Neve'ei language

Name of the language

The traditional name of the language, which is recognized by older speakers, is Neveʻei. However, the majority of younger speakers of Neve’ei do not use the traditional name and some are not even aware of it. Native speakers commonly refer to their language as Nabusian teget which literally means “our language” and in Bislama the language(Neveʻei) is called Lanwis Vinmavis “the language of Vinmavis”. Neveʻei is the traditional name for the language; Vinmavis is the name of one of the villages in which the language is spoken in(Lynch and Crowley 2001:83).

Syllable Structure

Syllables that consist of two vowels are also present, but are only used for specific reasons. While most two non-like vowels can be used to form a morpheme, there are certain exceptions that must be noted.

Orthography

Neve’ei does not have a traditional orthography. Like elsewhere in Vanuatu, most speakers of Neve’ei write using either Bislama, English or sometimes French. However, Neve’ei is sometimes used in writing for certain special occasions, such as the composition of hymns, recording details of family history, and land ownership. Due to the lack of stable spelling conventions for Neve’ei, individuals differ in the choice of orthographical methods when transcribing unusual phonemes. In the past efforts had been made to create a standard orthography, but the current situation is unknown.

Independent pronouns

In Neve’ei, independent pronouns can function as verbal subjects, as verbal and prepositional objects, and as pronominal possessors following directly possessed nouns. Independent pronouns inflect according to person and number (singular, dual, or non-singular), but not according to case or grammatical gender. First person pronouns also distinguish between inclusive and exclusive in the dual and non-singular forms.

Although Neve’ei has a distinction between dual and plural, the forms listed as non-singular can be used to refer to both dual and plural subjects. In these cases, even when the non-singular independent pronoun is used, the dual verbal prefix will be used.

Example:

The pronominal forms listed as dual in the table are instead used in cases where there is a pragmatic contrast with singular or plural reference, or where two participants are acting together rather than separately.

Example:

Possessive pronouns

Neve’ei contains a set of possessive postmodifiers which are used as possessive adjuncts with indirectly possessed nouns. The possessive pronouns (used when the possessed noun is not overtly expressed) are derived from these possessive postmodifiers by adding the prefix ti-, although this may be omitted in some forms. Like the independent pronouns, these pronominal forms indicate person and number, and the non-singular forms may be used for dual referents. These pronominal forms also have an inclusive/exclusive distinction.

Example:

Indefinite pronouns

Neve’ei also contains a set of indefinite pronouns which function as both verbals subjects and objects, with separate forms in fast and slow speech.

Example:

Nouns

in Neveʻei, similar to most Oceanic Languages nouns do not change. The inflection of nouns by numbers does not occur and instead postmodifiers are used. It is also interesting to note that only two types of possession exist in Neveʻei. These two types of possession are: direct and indirect. For a directly possessed noun, a suffix is attached directly to the noun itself and for a indirectly possessed noun, a possessive postmodifier appears before the noun.

Directly possessed nouns most commonly have stems ending in vowels, but stems ending in non-nasal alveolar consonants t,s,l and r have also been encountered.

Noun Derivation

In Neveʻei complex nouns can be formed by compounding or affixation. Compounding involves combining a noun root with either a noun or verb root. And affixation involves deriving nouns from verbs, a process in which a simulfix is added to the verb stem.

Cardinal Numerals (numerals that denote quantity)

Neveʻei uses a decimal (base 10) system for numbers, however many young people are only familiar with one to ten, so higher value numerals are often expressed using methods derived from Bislama.

10 is an interesting number in Neveʻei because it can be either nangavil or nangavil sevkh. Also note that nangavil is used for the actual number 10 when counting and vungavil is used to modify a phrase or noun. An example would be noang vungavil which translates to "10 canoes" in english.

Person markers

In Neve’ei, subject verbal prefixes are obligatory and indicate the person and number of the subject. There are two complete sets of prefixes: one for realis mood and the other for irrealis. Unlike the pronoun systems, there is no distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person, and dual prefixes are always used with dual referents. There is no set of affixes encoding the person and number of objects. Vowels in some of these prefixes may change according to the first vowel in the verb stem; this is a process of progressive assimilation at a distance.

Irrealis prefixes

Example:

The third person singular realis prefix is sometimes realised as ∅- in various environments. This is more common with certain verbs, especially verbs where the stem begins with s.

Example:

Verbal prefixes ending in t also often lose the t before verb roots beginning with s.

Example:

Reduplication in Neveʻei

Reduplication is most commonly used in Neveʻei to indicate things such as intensity, prohibition, reciprocity and habitual aspects and is also sometimes used in order to differentiate between transitive and intransitive forms of a verb. The most common method of reduplication in Neveʻei is the repeating of the first syllable in the verb stem.

Example

This example shows reduplication to express a habitual aspect.

Example

This example shows reduplication to express prohibition.

Example

This example shows reduplication to express reciprocity.

Example

This example shows reduplication to express intensity.

Transitive suffix

In Neveʻei transitive and intransitive verbs are represented by a technique in which intransitive verbs become transitive through the addition of a suffix -V(vowel)n to the end of an intransitive verb stem.

The suffix to make verbs transitive has three allomorphs. They are:

-on ~ -en (used for verb stems ending in oC(consonant)).

-an ~ -en (used for verb stems ending in aC(consonant) where the consonant is also glottal or velar).

-en (used elsewhere).

Apart from addition of the suffix, there are two other methods to differentiate between intransitive and transitive verbs.

One other way is for both transitive and intransitive verbs to have very different forms of expression.

The final way for intransitive and transitive verbs to differentiate from each other is through reduplication.