The Niuean language or Niue language (Niuean: ko e vagahau Niuē) is a Polynesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages. It is most closely related to Tongan and slightly more distantly to other Polynesian languages such as Māori, Sāmoan, and Hawai'ian. Together, Tongan and Niuean form the Tongic subgroup of the Polynesian languages. Niuean also has a number of influences from Samoan and Eastern Polynesian languages. Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages and comprise at least 351 million speakers. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion, because: it is patent nonsense. ... The family of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages is a subgroup of the Central Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages. ... The Oceanic languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, containing approximately 450 languages. ... The family of Central-Eastern Oceanic languages is a subgroup of the Oceanic languages. ... The family of Remote Oceanic languages is a subgroup of the Central-Eastern Oceanic languages. ... The family of Central Pacific languages is a subgroup of the Remote Oceanic languages. ... The family of East Fijian-Polynesian languages is a subgroup of the Central Pacific languages. ... The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ... Tongic is a subgroup of the Polynesian languages. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ... The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages and comprise at least 351 million speakers. ... The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... Māori (or Maori) is a language spoken by the native peoples of New Zealand and the Cook Islands. ... The Sāmoan or Samoan language is the traditional language of Samoa and American Samoa and is an official language in both territories. ... Hawaiian is the ancestral language of the indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands, the Hawaiians, a Polynesian people. ... Tongic is a subgroup of the Polynesian languages. ...

Speakers

Niuean is spoken by 2,240 people on Niue Island (97.4% of the inhabitants) as of 1991, as well as by speakers in the Cook Islands, New Zealand, and Tonga, for a total of around 8,000 speakers. There are thus more speakers of Niuean outside the island itself than on the island. Most inhabitants of Niue are bilingual in English. 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Dialects

Niuean consists of two main dialects, the older motu dialect from the north of the island and the tafiti dialect of the south. The words mean, respectively, the people of the island and the strangers (or people from a distance).

The differences between the dialects are mainly in vocabulary or in the form of some words.

Examples of differences in vocabulary are volu (Tafiti) vs matā (Motu) for scrape, scraper and lala (Tafiti) vs kautoga (Motu) for guava (plant); examples of differences in form include hafule (T) / afule (M), aloka/haloka, nai/nei, ikiiki/likiliki, and malona/maona.

Phonology

The phonology of Niuean consists of the consonant phonemes f, ŋ, h, k, l, m, n, p, t, v and the vowels a, ā, e, ē, i, ī, o, ō, u, ū. Phonology (Greek phonÄ“ = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

There are also two marginal consonant phonemes, r and s, which only occur in loanwords; some speakers substitute the sounds l and t, respectively, in words where r and s occur.

Note that [s] is also an allophone of [t] before the front vowels e ē i ī. This probably arose from a pronunciation of /t/ as [ts] before these vowels, which eventually became simply [s]. In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ...

Foreign words which begin with [t] in the source language usually retain this pronunciation even before front vowels; however, very old borrowings shift this to [s], as in tī from English tea, pronounced [si:].

Vowel length

Vowel length is distinctive in Niuean; vowels are either long or short. Furthermore, two adjacent identical vowels (whether short-short, short-long, long-short, or long-long) form a rearticulated vowel; the sound is distinct from one long vowel. In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. ...

Both short and long vowels can occur in any position.

Diphthongs

All short vowels may combine with one another to form diphthongs. The possible diphthongs are, therefore:

• ae, ai, ao, au
• ea, ei, eo, eu
• ia, ie, io, iu
• oa, oe, oi, ou
• ua, ue, ui, uo

Rearticulation

Rearticulation is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels, as opposed to diphthongs which are written as two letters but pronounced as one sound. These two vowels may be the same or be different ones. In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek and ending tongue positions. ...

Rearticulation typically occurs across morpheme boundaries, for example, when a suffix ending with a vowel comes before a root beginning with that same vowel. It may also occur, rarely, within monomorphemic words (words that consist of only one morpheme) as a result of the elision of a historical intervocalic consonant. In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest language unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ...

