rapa Nui language is isolated within Eastern Polynesian, which also includes the Marquesic and Tahitic languages. Within Eastern Polynesian, it is closest to Marquesan morphologically, although its phonology has more in common with New Zealand Maori, as both languages are relatively conservative in retaining consonants lost in other Eastern Polynesian languages.Like all Polynesian languages, Rapa Nui has relatively few consonants. Uniquely for an Eastern Polynesian language, Rapa Nui has preserved the original glottal stop of Proto-Polynesian. It is, or until recently was, a verb-initial language.
One of the most important recent books written about the language of Rapa Nui is Verónica du Feu's Rapanui .
Very little is known about the Rapa Nui language prior to European contact. The majority of Rapa Nui vocabulary is inherited directly from Proto–Eastern Polynesian. Due to extensive borrowing from Tahitian there now often exist two forms for what was the same word in the early language. For example, Rapa Nui has Tahitian ꞌite alongside original tikeꞌa for 'to see', both derived from Proto-Eastern Polynesian *kiteꞌa. There are also hybridized forms of words such as hakaꞌite 'to teach', from native haka and Tahitian ꞌite.
Language notes from 1770 and 1774
Spanish notes from a 1770 visit to the island record 94 words and terms. Many are clearly Polynesian, but several are not easily recognizable. For example, the numbers from one to ten seemingly have no relation to any known language. They are compared with contemporary Rapa Nui words, in parenthesis:- cojàna
- corena
- cogojù
- quirote
- majanà
- teùto
- tejèa
- moroqui
- vijoviri
- queromata-paùpaca quacaxixiva
Captain James Cook visited the island four years later, and had a Tahitian interpreter with him, who, while recognizing some Polynesian words, was not able to converse with the islanders in general. The British also attempted to record the numerals and were able to record the correct Polynesian words.
Post-Peruvian enslavement
In the 1860s the Peruvian slave raids began. It was at this time that Peruvians were experiencing labor shortages and they came to regard the Pacific as a vast source of free labor. Slavers raided islands as far away as Micronesia, but Easter Island was much closer and became a prime target.In December 1862 eight Peruvian ships landed their crewmen and between bribery and outright violence they captured some 1,000 Easter Islanders, including the king, his son, and the ritual priests. It has been estimated that a total of 2,000 Easter Islanders were captured over a period of years. Those who survived to arrive in Peru were poorly treated, overworked, and exposed to diseases. Ninety percent of the Rapa Nui died within one or two years of capture.
Eventually the Bishop of Tahiti caused a public outcry and an embarrassed Peru rounded up the few survivors to return them. A shipload headed to Easter Island, but smallpox broke out en route and only 15 arrived at the island. They were put ashore. The resulting smallpox epidemic nearly wiped out the remaining population.
In the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1860s, Rapa Nui came under extensive outside influence from neighbouring Polynesian languages such as Tahitian. While the majority of the population that was taken to work as slaves in the Peruvian mines died of diseases and bad treatment in the 1860s, hundreds of other Easter Islanders who left for Mangareva in the 1870s and 1880s to work as servants or labourers adopted the local form of Tahitian-Pidgin. Fischer argues that this pidgin became the basis for the modern Rapa Nui language when the surviving part of the Rapa Nui immigrants on Mangareva returned to their almost deserted home island.
Language notes from 1886
William J. Thomson, paymaster on the USS Mohican, spent twelve days on Easter Island from 19 to 30 December 1886. Among the data Thomson collected was the Rapa Nui calendar.Language notes from the twentieth century
Father Sebastian Englert, a German missionary living on Easter Island during 1935–1969, published a partial Rapa Nui–Spanish dictionary in his La Tierra de Hotu Matuꞌa in 1948, trying to save what was left of the old language. Despite the many typographical mistakes, the dictionary is valuable, because it provides a wealth of examples which all appear drawn from a real corpus, part oral traditions and legends, part actual conversations.Englert recorded vowel length, stress, and glottal stop, but was not always consistent, or perhaps the misprints make it seem so. He indicated vowel length with a circumflex, and stress with an acute accent, but only when it does not occur where expected. The glottal stop is written as an apostrophe, but is often omitted. The velar nasal is sometimes transcribed with a, but sometimes with a Greek eta,, as a graphic approximation of.
