| Olrat | |
|---|---|
| Ōlrat | |
| Pronunciation | [ʊlrat] |
| Native to | Vanuatu |
| Region | Gaua |
Native speakers | 3 (2012) [1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | olr |
| Glottolog | olra1234 |
| ELP | Olrat |
 Olrat is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger . | |
Olrat was an Oceanic language of Gaua island, in northern Vanuatu. It became extinct in 2009 with the death of its last speaker, Maten Womal. [2]
The name Olrat (spelled natively as Ōlrat [ʊlrat] ) is an endonym. Robert Codrington mentions a place south of Lakon village under the Mota name Ulrata. [3] A few decades later, Sidney Ray mentions the language briefly in 1926 under the same Mota name ‒ but provides no linguistic information. [4]
In 2003, only three speakers of Olrat remained, who lived on the middle-west coast of Gaua. [5] Their community had left their inland hamlet of Olrat in the first half of the 20th century, and merged into the larger village of Jōlap where Lakon is dominant. [1] [2]
Alexandre François identifies Olrat as a distinct language from its immediate neighbor Lakon, on phonological, [6] grammatical, [7] and lexical [8] grounds.
Olrat has 14 phonemic vowels. These include 7 short /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and 7 long vowels /iː ɪː ɛː aː ɔː ʊː uː/. [9] [2]
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Near-close | i ⟨i⟩ ∙ iː ⟨ii⟩ | u ⟨u⟩ ∙ uː ⟨uu⟩ |
| Close-mid | ɪ ⟨ē⟩ ∙ ɪː ⟨ēē⟩ | ʊ ⟨ō⟩ ∙ ʊː ⟨ōō⟩ |
| Open-mid | ɛ ⟨e⟩ ∙ ɛː ⟨ee⟩ | ɔ ⟨o⟩ ∙ ɔː ⟨oo⟩ |
| Open | a ⟨a⟩ ∙ aː ⟨aa⟩ | |
Historically, the phonologization of vowel length originates in the compensatory lengthening of short vowels when the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ was lost syllable-finally. [10]
The system of personal pronouns in Olrat contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural). [11]
Spatial reference in Olrat is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages. [12]
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