Marquesan language

Marquesan
ʻEo ʻenata (North Marquesan) ʻEo ʻenana (South Marquesan)
Region	Marquesas Islands, Tahiti
Native speakers	8,700 (2007 census)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Polynesian Eastern Polynesian Marquesic Marquesan
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: mrq – North Marquesan mqm – South Marquesan
Glottolog	nort2845  (North) sout2866  (South)

Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines.

Phonology

The most striking feature of the Marquesan languages is their almost universal replacement of the /r/ or /l/ of other Polynesian languages by a /ʔ/ (glottal stop).

Like other Polynesian languages, the phonology of Marquesan languages is characterized by a scarcity of consonants and a comparative abundance of vowels. The consonant phonemes are:

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p	t	k	ʔ
Fricative	f v			h
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Liquid		r

Of this small number of consonants, /ŋ/ is found only in eastern Nuku Hiva (Tai Pi Marquesan), and /f/ is found only in South Marquesan dialects. In writing, the phoneme /ŋ/ is represented by n(g), and /ʔ/ is represented as ʻ.

Unlike Samoan, the /ŋ/ is not an isolated nasal: it is found only in conjunction with a following /k/. So, whereas the Samoan word for "bay" is faga, pronounced [ˈfa.ŋa], it is hanga in Tai Pi Marquesan, and is pronounced /ˈha.ŋka/. (This word is useful to demonstrate one of the more predictable regular consonantal differences between the northern and southern dialects: in North Marquesan, the word is haka, and in South Marquesan, it is hana).

The letter h is used to represent a wide range of sounds. It is sometimes realised phonetically as [h], and sometimes [s] or [x], depending on the following vowel.

The vowel phonemes are the same as in other Polynesian languages, long and short versions of each:

	Front		Central		Back
	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long	Short
High	i:	i			u:	u
Mid	e:	e			o:	o
Low			a:	a

Morphology

Verbal particles are placed before the verb they modify.

Verbal Phrase

Verbal Particles		example	example in a sentence
past	i	i ui (asked)	te mehai i iu (the youth asked)
present	te...nei	te maakau nei (think)	te maakau nei au i tuu kui (I think of my mother)
perfective	u\ua	u hanau (was born)	u hanau au i Hakehatau (I was born at Hakehatau)
imperfective	e	e hee (going)	e hee koe i hea (where are you going?)
inceptive	atahi a	atahi a kai (then they eat)	iu pao taia, atahi a kai (...when finish that, then do they eat)
imperative	a	a hee! (go!)	a hee io te tante (go to the doctor!)

A noun phrase in Marquesan is any phrase beginning with either a case marker or a determiner. Case markers or prepositions always precede the determiners, which in turn precede the number markers. As such, they all precede the noun they modify.

Nominal Phrase Markers

Articles		Demonstratives		Other
definite singular	te/t-	this	tenei	a certain	titahi
indefinite	e/he	that	tena	other	tahipito
dual/ paucal definite	na	that	tea
anaphoric	hua

Nominal Number Markers	Number Markers
dual	mou
dual/paucal	mau
plural	tau

There are 11 personal pronouns which are distinguished by singular, dual, and plural. As well as that, there are two other personal pronouns which distinguish possession.

Pronouns

Pronoun	Singular	Dual/Paucal	Plural	Possession
1.ps	au/-ʻu			tuʻu
1.inclusive		taua	tatou
1.exclusive		maua	mataou
2.ps	koe	koʻua	kotou	to
3.ps	ia	ʻaua	ʻatou

Dialect diversity

North Marquesan is found in the northern islands, and South Marquesan in the southern islands, as well as on Ua Huka in the northern Marquesas. Comparative data on the various dialects of Marquesan can be found in the Linguistic Atlas of French Polynesia (Charpentier & François 2015).

The most noticeable differences between the varieties are Northern Marquesan /k/ in some words where South Marquesan has /n/ or /ʔ/ (glottal stop), and /h/ in all words where South Marquesan has /f/. For example,

North	South
haka	fana	"bay"
haʻe	faʻe	"house"
koe	ʻoe	"you" (singular)
Ua Huka	Ua Huna	(the island)

The northern dialects fall roughly into four groups:

Tai Pi, spoken in the eastern third of Nuku Hiva, and according to some linguists, a separate language, Tai Pi Marquesan

Teiʻi, spoken in western Nuku Hiva

Eastern Ua Pu

Western Ua Pu

The southern dialects fall roughly into three groups:

Pepane: Eastern Hiva ʻOa and Ua Huka

Fatu Hiva

Nuku: Western Hiva ʻOa and Tahuata

North Marquesan exhibits some original characteristics. While some Polynesian languages maintained the velar nasal /ŋ/, many have lost the distinction between the nasals /ŋ/ and /n/, merging both into /n/. North Marquesan, like South Island Māori dialects of New Zealand, prefers /k/. Another feature is that, while some Polynesian languages replace *k with /ʔ/, North Marquesan has retained it. (Tahitian and formal Samoan have no /k/ whatsoever, and the /k/ in modern Hawaiian is pronounced either [k] or [t] and derives from Polynesian *t.)

The dialects of Ua Huka are often incorrectly classified as North Marquesan; they are instead transitional. While the island is in the northern Marquesas group, the dialects show more morphological and phonological affinities with South Marquesan. The North Marquesan dialects are sometimes considered two separate languages: North Marquesan and Tai Pi Marquesan, the latter being spoken in the valleys of the eastern third of the island of Nuku Hiva, in the ancient province of Tai Pi. Puka-Pukan, spoken in Puka-Puka and the Disappointment Islands in northeastern Tuamotu, is a dialect of South Marquesan, and should not be confused with the homonymous Pukapukan language spoken in Pukapuka, one of the Cook Islands.

References

• Gabriele H. Cablitz (2006). Marquesan: A Grammar of Space. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 169. Mouton de Gruyter.
• “Grammaire et dictionnaire de la langue des Îles Marquises”: Mgr Dordillon's Marquesan language dictionary (Société des études océaniennes, Pape’ete, 1904 – reissued 1999) (French)
• Margaret Mutu & Ben Teìkitutoua (2002). Ùa Pou : aspects of a Marquesan dialect. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Bulletins.

External links

• Online version of the Grammaire et dictionnaire de la langue des Iles Marquises – Marquisien–Français (Paris, Institut d'Ethnologie, 1931) (French)
• Aperçu de la langue des îles Marquises et de la langue taïtienne, accompagné d'un vocabulaire inédit de la langue taïtienne (Johann Buschmann & Guillaume de Humboldt, Berlin, 1843) (French)
• DoBeS — Marquesan language