Rongorongo
It is assumed that rongorongo, the undeciphered script of Easter Island, represents the old Rapa Nui language.Hispanisation
The island is under the jurisdiction of Chile and is now home to a number of Chilean continentals most of whom speak only Spanish. The influence of the Spanish language is noticeable in modern Rapa Nui speech. As fewer children learn to speak Rapa Nui at an early age, their superior knowledge of Spanish affects the 'passive knowledge' they have of Rapa Nui. A version of Rapa Nui interspersed with Spanish nouns, verbs and adjectives has become a popular form of casual speech. The most well integrated borrowings are the Spanish conjunctions o, pero and y. Spanish words such as problema, which was once rendered as poroborema, are now often integrated with minimal or no change.Spanish words are still often used within Rapa Nui grammatical rules, though some word order changes are occurring and it is argued that Rapa Nui may be undergoing a shift from VSO to the Spanish SVO. This example sentence was recorded first in 1948 and again in 2001 and its expression has changed from VSO to SVO.
Easter Island's indigenous Rapa Nui toponymy has survived with few Spanish additions or replacements, a fact that has been attributed in part to the survival of the Rapa Nui language. This contrasts with the toponymy of continental Chile, which has lost most of its indigenous names.
Phonology
Rapa Nui has ten consonants and five vowels.Consonants
As present generation Rapa Nui speak Spanish as their first language in younger years and learn Rapa Nui later in life, flap in word-initial position can be pronounced alveolar trill.Vowels
All vowels can be either long or short and are always long when they are stressed in the final position of a word. Most vowel sequences are present, with the exception of *uo. Repetition sequences do not occur except in eee.Orthography
Written Rapa Nui uses the Latin script. The Latin alphabet for Rapa Nui consists of 20 letters:A, Ā, E, Ē, G, H, I, Ī, K, M, N, O, О̄, P, R, T, U, Ū, V, ꞌ
The nasal velar consonant is generally written with the Latin letter, but occasionally as. In electronic texts, the glottal plosive may be written with an 'okina to avoid the problems of using a straight apostrophe. A special letter,, is sometimes used to distinguish the Spanish, occurring in introduced terms, from the Rapa Nui. Similarly, has been written to distinguish it from Spanish g. The IPA letter is now also coming into use.
Morphology
Syllable structure
Syllables in Rapa Nui are CV or V. There are no consonant clusters or word-final consonants.Reduplication
The reduplication of whole nouns or syllable parts performs a variety of different functions within Rapa Nui. To describe colours for which there is not a predefined word, the noun for an object of a like colour is duplicated to form an adjective. For example:Besides forming adjectives from nouns, the reduplication of whole words can indicate a multiple or intensified action. For example:
There are some apparent duplicate forms for which the original form has been lost. For example:
The reduplication of the initial syllable in verbs can indicate plurality of subject or object. In this example the bolded section represents the reduplication of a syllable which indicates the plurality of the subject of a transitive verb:
The reduplication of the final two syllables of a verb indicates plurality or intensity. In this example the bolded section represents the reduplication of two final syllables, indicating intensity or emphasis:
Loanwords
Rapa Nui incorporates a number of loanwords in which constructions such as consonant clusters or word-final consonants occur, though they do not occur naturally in the language. Historically, the practice was to transliterate unfamiliar consonants, insert vowels between clustered consonants and append word-final vowels where necessary.More recently, loanwords – which come primarily from Spanish – retain their consonant clusters. For example, "litro".
Syntax
Word order
Rapa Nui is a VSO language. Except where verbs of sensing are used, the object of a verb is marked by the relational particle i.Where a verb of sensing is used, the subject is marked by the agentive particle e.
