Koro language (Vanuatu)

This article is about the Koro language of Vanuatu. For other uses, see Koro language (disambiguation).

Koro
Pronunciation	[kʊrʊ]
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Gaua
Native speakers	250 (2012) [1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic North-Central Vanuatu North Vanuatu Torres-Banks Koro
Language codes
ISO 639-3	krf
Glottolog	koro1318
ELP	Koro (Vanuatu)
Koro is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger .

Koro is an Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu. Its 280 speakers live in the village of Koro, on the south coast of Gaua. ^[2]

Koro is a distinct language from its immediate neighbours, Dorig (300 sp.) and Olrat (4 sp.). ^[3]

Name

The name Koro, spelled natively as Kōrō [kʊrʊ] , is an endonym referring to the village.

Phonology

Koro has eight phonemic vowels. These include seven monophthongs /iɪɛaɔʊu/ and one diphthong /ɛ͡a/. ^[4]

	Front	Back
Near-close	i ⟨i⟩	u ⟨u⟩
Close-mid	ɪ ⟨ē⟩	ʊ ⟨ō⟩
Open-mid	ɛ ⟨e⟩	ɔ ⟨o⟩
Open	a ⟨a⟩

The diphthong [ɛ͡a] is spelled as ⟨ä⟩.

Grammar

The system of personal pronouns in Koro contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural). ^[5]

Spatial reference in Koro is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages. ^[6]

Notes and references

References

1. François (2012:88) harvcoltxt error: no target: CITEREFFrançois2012 (help).
2. François (2005 :444).
3. List of Banks islands languages.
4. François (2005 :445).
5. François (2016).
6. François (2015).

Bibliography

• François, Alexandre (2005), "Unraveling the history of the vowels of seventeen northern Vanuatu languages" (PDF), Oceanic Linguistics, 44 (2): 443–504, doi:10.1353/ol.2005.0034, S2CID   131668754
• —— (2011), "Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence" (PDF), Journal of Historical Linguistics, 1 (2): 175–246, doi:10.1075/jhl.1.2.03fra, hdl: 1885/29283 .
• —— (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages" (PDF), International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2012 (214): 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022, S2CID   145208588
• —— (2015). "The ins and outs of up and down: Disentangling the nine geocentric space systems of Torres and Banks languages" (PDF). In Alexandre François; Sébastien Lacrampe; Michael Franjieh; Stefan Schnell (eds.). The languages of Vanuatu: Unity and diversity. Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics. pp. 137–195. hdl:1885/14819. ISBN   978-1-922185-23-5.
• —— (2016), "The historical morphology of personal pronouns in northern Vanuatu" (PDF), in Pozdniakov, Konstantin (ed.), Comparatisme et reconstruction : tendances actuelles, Faits de Langues, vol. 47, Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 25–60
• —— (2021). "In love with an eel man". Pangloss Collection . Paris: CNRS. Retrieved 22 Feb 2022.

External links

• Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Koro on Gaua.
• Audio recordings in the Koro language, in open access, by A. François ( Pangloss Collection ).