Two adjacent identical short vowels are always rearticulated, as are combinations of any two long vowels or a short and a long vowel; two adjacent different short vowels may be rearticulated or form a diphthong, and this has to be determined from the morphology or history of the word.

Syllable structure

The basic structure of a Niuean syllable is (C)V(V); all syllables end in a vowel or diphthong, and may start with at most one consonant. Consonant clusters in borrowed words are broken up with epenthetic vowels, e.g. English tractor becomes tuleketā.

Stress

The stress on a Niuean word is nearly always on the penult (second-to-last syllable), though multi-syllable words ending in a long vowel put primary stress on the final long vowel and secondary stress on the penult. Long vowels in other positions also attract a secondary stress.

Glottal stop

The Niuean language does not contain the glottal stop which is present in its closest relative, Tongan; this has caused some distinct words to merge. For example, Tongan ta'u year and tau fight have merged in Niuean as tau. The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ...

Orthography

Niuean orthography is largely phonemic; that is, one syllable stands for one sound and vice versa. The orthography of a language is the set of symbols (glyphs and diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs correctly, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. ...

Alphabet

The traditional alphabet order, given with the traditional names of the letters, is ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, fā, gā, hā, kā, lā, mō, nū, pī, tī, vī, rō, sā. Note that rō and sā as introduced letters are ordered at the end.

Sperling (1970) uses an alphabetical order based on English for his dictionary: a, ā, e, ē, f, g, h, i, ī, k, l, m, n, o, ō, p, s, t, u, ū, v (r is left out since no words start with this letter). He recommends that consonants be named consistently with a following ā: fā, gā, hā, kā, lā, mā, nā, pā, tā, vā, rā, sā.

Vowel length can be marked with a macron; however, this is not always done. A macron (from Gr. ...

History

As with many languages, writing was brought to Niue in connection with religion, in this case with Christianity by missionaries educated in Samoa. This has led to some Samoan influences in morphology and grammar and also to a noticeable one in spelling: the sound /ŋ/ (IPA) is written g, rather than ng as in Tongan and other Polynesian languages with this sound. (McEwen (1970) uses ng in his dictionary; however, this feature of his spelling was not popular, particularly since it conflicted with the spelling used in the Niuean Bible.) Christianity is a monotheistic religion centered on the life, teachings, and actions of Jesus of Nazareth, known by Christians as Jesus Christ, as recounted in the New Testament. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ...

Grammar

Typology

Niuean can be considered a VSO language; however, one analysis of Niuean uses ergative terminology, in which case it may be better to speak of Verb Agent Patient word order. Verb Subject Object—commonly used in its abbreviated form VSO—is a term in linguistic typology. ... In ergative-absolutive languages, the ergative case identifies the subject of a transitive verb. ...

Because the unmarked case is the absolutive, Niuean transitive verb constructions often appear passive in a literal translation.

Compare

Kua kitia e ia e kalahimu

TENSE see AGENT he ARTICLE crab

"The crab was seen by him"

and

Kua kitia e kalahimu

TENSE see ARTICLE crab

"The crab was seen"

The first example sentence could also be translated into English as the nominative-accusative construction "He saw the crab".

Pronouns

Niuean pronouns are differentiated by person and number. Furthermore, first person non-singular (dual and plural) pronouns distinguish inclusive and exclusive forms, including and excluding the listener, respectively. However, they are not differentiated by gender or case; for example, ia means both he and she, him and her (inanimates ['it'] are not usually pronominalised). In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun phrase. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Narrator. ... Number, in linguistics, is a grammatical category used to express the quantity of objects referred to by a noun. ... The word singular may refer to one of several concepts. ... Dual is the grammatical number used for two referents. ... Look up Plural in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ... In linguistics, noun classes, also called grammatical gender is a type of inflection. ... In linguistics, declension is a paradigm of inflected nouns. ...

The Niuean pronouns are:

Note that the endings of the dual and plural forms resemble the numbers 2 and 3, ua and tolu.

Numbers

Some numbers in Niuean are:

(*Note: Both McEwen (1970) and Sperlich (1997) give fā for four; however, Kaulima & Beaumont (1994) give fa with a short vowel.)

Tens and ones combine with ma, e.g. hogofulu ma taha, 11; tolugofulu ma ono, 36.

