Mota language
Austronesian language spoken in Vanuatu
title: "Mota language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["languages-of-vanuatu", "banks–torres-languages", "torba-province", "lingua-francas"] description: "Austronesian language spoken in Vanuatu" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mota_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Austronesian language spoken in Vanuatu ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Mota |
| pronunciation | |
| states | Vanuatu |
| region | Mota island |
| speakers | 750 |
| date | 2012 |
| ref | |
| familycolor | Austronesian |
| fam2 | Malayo-Polynesian |
| fam3 | Oceanic |
| fam4 | Southern Oceanic |
| fam5 | North-Central Vanuatu |
| fam6 | North Vanuatu |
| fam7 | Torres-Banks |
| dia1 | Maligo |
| dia2 | Veverao |
| iso3 | mtt |
| glotto | mota1237 |
| glottorefname | Mota |
| :: |
|name=Mota |pronunciation= |states=Vanuatu |region=Mota island |speakers=750 |date=2012 |ref= |familycolor=Austronesian |fam2=Malayo-Polynesian |fam3=Oceanic |fam4=Southern Oceanic |fam5=North-Central Vanuatu |fam6=North Vanuatu |fam7=Torres-Banks |dia1=Maligo |dia2=Veverao |iso3=mtt |glotto=mota1237 |glottorefname=Mota
Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu. It is the most conservative Torres–Banks language, and the only one to keep its inherited five-vowel system intact while also preserving most final vowels.
Name
The language is named after the island.
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. 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.
Robert Henry Codrington compiled the first dictionary of Mota (1896), and worked with George Sarawia and others to produce a large number of early publications in this language.
Phonology
Phoneme inventory
Mota phonemically contrasts 14 consonants and 5 vowels, /i e a o u/. These 19 phonemes form the smallest phonemic inventory among the Torres-Banks languages, because it did not undergo vowel hybridization, and also merged two ancient consonants *ⁿd and *n. ::data[format=table title="Mota consonants"]
| Labiovelar | Bilabial | Alveolar | Dorsal | Nasal | Stop | Fricative | Rhotic | Approximant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
::data[format=table title="Mota vowels"]
| Front | Back | Close | Close-mid | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
There is no stress in Mota. As a result, penultimate high vowels tend to be deleted, creating new consonant clusters (see below).
Phonotactics
Proto-Torres–Banks, the ancestor of all Torres–Banks languages including Mota, is reconstructed as a language with open syllables of type {CV}, and no closed syllable {CVC}. That phonotactic profile has been preserved in many words of modern Mota (e.g. salagoro “secret enclosure for initiation rituals”, ran̄oran̄o “Acalypha hispida”), unlike surrounding languages which massively created closed syllables. That said, modern Mota also reflects the regular loss of unstressed high vowels *i and *u ‒ a process already incipient in the earliest attestations of the language (circa 1860) and completed in modern Mota. However, this is thought to be a relatively recent process compared to other Torres-Banks languages, because when Maligo and Veverao dialects are compared, such as Maligo rusag and Veverao rusai ( -ai). As a result, many modern Mota words now feature final consonants and/or consonant clusters: e.g. pal (
Literature
The New Testament was translated by Robert Henry Codrington, John Palmer, John Coleridge Patteson and L. Pritt all of the Melanesian Mission. The Bible was published in 1912 and then revised in 1928. The New Testament (O Vatavata we Garaqa) was further revised by W.G. Ivens of the Anglican Melanesian Mission and published in 1931 by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS). The Anglican Prayer Book was produced in Mota in 1947.
Notes
References
- {{citation |last1=Codrington |first1=Robert H. |last2=Palmer |first2=Jim |year=1896 |title=A Dictionary of the Language of Mota, Sugarloaf Island, Banks' Islands, with a short grammar and index |location=London |publisher=Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryoflang00codruoft
- {{citation |doi=10.1353/ol.2005.0034 |last=François |first=Alexandre |author-link=Alexandre François |year=2005 |title=Unraveling the history of the vowels of seventeen northern Vanuatu languages |journal=Oceanic Linguistics |volume=44 |issue=2 |pages=443–504 |s2cid=131668754 |url=https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_VowelsNorthernVanuatu_OL44-2.pdf
- {{citation |last=François |first=Alexandre |author-mask=2 |year=2012 |title=The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages |journal=International Journal of the Sociology of Language |volume=2012 |issue=214 |doi=10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022 |pages=85–110 |s2cid=145208588 |url=https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_2012_NorthVanuatuSocioling_IJSL.pdf |ref=AF-diversity
- {{cite book |last=François |first=Alexandre |author-mask=2 |year=2016 |contribution = The historical morphology of personal pronouns in northern Vanuatu |editor1-last = Pozdniakov |editor1-first = Konstantin |title = Comparatisme et reconstruction : tendances actuelles |volume = 47 |pages = 25–60 |publisher = Peter Lang |place = Bern |series = Faits de Langues |contribution-url= https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_2016_History-personal-pronouns_north-Vanuatu.pdf |ref=pronouns
- {{cite web |url=https://pangloss.cnrs.fr/corpus/Mota?lang=en&mode=pro&seeMore=true |title=Presentation of the Mota language and audio archive |last=François |first=Alexandre |author-mask=2 |date=2021 |website=Pangloss Collection |location=Paris |publisher=CNRS |access-date=22 Feb 2022 |quote= |ref=pangloss}}
References
- {{Harvcoltxt. François. 2012
- [https://marama.huma-num.fr/AlexFrancois_Torba-languages_map.htm Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Mota].
- 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".
- {{Harvcoltxt. François. 2005
- [[#pangloss. François (2021)]].
- {{Harvcoltxt. François. 2016
- Clark, Ross. (2009). "Leo Tuai: A comparative lexical study of North and Central Vanuatu languages". Pacific Linguistics.
- See {{Harvcoltxt. François. 2005
- "MOTA Bible | O Vatavata we Garaqa 1931 (Vanuatu) | YouVersion".
- "The Book of Common Prayer in Mota".
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