Mota language

Mota
Mota
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Mota island
Native speakers	750 (2012)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic Vanuatu North Vanuatu Torres–Banks Mota; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mtt
Glottolog	mota1237
ELP	Mota

Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota Island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu.^[2]

History[]

During the period 1840-1940, Mota was used as a missionary lingua franca throughout areas of Oceania included in the Melanesian Mission, an Anglican missionary agency.^[3] Mota was used on Norfolk Island, in religious education; on other islands with different vernacular languages, it served as the language of liturgical prayers, hymns, and some other religious purposes. Elizabeth Fairburn Colenso translated religious material into the language.^[3]

Robert Henry Codrington compiled the first dictionary of Mota (1896), and worked with and others to produce a large number of early publications in this language.

Phonology[]

Mota has 5 phonemic vowels, /i e a o u/.^[4]

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Close-mid	e	o
Open	a

Notes[]

^ François (2012): 88).
^ Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Mota.
^ Jump up to: ^a ^b Transcribed by the Right Reverend Dr. Terry Brown (2007). "ELIZABETH COLENSO: Her work for the Melanesian Mission; by her eldest granddaughter Francis Edith Swabey 1956". Retrieved 5 December 2015.
^ François (2005:445, 460).

References[]

Codrington, Robert H.; Palmer, Jim (1896), A Dictionary of the Language of Mota, Sugarloaf Island, Banks' Islands, with a short grammar and index, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
François, Alexandre (2005), "Unraveling the history of the vowels of seventeen northern Vanuatu languages", Oceanic Linguistics, 44 (2): 443–504, doi:10.1353/ol.2005.0034, S2CID 131668754
François, Alexandre (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages", International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2012 (214): 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022, S2CID 145208588

External links[]

Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Mota
Texts in Mota from Project Canterbury
Audio recordings in the Mota language, in open access, by A. François (source: Pangloss Collection of CNRS).
Materials on Mota are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections (AC1 and AC2) held by Paradisec.

This Vanuatu-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

This article about Southern Oceanic languages is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

[1] François (2012): 88).

[2] Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Mota.

[fes-3] Jump up to: ^a ^b Transcribed by the Right Reverend Dr. Terry Brown (2007). "ELIZABETH COLENSO: Her work for the Melanesian Mission; by her eldest granddaughter Francis Edith Swabey 1956". Retrieved 5 December 2015.

[4] François (2005:445, 460).

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]