Tirax language
Tirax | |
---|---|
Mae, Dirak | |
Native to | Malekula |
Native speakers | 1,000 (2001)[1] |
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | mme |
Glottolog | maee1241 |
ELP | Tirax |
is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger |
Tirax (Dirak, Mae) is an
.Tirax homeland
The name Tirax refers to ‘inland person’. The original homeland of the Tirax speakers is the mountainous interior of North Central Malakula, neighbouring
Alternative names
Tirax speakers often refer to their own language as resan, "language, speech", or Resan Tirax. Tirax is called “Dirak” by the speakers of Northeast Malakula.
Typology
Tirax has many features in common with other North Vanuatu languages. It has no tense marking, but has "obligatory subject-mood markers distinguishing realis and irrealis mood". It has "inalienable and alienable possessive marking", with a range of "possessive classifiers for alienable possession" including specific markers for food, drink and paths. Also like other Malakula languages, numbers have verbal morphology. Tirax has "nuclear verb serialisation, and a range of strategies for paratactic linkage. Several morphosyntactic processes, such as object marking and plural marking, are sensitive to the animacy of the referent".[5]
Apicolabials
There is evidence that Tirax had an apicolabial (
Narrative structure
Until 2004, Tirax was an oral language; a writing system is a relatively recent development. Tirax narratives show previously undescribed structural features not found in written narratives. There is a linking device between paragraphs, termed "transition clauses". Transition clauses are associated with a misalignment of prosodic and discourse-semantic levels of structure.[7] And there are a small set of circumstances in which story events are related out of chronological order, which runs counter to traditional theories of narrative.[8]
References
- ^ Tirax at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Brotchie, A. (2009). Tirax grammar and narrative: an Oceanic language spoken on Malakula, North Central Vanuatu. PhD thesis, Dept. of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, The University of Melbourne. p1
- ^ Crowley, Terry. 2006b. Tape: A declining language of Malakula (Vanuatu). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. p3 footnote.
- ^ Brotchie, A. (2009). Tirax grammar and narrative: an Oceanic language spoken on Malakula, North Central Vanuatu. PhD thesis, Dept. of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, The University of Melbourne. p2.
- ^ Brotchie, A. (2009). Tirax grammar and narrative: an Oceanic language spoken on Malakula, North Central Vanuatu. PhD thesis, Dept. of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, The University of Melbourne. Abstract. https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/36956
- ^ Lynch, J. and Brotchie, A. (2010). Vowel Loss in Tirax and the History of the Apicolabial Shift. Oceanic Linguistics Vol. 49, No. 2 (DECEMBER 2010), pp. 369-388
- ^ Brotchie, A. (2009). Tirax grammar and narrative: an Oceanic language spoken on Malakula, North Central Vanuatu. PhD thesis, Dept. of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, The University of Melbourne. pp.415ff.
- ^ Brotchie, A. (2016). "Sequentiality in the narratives of Tirax, an oceanic language spoken on Malakula, Vanuatu." In "Narrative in ‘societies of intimates". Special issue of Narrative Inquiry 26:2 (2016) edited by Stirling, L., Green, J., Strahan, T. & Douglas, S. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp340-375 https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/ni.26.2.07bro/details
External links
- Paradisec has a number of collections with Mae materials, including Amanda Brotchie's collection (TB1)