East Ambae language

East Ambae is an Oceanic language spoken in the north, east, and south of Ambae, Vanuatu. The data in this article will concern itself with the Lolovoli dialect.

Phonology

North-East Ambae distinguishes 5 vowels and 16 consonants, shown in the tables below.

	Front	Central	Back
High
Mid
Low

Morphosyntax

Pronominals

In Ambae there are four different pronominal forms, one set of free forms, independent pronouns and three sets of bound forms, subject proclitics, object enclitics and possessive suffixes. All sets of pronominals distinguish between singular, dual and plural and between inclusive and exclusive in the first person. Independent pronouns are preceded by the personal article when the head of a noun phrase.

Independent pronouns

Subject proclitics

The subject proclitic is the first part of a verb phrase and can attach to an aspect, mood, negative particle or verb head. Dual forms cliticise to the marker ru. In Lolovoli, no= is applied when cliticised in 1st person exclusive singular.

Object enclitics

Object enclitics occur when attached to the predicate head or last adverb in a verb phrase. These only occur in singular forms and all 3rd person forms.

Possessive suffixes

Possessive suffixes are attached to the head noun in a direct possessive construction, or a relational classifier in an indirect possessive construction.

Demonstratives

In East Ambae, demonstratives are a part of the subclass of nominals. They can function pronominally as an independent pronoun at the head of a noun phrase, or they can modify the head noun in a noun phrase.
There are two forms which distinguish a proximal location from a distal location. The form ngaha ‘this’ refers to a proximal location, while ngihie ‘that’ refers to a distal location. While generally considered a conservative Oceanic language, in this way, East Ambae differs from many Oceanic languages, and the reconstructed Proto-Oceanic in that it only has two forms to represent locations. Most Oceanic languages, for example, Futuna-Aniwa, the Oceanic language also spoken on Vanuatu, have three forms, representing a near distance, a medium distance, and a far distance. East Ambae also differs from Proto-Oceanic by not only using demonstratives at the end of the noun phrase.
Ngihie also has a plural form, ngire, which is homophonous with the third person plural independent pronoun.
The form ngaha can also have a temporal meaning of ‘now’. This is shown in the example below.
The form ngihie can also function as an emphatic demonstrative, acting to modify an entire proposition.
Whether being used as the head of the noun phrase, or to modify the noun, the demonstratives take on the same form, ngaha and ngihie. This is typologically similar to other Oceanic languages, who often do not have different forms, either in the stem or in the inflection based on whether the demonstrative is acting as a noun or a modifier.

Demonstratives as the head noun

Demonstratives as a modifier

Demonstratives, either in the form of the basic demonstratives ngaha ‘this’ or ngihie ‘that’, or by a demonstrative derived from one of the members of the class of directionals prefixed with the demonstrative formative gi- or ngi-, can act to modify the head noun of a noun phrase.
When being used to modify the head noun, the order of noun and demonstratives in East Ambae is noun-demonstrative, which also occurs in all other languages in Vanuatu. This feature is common in almost all Oceanic languages.
Similarly to the reconstructed Proto-Oceanic, common nouns and independent pronouns can be modified by a demonstrative, while proper nouns and temporals cannot.

Demonstrative ''ge''

Additionally, the form ge can be used to indicate the location of an object. This form is generally used when someone has asked for the location of an object, and is accompanied by either pointing to the object in question, indication with the eyes, or tilting the head.

Presentative ''ia''

The presentative ia is used when presenting an object to the addressee. Ia is a borrowing from Bislama, an official language of Vanuatu, from the English ‘here’. *Ia is the reconstructed form for ‘here’ in Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Ia can still be found in many Malayo-Polynesian languages, such as Lamaholot, Tongan, Samoan, Maori and Hawaiian. An example of this presentative ia is given below.

