Big Nambas language

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Big Nambas language" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Big Nambas
V'ənen Taut
Pronunciation	[ˈθ̼ənɛn tautʰ]
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Northwest Malekula
Native speakers	3,400 (2001)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic North-Central Vanuatu Central Vanuatu Malakula Malakula Interior Big Nambas
Writing system	Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nmb
Glottolog	bign1238
Big Nambas is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Big Nambas (native name V'ənen Taut) is an Oceanic language spoken by about 3,400 people (as of 2001^[update]) in northwest Malekula, Vanuatu. Approximately nineteen villages in the Big Nambas region of the Malekula Interior use the language exclusively with no variation in dialect. It was studied in-depth over a period of about 10 years by missionary Greg. J. Fox, who published a grammar and dictionary in 1979. A Big Nambas translation of the Bible has been completed recently by Andrew Fox.

The consonant phonemes of Big Nambas are as shown in the following table:

• /p, t, k/ are aspirated [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] word finally. /t̼/ is not noted as behaving likewise.
• /m, p/ are rounded [mʷ, pʷ] before the front vowels /i, e/
• The voiced fricatives /β, ð̼, ɣ/ are devoiced [ɸ, θ̼, x] word initially and finally.
• /l/ is realized as [ɬ] word finally or when adjacent to /t/, and as [ɮ] when adjacent to /n/ word medially.

Big Nambas has a 5-vowel system with the following phonemes:

Big Nambas has a complex syllable structure with a large amount of consonant clusters possible. Additionally, clusters of up to four vowels are permitted (e.g. nauei "water"). Stress in Big Nambas is phonemic, but partly predictable. The consonants /t β r l n/ all exhibit phonemic gemination when two identical ones occur between syllables. Linguolabial consonants are often marked with an apostrophe in the orthography to distinguish them from their bilabial counterparts.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (April 2015)

Big Nambas is a synthetic, head-marking language.

Nouns in Big Nambas are capable of phrasal expansion. There are three noun classes in Big Nambas:

1. Obligatorily possessed nouns, most commonly constituent parts of any object (body parts, tree parts, ordinals, possessive)
2. Optionally possessed nouns, with the subclasses:
   1. Nouns taking the third singular possessives nan or nen
   2. Nouns taking the prefix ar- "all"
   3. Title nouns (names and kinship terms)
3. Unpossessed nouns (personal and interrogative pronouns)

Big Nambas features a system of complex nouns, formed by derivation. Derived nouns can be of one of five types:

1. Abstract nouns, formed by suffixing -ien to verb stems (e.g. tkar "be pregnant" vs. tkar-ien "pregnancy")
2. Articled nouns, formed by prefixing na- or n- to a verb stem beginning with a vowel (i-u "it rains" vs. n-u "(the) rain")
3. Ordinal nouns, formed by prefixing the nominalizer ni- and suffixing the possessive -a (tl "three" vs. ni-tl-a "the third of")
4. Determinative nouns, formed by prefixing ter- to some adjective stems (p'arei "long" vs. ter-p'arei "the long one")
5. Reverential nouns, formed by suffixing -et to some nouns (nut "place" vs. nutet "a sacred place", cf. nap' "fire" vs. nep'et "sacred fire")

Nouns in Big Nambas may be compounded by following them with a verb stem.

• Fox, G. J. (1979). Big Nambas Grammar. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 0-85883-183-X.

• V'enen Taut recordings
• Video about the language