A Grammar of Unua

The island of Malakula is known to have, or to have had, a total of about 40 distinct languages of which fewer than half have been described. The 700 or so speakers of Unua are also fluent speakers of Bislama and the domains of use for Unua are becoming more restricted. This book describes the Unua language of Malakula, Vanuatu.

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The book presents a description of Unua, one of two dialects of Unua-Pangkumu, an Oceanic language of Malakula Island, Vanuatu. Unua has about 700 speakers who are bilinguals using Unua in local interactions and using the national language, Bislama, non-locally, as well as in local public and religious settings. The description is based on material collected in the field from speakers of different age-groups in the five Unua villages. The data corpus includes a substantial body of material: contemporary translations of the New Testament gospels; audio-recorded transcribed and glossed texts; and elicited material collected with a range of speakers. The analysis includes comparisons with other Malakula languages and is both of typological and historical-comparative interest. The data documentation is substantial and detailed.