A Comprehensive Comparison of Lexemes in the ... - SIL International

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Section A. Background
Chapter 1. Introduction to the study
1.0 Introduction
When people greet each other in Lenakel, Tanna, they say rawɨt lakapnəpɨn.
In Whitesands, they say tawɨr laplapen. In the southern mountains they say rhuvə
namsuk. In Kwamera, on the southern tip, it’s ramasan nəpnəpɨn. A small number
of people by Mount Yasur Volcano in the southeast say thuvə yenpengenpeng. In the
north, they say tawɨr loulaugɨn. Tanna’s folklore says that the ancestors in the
mythical days argued with each other about how to talk, so one said, “Fine, I’ll
say ‘I do it’ my way,” and another said, “Fine, I’ll say ‘I do it’ my way.” Thus, the
argument was settled. They spread out and each began speaking his own way.
1.1 Purpose of the study
Inhabitants of Tanna have counted as many as 25 different dialects, but
linguists recognize five major languages spoken on Tanna: Kwamera (a.k.a. South
Tanna, hereafter S Tanna), Lenakel, North Tanna (hereafter N Tanna), Southwest
Tanna (hereafter SW Tanna), and Whitesands (Gordon 2005:303; Lynch 1982:2).
It has been difficult to establish the language boundaries and language group
sizes on Tanna and to determine whether a particular variety is a dialect or a
different language. The reason for this is the lack of adequate language data to
verify the degree to which the languages vary from one another. Most of the
languages and dialects have had minimal analysis. Only three have dictionaries or
grammar sketches. For others, comprehensive lexical data has not been published
previously, making such data unavailable to linguists and speakers of Tanna’s
vernaculars.
In light of the underrepresentation of Tanna’s languages, the purpose of
this book is to supply a substantial portion of the previously unpublished lexical
data and to begin some comparative analysis. Here, I compare more than 1,700
lexemes in the five major languages of Tanna listed above as well as a dialect of
SW Tanna called Vaha, which is spoken between the Whitesands and SW Tanna
language boundary. 1
The language data here presented can prove helpful for historical linguists
to determine how the languages of Tanna have evolved. Or, to continue the
legend mentioned above, this data can help us discover just what the ancestors
did when they settled their argument, spread out, and began talking in their own
ways. Which of the ancestors won that mythical argument—that is, which
lexemes seem to have been most resistant over time? What ‘paths’ did those
1 I held lexicography workshops in the Vaha area in order to determine whether Vaha and SW Tanna differed
enough to be considered distinct languages. The results showed Vaha to be 90 percent lexically similar to SW
Tanna. For this reason, and since their grammars are nearly identical, I consider Vaha to be a dialect of SW
Tanna. Nevertheless, I have included Vaha in this study for the sake of comparison and refer to it as one of
the languages of Tanna.