Pronoun
Pronouns are usually marked for number: in Rapa Nui there are markers for first, second and third personal singular and plural; however, there is only a marker for dual in the first person. The first person dual and plural can mark for exclusive and inclusive. The pronouns are always ahead of the person singular 'a' and relational particle 'i' or dative 'ki'. However, in some examples, they do not have PRS, RLT and DAT.There is only one paradigm of pronouns for Rapa Nui. They function the same in both subject and object cases.
Here is the table for the pronoun forms in Rapa Nui:
| abbreviations | grammatical interpretations | Rapa Nui forms |
| 1s | 1st-person singular | au |
| 2s | 2nd-person singular | koe |
| 3s | 3rd-person singular | ia |
| 1de | 1st-person dual exclusive | māua |
| 1di | 1st-person dual inclusive | tāua |
| 1pe | 1st-person plural exclusive | mātou |
| 1pi | 1st-person plural inclusive | tātou |
| 2p | 2nd-person non-singular | kōrua |
| 3p | 3rd-person non-singular | rāua |
'I live here all alone'
'They made him governor'
Abbreviations used
ACT – actionCAUS – causative
EX – existential
LIM – limitative
PFT – perfect tense
PPD – postpositive determinant
PRS – person singular
RLT – relational particle
STA – state
±SPE – +/- specific
TOW – towards subject
Questions
Yes/no questions are distinguished from statements chiefly by a particular pattern of intonation. Where there is no expectation of a particular answer, the form remains the same as a statement. A question expecting an agreement is preceded by hoki.Conjunction
Original Rapa Nui has no conjunctive particles. Copulative, adversative and disjunctive notions are typically communicated by context or clause order. Modern Rapa Nui has almost completely adopted Spanish conjunctions rather than rely on this.Possession
Alienable and inalienable possession
In the Rapa Nui language, there are alienable and inalienable possession. Lichtemberk described alienable possession as the possessed noun being contingently associated with the possessor, and on the other hand inalienable possession as the possessed noun being necessarily associated with the possessor. The distinction is marked by a possessive suffix inserted before the relevant pronoun.Possessive particles:
- a expresses dominant possession
e.g.
'I must cook dinner for my children who are hungry'
poki 'children' is an alienable possession therefore a is used to indicate that in this sentence, therefore the possessive pronoun "ta'aku" is used instead of "to'oku"
- o expresses the subordinate possession
e.g.
'It is true apparently, he is my brother.'
Inalienable possession o is used in this example, therefore "'o'oku" instead of "'a'aku" is used. It is talking about the speaker's brother, which is an inalienable relation.
There are no markers to distinguish between temporary or permanent possession; the nature of objects possessed; or between past, present or future possession.
A and O possession
A and O possession refer to alienable and inalienable possession in Rapa Nui. a marks for alienable possession and o marks for inalienable possession. a and o are marked as suffixes of the possessive pronouns; however, they are only marked when the possessive pronoun is in the first, second or third person singular. In above, taina 'sibling' is inalienable and the possessor is first person singular ꞌoꞌoku 'my'. However, for all the other situations, a and o are not marked as a suffix of the possessor.'We'll talk about those matters.'
In the above example, the possessor meꞌe 'those' is not a possessive pronoun of the first, second or third person singular. Therefore, o is marked not as a suffix of the possessor but a separate word in the sentence.
Classifiers
There are no classifiers in the Rapa Nui language.Abbreviations used
BEN- benefactiveEMP-emphasis
GRP- group plural
LIM - limitative
POS1sa- possessive 1st person singular alienable
POS1si - possessive 1st person singular inalienable
POS - possession
PPD- postpositive determinant
PFT - perfect tense
RES - resultative
RLT-relational particle
+/- SPE - +/- specific
STA- state
Exclamation
Ko and ka are exclamatory indicators.Compound words
Terms which did not exist in original Rapa Nui were created via compounding:Negation
In Rapa Nui, negation is indicated by free standing morphemes. Rapa Nui has four main negators:Additionally there are also two additional particles/ morphemes which also contribute to negation in Rapa Nui:
Negation occurs as preverbal particles in the verb phrase, with the clausal negator kai and ko occurring in first position in the verbal phrase, while the constituent negator occurs in second position in the verbal phrase. Clausal negators occur in the same position as aspect markers and subordinators—this means it is impossible for these elements to co-occur. As a result, negative clauses tend to have fewer aspectual distinctions. Hia occurs in eighth position as a post-verbal marker. Verbal negators precede adjectives. The table below roughly depicts the positions of negators in the Verb Phrase:
Position in the verb phrase
Clausal negators
''ꞌIna''
ꞌIna is the neutral negator. It has the widest range of use in a variety of contexts. It usually occurs in imperfective contexts, as well as habitual clauses and narrative contexts, and is used to negate actions and states. It almost always occurs clause initially and is always followed by the neutral aspectual he + noun or he + verb.'There was no light to see the food.'
