Volow language

Volow
Aplow, Valuwa
Vōlōw
Pronunciation	[βʊˈlʊw]
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Mota Lava island, Banks Islands
Extinct	1986, with the death of Wanhan[1] 1 passive speaker (2021)[2]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic North-Central Vanuatu North Vanuatu Torres-Banks Mwotlap Volow
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	volo1238
ELP	Volow
Volow is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Volow (formerly known as Valuwa or Valuga) is an Oceanic language variety that used to be spoken in the area of Aplow, in the eastern part of the island of Motalava, Vanuatu.^[1][3][4][5]

The name Volow [βʊˈlʊw] is originally a placename: it corresponds to the area known today as Aplow, but in the former language Volow rather than in Mwotlap. Now that the Volow dialect has ceased to be used, the name Volow has been forgotten by the modern population. The place is only known through its Mwotlap name Aplow; as for the language variety, it is often referred to, in the Mwotlap language, as na-vap te-Plōw “the language of Aplow”.

The language variety is sometimes also referred to as na-vap ta Dagmel “the language of Dagmel” (in Mwotlap), after the name of an ancient, now abandoned, village.

Volow has receded historically in favor of the now dominant language Mwotlap.^[1] It is now only remembered by a single passive speaker, who lives in the village of Aplow — the new name of what was previously known as Volow.

The similarity of Volow with Mwotlap is such that the two communalects may be considered dialects of a single language.

Volow phonemically contrasts 16 consonants and 7 vowels.^[2]

Consonants

		Labial–velar	Bilabial	Alveolar	Dorsal	Glottal
Nasal		ŋ͡mʷ ⟨m̄⟩	m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩	ŋ ⟨n̄⟩
Stop	voiceless			t ⟨t⟩
	prenasalized	ᵑᵐɡ͡bʷ ⟨q̄⟩	ᵐb ⟨b⟩	ⁿd ⟨d⟩	ᵑɡ ⟨ḡ⟩
Fricative			β[a] ⟨v⟩	s ⟨s⟩	ɣ ⟨g⟩	h ⟨h⟩
Approximant		w ⟨w⟩		l ⟨l⟩	j ⟨y⟩

This consonant inventory includes a typologically rare consonant: a rounded, prenasalised voiced labial-velar plosive [ᵑᵐɡ͡bʷ]:^[6] e.g. [n.lɛᵑᵐɡ͡bʷɛβɪn] “woman”^[7] (spelled n-leq̄evēn in the local orthography).

Amongst the 17 Torres–Banks languages, Volow is the only one to have preserved the voicing of the proto-phonemes *ᵑg > /ᵑɡ/ and *ᵐbʷ > /ᵑᵐɡ͡bʷ/, which are reconstructed for its ancestor Proto-Torres-Banks. All its neighbours (including Mwotlap) devoiced these to /k/ and /k​͡pʷ/ respectively.^[8]

The seven vowels of Volow are all short monophthongs:^[9]

Vowels

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

• Presentation of the Volow language, by linguist A. François. Access to the Volow corpus (Pangloss Collection of CNRS).
• Wanhan (1969), Le dignitaire et l’orphelin — The dignitary and the abandoned child, Pangloss Collection of CNRS, doi:10.24397/pangloss-0003315, retrieved 2025-01-19. — Traditional narrative, presented in bilingual format (Volow transcription, French translation). This story was recorded by anthropologist Bernard Vienne in 1969 from the last fluent speaker Wanhand [†1986]; it was transcribed and translated by A. François in 2003, with the help of Wanhand's son, and published online in 2017.

• François, Alexandre (2005a), "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

• François, Alexandre (2005b), "A typological overview of Mwotlap, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu" (PDF), Linguistic Typology, 9 (1): 115–146, doi:10.1515/lity.2005.9.1.115, S2CID 55878308

• François, Alexandre (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, S2CID 42217419.
• François, Alexandre (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages" (PDF), International Journal of the Sociology of Language (214): 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022, S2CID 145208588
• François, Alexandre (2013), "Shadows of bygone lives: The histories of spiritual words in northern Vanuatu" (PDF), in Mailhammer, Robert (ed.), Lexical and structural etymology: Beyond word histories, Studies in Language Change, vol. 11, Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton, pp. 185–244, ISBN 978-1-61451-058-1
• François, Alexandre (2021). "Presentation of the Volow language and audio archive". Pangloss Collection. Paris: CNRS. Retrieved 28 Sep 2022.
• Ray, Sidney Herbert (1926). A Comparative Study of the Melanesian Island Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. xvi+598. ISBN 9781107682023. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)