Teanu language

 ( Languages Of The Solomon Islands ) 

Teanu (or Puma, Buma) is the main language spoken on the island of Vanikoro, in the easternmost province of the Solomon Islands.

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Name The language receives its name from Teanu island, the island located northeast of the Vanikoro island group. The same language has also been known in the literature as Puma (or wrongly Buma), after the Puma village of Teanu island..

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Sources The very first source about the languages of Vanikoro were wordlists collected in 1834 by French Natural history Joseph Paul Gaimard, as he took part in the first voyage of Astrolabe (1826–36) led by Dumont d'Urville. On top of his botanical and zoological work, Gaimard collected, and later published, about ten pages of wordlists in Teanu, Tanema and Lovono.Gaimard (1834). In this work, the three languages were labelled respectively “Tanéanou”, “Tanema”, and “Vanikoro”.

More data was collected in the 1980s by Australian linguist Darrell Tryon;Tryon (1994), 2002). he described Teanu using the name “Buma”.

The languages of Vanikoro are currently being studied by French linguist Alexandre François.See François (2009, 2021a, 2021b).

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Geographical distribution Whereas Teanu used to be confined to the northeast part of the island group, during the 20th century it became the main language of the whole island group of Vanikoro, at the expense of the two other indigenous languages Lovono and Tanema.

While the Melanesian population of Vanikoro now speaks Teanu, the southern coast of the island also has been colonised for a few centuries by a population, who still keep strong ties with their homeland, the nearby island of Tikopia. Their main language is Tikopia language, even though some speak Teanu as a second language.

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Phonology

The phoneme inventory of Teanu includes 19 consonants and 5 vowels.François (2021a), Introduction to the Teanu dictionary – § Phonology.See François (2022).

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Consonants

The labiodental fricative /v/ can be freely devoiced , especially word-initially.Tryon (2002). By contrast, the phoneme /s/ is always heard voiceless.François (2009, 2021a), pace Tryon (2002).

Teanu does not have a phonemic palatal glide //: the sound j only exists as an allophone of /i/ before another vowel: e.g. iebe i.e.ᵐbe ~ je.ᵐbe ‘besom, broom’.

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Vowels

Teanu has 5 phoneme vowels, /i e a o u/.

Tryon (2002) proposed that vowel length may be contrastive, but more recent research has found this to be incorrect: the language only has five short vowels .

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Notes

• Darrell Tryon (1994). 9783110883091, Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110883091

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External links

• Basic vocabulary list in Teanu (Buma) (site: ABVD)
• Audio recordings in the Teanu language, in open access, by Alexandre François (source: Pangloss Collection of CNRS).

Categories: Languages Of The Solomon Islands, Temotu Languages, Definitely Endangered Languages

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