In the example above ꞌina is followed by the combination of he+ maꞌeha
'He did not see many people.'
In this example, ꞌina is followed by he + takeꞌa
In addition to negating verbal and nominal clauses, it also functions as the term ꞌnoꞌas shown below:
'There were no chairs?...'
Unlike the other two clausal negators, ꞌina is a phrase head, thus it can form a constituent of its own.
''Kai''
Kai negates clauses with perfective aspects.'I don't know who she is.'
It is used to negate past events and narrative events, and is usually combined with ꞌina. It is also used to negate stative verbs, and a verb phrase marked with kai may contain various post-verbal particles such as the continuity marker ꞌâ / ꞌana. This marker occurs when the clause has perfect aspect. When combined with kai, it indicates that the negative state continues.
'I haven't yet started to chop down a tree.'
''(E)ko''
ko is the imperfective negator, which replaces the aspectual marker in front of the verb, and which can occur with the negator ꞌina.| 107) ꞌIna | e | ko | kai | i | te | kahi | o | tôꞌona | vaka |
| eat | tuna | of | boat |
' would not eat the tune his boat.'
It marks negative commands in imperatives with the e often excluded in imperatives.
'Don't eat raw food.'
In other contexts, especially when ꞌina is absent, the e is obligatory.
'Don't you want to dance with me ?'
Constituent negator
''Taꞌe''
Taꞌe is a constituent negator used to negate anything other than a main clause. This can be subordinate clauses, prepositional phrases, possessive predicates and other non-verbal clauses. It also negates nominalised verbs and sub-constituents such as adjectives and quantifiers. It does not negate nouns. It is also used to negate locative phrases, actor emphasis constructions, and is also used to reinforce the preposition mai.'I'm going now, before it gets dark.'
Taꞌe is an indicator for subordinate clauses, as it can also negate subordinate clauses without subordinate markers.
'Because did not listen, it got lost.'
It also occurs in main clauses with main clause negators and aspect markers i and e, when the clause has a feature of a subordinate clause such as oblique constituents
Noun negator: ''kore''
kore is a verb meaning 'the absence or lack of something'.'He looked ; the crying was over.'
It immediately follows the noun in the adjective position, and is used to indicate that the entity expressed by the noun or noun modifier does not exist or is lacking in the given context.
'The problem was the lack of files to sharpen at the time.'
''Hia'' / ''ia''
Hia / ia is a morpheme used immediately after negated verbs and co-occurs with a negator to indicate actions or events which are interrupted or are yet to happen.'When he had not yet become a priest, he came here.'
Double negation
In Rapa Nui, double negation is more frequent than single negation. It is often used as a slight reinforcement or emphasis.ꞌIna can be combined with negators kai and ko- both of these are main clause negators.
'She hasn't come for two days.'
In the example above we see the negator ꞌina co-occurring with the perfective negator kai.
When taꞌe occurs in double negation, if the other negator is kai or ko, the negative polarity is cancelled out.
' did not fail to make known who he is, by the good things he did.'
ꞌIna only negates main clauses so it never combines with the negator taꞌe, which is a subordinate clause negator. When occurring with ꞌina, negation may be reinforced.
', he will not fail to catch fish.'
Double negation occurs very frequently in imperatives in particular.
'Don't go to another place.'