The numbers from one to nine (and occasionally higher numbers) can take the prefix toko- when used to count persons; for example, tokolima five (for people).

Numbers are used as verbs, for example:

Ne taha e fufua moa i loto he kato

PAST one ART egg chicken LOC inside GEN basket

"There was one egg in the basket"; literally, "An egg oned inside the basket"

or

Tolu e tama fuata ne oatu ke takafaga

three ART child youth REL go GOAL hunt

"Three young men went out hunting"; literally, "The young men threed who went out to hunt"

or

Ko e tau maaga ne fa

PRED ART PLUR village REL four

"There were (are) four villages"; literally, "The villages, which foured"

Morphology

Morphology comprises the ways in which words are built up from smaller, meaningful sub-units, or how words change their form in certain circumstances. Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ...

Suppletion

Suppletion concerns closely related words (often singular and plural forms of nouns or verbs) which are based on very different forms, for example fano to go (used with a singular subject) and ō to go (used with a plural subject). This can be compared to English go and went, which are forms of the same verb yet differ in form.

Reduplication

Reduplication is frequently used in Niuean morphology to derive different nouns. Reduplication is the process of taking the entire morpheme, or sometimes only the first or last syllable or two, and repeating it. Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ...

This is used for several purposes, including:

• forming a "plural" verb from a "singular" one (that is, a verb form used when the subject is plural, as opposed to the form used when the subject is singular)
• forming a "frequentative" form of a verb (an action that is carried out several times)

An example of a whole-morpheme reduplication indicating a plural verb is molemole to have passed by, to be gone from mole to have passed by, to be gone; an example of a whole-morpheme reduplication indicating a frequentative verb is molomolo to keep squeezing from molo to squeeze, to compress. In grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action. ...

Examples of part-morpheme reduplication are gagau to bite from gau to chew (first part of the syllable reduplicated), gegele to make a crying sound from gele to start to cry (of babies) (first syllable reduplicated), and molūlū to be very soft, to be very weak from molū to be soft, to be weak (last syllable reduplicated).

Reduplication is also frequently employed together with affixes.

Affixes

Affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are frequently used for a variety of purposes; there is also one circumfix, fe- -aki (sometimes fe- -naki or fe- -taki), which is used to form reciprocal verbs ("to ... one another"). An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a base morpheme such as a root or to a stem, to form a word. ... Look up prefix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Suffix has meanings in linguistics, nomenclature and computer science. ... A circumfix or circumflection is an affix, a morpheme which is placed around another morpheme. ...

A common suffix is -aga, which is a nominaliser: it forms nouns from verbs.

A common prefix with faka-, with a variety of meanings, the most common being a causative one (e.g. ako to learn, fakaako to teach).

Words may also have more than one prefix or suffix, as fakamalipilipi to break (used with a plural object), from faka-, ma-, and a reduplicated lipi to break.

Compound words

Many words are simply formed by joining together other words, for example vakalele aeroplane from vaka canoe and lele fly (i.e. literally, flying canoe).

References

• Kaulima, Aiao & Beaumont, Clive H. (1994). A First Book for Learning Niuean. Auckland, New Zealand: Beaumont and Kaulima. ISBN 0-9583383-0-2.
• Kaulima, Aiao & Beaumont, Clive H. (2000). Learning Niuean, Book 2. Tohi Ako Vagahau Niue. Auckland, New Zealand: Beaumont and Kaulima. ISBN 0-9583383-9-6.
• McEwen, J. M. (1970). Niue Dictionary. Wellington, New Zealand: Department of Maori and Island Affairs. No ISBN.
• Seiter, William J. (1980). Studies in Niuean Syntax. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-8240-4560-2.
• Sperlich, Wolfgang B. (1997). Tohi vagahai Niue - Niue language dictionary: Niuean–English, with English–Niuean finderlist. Honolulu, Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-1933-0.
• Tregear, Edward & Smith, S. Percy (1907). A Vocabulary and Grammar of the Niue Dialect of the Polynesian Language. Wellington: Government Printer.

External links

• Ethnologue Entry for Niuean
• Niuean Basic Vocabulary List