Araki: A disappearing language of Vanuatu

L’araki est une langue de tradition orale, appartenant à la branche océanienne de la famille austronésienne. Aujourd’hui parlé par moins d’une dizaine de locuteurs sur une petite île du Vanuatu, il est fortement menacé de disparition. Première publication sur cette langue, cette étude rassemble tout ce qu’il a été possible d’en appréhender. L’essentiel de l’ouvrage présente la grammaire de l’araki : phonologie et morphologie, inventaire des catégories syntaxiques, structure interne des syntagmes nominaux et verbaux, sémantique de l’aspect et du mode, phrase complexe, etc. Outre la grammaire elle-même, un lexique bilingue est proposé, ainsi qu’une sélection de textes empruntés à la tradition orale.

Araki, an unwritten Austronesian language belonging to the Oceanic subgroup, is now spoken by less than a dozen people in a small islet of Vanuatu; it is likely to disappear very soon. As a first ever publication about this language, the present study covers all that it has been possible to understand of it. The core of this book is a grammatical description of Araki: particular attention has been paid to its phonology and morphology, the inventory of syntactic categories, the internal organisation of noun and verb phrases, the semantics of aspect and mood, complex sentence construction, and many other topics which illustrate the originality of this language. Apart from the grammar itself, a bilingual lexicon is provided, as well as a selection of texts taken from the oral tradition.
The first-hand information given here aims at improving the knowledge of the languages of Vanuatu, and should therefore prove useful to specialists of Oceanic linguistics. But theoretical linguists and typologists will also notice the high interest of Araki for the general study of language diversity and universal constraints on mind.

FRANÇOIS Alexandre, 2002, Araki: A disappearing language of Vanuatu, Canberra, Australian National University (Pacific Linguistics 522), XX-355 p.

Publié en Février 2002

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