Native to Vanuatu Native speakers 300 (2011) Glottolog seke1241 | Region Pentecost Island ISO 639-3 ske | |
Language family Austronesian
Malayo-Polynesian
Oceanic
Southern Oceanic
Vanuatu
Northern Vanuatu
East Vanuatu
Ske | ||
Ske (or Seke) 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.
Contents
The Ske area comprises fourteen small villages centred on 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.
Phonology
Following the orthography developed by linguist Kay Johnson in consultation with the Ske community, the consonants of Ske are b, d, g, h, k, l, m, n, ng (as in English "singer"), p, q (prenasalized g, written ngg or g-macron in some sources), 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 iq "you", for example, is often pronounced iqi.
In addition to the five standard vowels (a, e, i, o and u), Ske has mid-high vowels é (intermediate between e and i) and ó (intermediate between o and u), like in Sowa and Sa languages. Vowels do not appear to be distinguished for length.
Stress typically occurs 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.
Grammar
Basic word order in Ske is subject–verb–object.
Pronouns
Personal pronouns are distinguished by person and number. They are not distinguished by gender. The basic pronouns are:
Nouns
Nouns in Ske are generally not preceded by articles. Plurality is indicated by placing the pronoun nier ("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:
dloq = my voice dlom = your voice dlon = his/her voice dlon subu = the chief's voicePossession 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:
vwel = to dance (verb) vwelan = a dance (noun)Modifiers generally come after a noun:
vet = stone vet alok = big stone vet aviet = four stonesVerbs
Verbs are preceded by markers providing information on the subject and the tense, 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):
ni va = I went mwa ba = I am going mwade ba = I will go(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 mó:
ni mó umné = I should do itNegative phrases are preceded by kare ("not"), or a variant:
kare ni umné = I didn't do itTransitive and intransitive verb forms are distinguished. Transitive verbs are commonly suffixed with -né:
mwa róh = I move mwa róhné vet = I move the stoneSke makes extensive use of stative verbs for descriptive purposes.
Ske has a copular verb, vé or bé.
Verbs in Ske can be linked together in serial verb constructions.