Demonstratives in spatial deixis

Apart from the two forms ngaha and ngihie, all members of the subclass of absolute location nouns, as in directionals and the small set of absolute location nouns, aulu 'up high, on top' vine 'down low' atagu 'behind, at the back' amue 'in front, at the front' aute 'up in the bush' alau 'down by the sea' varea 'outside' and vagahao 'far away', can form demonstratives to be used for spatial reference. When prefixed with the demonstrative formative prefix, gi-/ngi-, absolute location nouns, but not place names, can form demonstratives. There is no difference between these two forms, gi- and ngi-, and the choice between the two is arbitrary. Demonstratives formed from directional and absolute location nouns can have either a referential or modifying function.
Additionally, the suffixes -mai and -atu can be added to directionals. The suffix -mai is used to denote the object being closer to the speaker, while the suffix -atu is used to denote the object being closer to the addressee. Only the suffix -mai can be added to directionals that have formed demonstratives.
In example 10, where the prefix ngi- has been added to form a demonstrative, and the suffix -mai has been added, the demonstrative indicates that the object is closer to the speaker, while in example 11, where the demonstrative is unmarked and thus has no suffix, the meaning is that the object is farther away.
The suffix -atu cannot be added to demonstratives, thus example 12 is not grammatical.

Reduplication of demonstratives

is a common process in East Ambae, and demonstratives are able to be reduplicated. When directionals that have formed demonstratives are reduplicated, the purpose is to either indicate a greater distance away, shown in example 13, or a considerably closer distance to the speaker, shown in example 14.

Negation

In North-East Ambae negative construction formation differs depending on firstly, whether the unit is verbal or nonverbal, and then based on what clause structure is being employed. Instances of verbal negation are obligatorily a double negative construction, using preverbal and postverbal particles. Nonverbal structures are formed with a different particle, the placement of which varies depending on the other components in the structure.

Verbal negation

Constructions of verbal negation in East Ambae are formed through a bipartite process, as there must be two specific negative particles present. The preverbal particle is ‘hi’, and the postverbal particle is ‘tea’. This is demonstrated in the example below. In these clauses, the subject marker is attached to the preverbal particle as a clitic. The subject proclitic attaches to the preverbal negative particles ‘hi’ or to the irrealis particle ‘ni’. Irrealis mood is how a speaker marks something as not known to have happened to them, as they are forming the utterance.
The word order of a negative verbal phrase is Verb Phrase → Subject = ni HEAD tea.
Neither the realis mood or telic aspect particles can be used within a negative verbal clause.
Verbal negative clauses in the past tense are formed by using an unmarked subject marker. Clauses with an unmarked subject marker express present or past reference to time, or instead, are indicative of the habitual aspect. Example 3 shows how the pronoun ‘ga’ combined with the negative preverbal particle ‘hi’ forms the past tense negative displayed in the sentence.

Nonverbal negation

In nonverbal clauses, negative mood is expressed by the negative particle ‘hate’. ‘Hate’ can doubly function as a negative predicate that can only take a complement clause as its argument. There is no grammatical means to mark TAM in nonverbal clauses, therefore, tense may only be understood from the semantic context of the clause. Below is an example of a nonverbal negative clause.

Negative clause structure

Negative existential clauses

To form a negative existential clause, the negative particle ‘hate’ is placed after the Noun Phrase. In order to investigate negative clause structure, it is important to contrast the formation process of affirmative clause structure. Minimally, a positive existential clause, contains a single constituent of the Noun Phrase, and this is a predicate. When this single Noun Phrase form is formed, the predication that follows is that referent in that Noun Phrase exists. In the corresponding negative existential clauses, what is predicated is that that referent of the subject Noun Phrase does not exist. It is worth noting that there are no existential verbs in East Ambae, and that all existential clauses are subsequently nonverbal.
Formation of the negative existential clause involves the Noun Phrase becoming the subject and the negative particle becoming the predicate. This is shown in the example below.
In positive existential clauses, modification of the head noun or a fronted topic must be present to construct these clauses. In contrast, for negative existential clauses, there is no clause initial topic slot and the subject Noun Phrase can be solely constituted by the head noun. This construction is demonstrated in the below example.