Daakaka (also known as Dakaka, South Ambrym and Baiap) is a native language of Ambrym, Vanuatu. It is spoken by about one thousand speakers in the south-western corner of the island.
Vitality Most children in the region still acquire Daakaka as a first language, but it is under threat by significant socio-economic changes and the dominant use of Vanuatu's official languages, Bislama, English and French, in education and in official contexts.Unless indicated otherwise, all information comes from von Prince (2012).
Phonology
Consonants The system of consonantal phonemes is fairly typical for the region. Voiced stops are prenasalized. The difference between bilabial consonants with and without a labio-velar release is relevant only before front vowels.
Labio-velarLabialAlveolarPalatalVelar Nasal Stop voiceless prenasalized Fricative Trill Approximant
Vowels There are seven phonemically distinct vowel qualities, with one long and one short vowel phoneme for each variety, plus a marginally phonemic . The distinction between mid and open-mid vowels is only phonemic after alveolar consonants, as in tee "axe" vs. téé "see".
Front Central Back Close , , Mid , () , Open-mid , , Open ,
Word classes The four major word classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Only nouns can stand in argument position, only verbs and some adjectives can be used as predicates without the copula i, only adjectives can be used as attributes to nouns without further modification. The two biggest word classes by far are nouns and verbs.
Nouns There are three subclasses of nouns. The biggest subclass consists of 'general nouns' such as em "house" or "volcano"; in contrast to the other two classes, these nouns do not need to specify a possessor, they cannot be inflected and they cannot be directly followed by another noun phrase. 'Inflected nouns' always indicate their possessor by a person-number ending:
Transitive or relational nouns also obligatorily specify an inalienable possessor, but this possessor is given by a subsequent noun phrase, not by an inflectional ending. Known, definite, non-human possessors can also be indicated by the suffix -sye or its allomorph -tye:
Verbs Among verbs, there are several subgroups which differ either in terms of transitivity or in terms of the number of their internal argument (the subject of an intransitive verb or the object of a transitive verb).
Transitivity There are three degrees of transitivity: verbs can be either intransitive, semitransitive or transitive. Intransitive verbs such as oko "walk" never take an object noun phrase. Semitransitive verbs can optionally be followed by an object noun phrase with indefinite reference; by contrast, transitive verbs are always interpreted to have a definite object.
Semitransitive en "eat":Transitive ane "eat":
Pluractionality While most verbs are neutral with regard to the number of their arguments, some verbs can take only singular arguments and some (pluractional) verbs can only take non-singular arguments. For example, , and all mean "fall down", but only can have either a singular or a plural subject. By contrast, can only take a singular subject, while the subject of always refers to more than one entity (starred examples, in red cells, are ungrammatical):
SingularPluractionalNumber-neutral
Clauses
Basic clause structure
A simple assertive clause always contains a subject pronoun, a TAM marker and a predicate - except for third person singular subjects, for which there is no subject pronoun. Predicates can consist of a verb, an adjective or a copula plus noun phrase (NP) or adverbial phrase.
Third person pronouns may be preceded by a subject NP. A few examples are given below:
Subject pronoun + TAM + VP
Subject NP + TAM + Adjective
Subject NP + TAM + Copula + NP
Personal Pronouns There are two kinds of personal pronouns, subject pronouns and non-subject pronouns. Subject pronouns end in a vowel and are followed directly by a TAM marker. They are obligatory in assertive clauses. Non-subject pronouns are used as topics or objects of verbs or prepositions. Each pronoun represents a combination of a person and a number value. There are four person values: first person inclusive (including both the speaker and the listener), first person exclusive (including only the speaker, not the listener), second person (including the listener) and third person (including neither speaker nor listener). The four number values are singular (one person), dual (two persons), paucal (few persons) and plural (an arbitrarily large number of persons).
+ Subject pronounsSingular DualPaucalPlural 1st person exclusive na kana kisi kinye inclusive da si ra 2nd person ko ka kasi ki 3rd person ∅ ya ye ye
+ Non-subject pronounsSingular DualPaucalPlural 1st person exclusive nye kenma kinyemsi kinyem inclusive ada ansi ar/er 2nd person ngok kama kamsi kimim 3rd person nge nyoo nya nyosi
Notes
Bibliography
External links Database of audio recordings in Daakaka (Sesivi) - basic Catholic prayers Kilu von Prince. 2017. Daakaka dictionary. Dictionaria 1. 1-2167. [access to raw data set: ]