Volow language

---

title: "Volow language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["banks–torres-languages", "languages-of-vanuatu", "torba-province", "endangered-austronesian-languages", "critically-endangered-languages"] description: "Austronesian language formerly spoken in Vanuatu" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volow_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Austronesian language formerly spoken in Vanuatu ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]

Field	Value
name	Volow
altname	Aplow, Valuwa
nativename	Vōlōw
pronunciation
states	Vanuatu
region	Mota Lava island, Banks Islands
extinct	1986, with the death of Wanhan
ref
speakers2	1 passive speaker (2021)
familycolor	Austronesian
fam2	Malayo-Polynesian
fam3	Oceanic
fam4	Southern Oceanic
fam5	North-Central Vanuatu
fam6	North Vanuatu
fam7	Torres-Banks
fam8	Mwotlap
isoexception	dialect
glotto	volo1238
glottorefname	Volow
map2	Lang Status 20-CR.svg
mapcaption2
script	Latin
::

| name = Volow | altname = Aplow, Valuwa | nativename = Vōlōw | pronunciation = | states = Vanuatu | region = Mota Lava island, Banks Islands | extinct = 1986, with the death of Wanhan | ref = | speakers2 = 1 passive speaker (2021) | familycolor = Austronesian | fam2 = Malayo-Polynesian | fam3 = Oceanic | fam4 = Southern Oceanic | fam5 = North-Central Vanuatu | fam6 = North Vanuatu | fam7 = Torres-Banks | fam8 = Mwotlap | isoexception = dialect | glotto = volo1238 | glottorefname = Volow | map2 = Lang Status 20-CR.svg | mapcaption2 = | script = Latin

Volow (formerly known as Valuwa or Valuga) is an Oceanic language variety that used to be spoken in the area of Aplow, in the eastern part of the island of Motalava, Vanuatu.

Name

The name Volow is originally a placename: it corresponds to the area known today as Aplow, but in the former language Volow rather than in Mwotlap. Now that the Volow dialect has ceased to be used, the name Volow has been forgotten by the modern population. The place is only known through its Mwotlap name Aplow; as for the language variety, it is often referred to, in the Mwotlap language, as na-vap te-Plōw “the language of Aplow”.

The language variety is sometimes also referred to as na-vap ta Dagmel “the language of Dagmel” (in Mwotlap), after the name of an ancient, now abandoned, village.

Sociolinguistics

Volow has receded historically in favor of the now dominant language Mwotlap. It is now only remembered by a single passive speaker, who lives in the village of Aplow — the new name of what was previously known as Volow.

The similarity of Volow with Mwotlap is such that the two communalects may be considered dialects of a single language.

Phonology

Volow phonemically contrasts 16 consonants and 7 vowels.

Consonants

:{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |+ Consonants !colspan="2"| ! Labial–velar ! Bilabial ! Alveolar ! Dorsal ! Glottal |- !colspan="2"| Nasal |
|
|
|
| |- !rowspan="2"| Stop ! voiceless | | |
| | |- ! prenasalized |
|
|
|
| |- !colspan="2"| Fricative | |
|
|
|
|- !colspan="2"| Approximant |
| |
|
| |}

This consonant inventory includes a typologically rare consonant: a rounded, prenasalised voiced labial-velar plosive : e.g. “woman” (spelled n-leq̄evēn in the local orthography).

Amongst the 17 Torres–Banks languages, Volow is the only one to have preserved the voicing of the proto-phonemes *ᵑg and *ᵐbʷ , which are reconstructed for its ancestor Proto-Torres-Banks. All its neighbours (including Mwotlap) devoiced these to and respectively.

Vowels

The seven vowels of Volow are all short monophthongs:

:{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |+ Vowels ! ! Front ! Back |- |
|
|- |
|
|- |
|
|- | colspan="2"|
|}

Notes

References

• {{citation |doi=10.1353/ol.2005.0034 |last=François |first=Alexandre |year=2005a |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 |doi=10.1515/lity.2005.9.1.115 |last=François |first=Alexandre |author-mask=2 |year=2005b |title=A typological overview of Mwotlap, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu |journal=Linguistic Typology |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=115–146 |s2cid=55878308 |url = https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_LingTyp-Mwotlap_2005.pdf
• {{citation |last=François |first=Alexandre |author-mask=2 |year=2011 |title=Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence |journal=Journal of Historical Linguistics |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=175–246 |doi=10.1075/jhl.1.2.03fra |url=https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_2011_JHL1-2_Social-ecology_Vanuatu.pdf |hdl=1885/29283 |s2cid=42217419 |hdl-access=free
• {{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 |issue=214 |doi=10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022 |pages=85–110 |s2cid=145208588 |url=https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_VowelsNorthernVanuatu_OL44-2.pdf
• {{Citation | last = François | first = Alexandre | author-mask=2 | contribution = Shadows of bygone lives: The histories of spiritual words in northern Vanuatu | editor1-last = Mailhammer | editor1-first = Robert | title = Lexical and structural etymology: Beyond word histories | volume = 11 | pages = 185–244 | publisher = DeGruyter Mouton | place = Berlin | year = 2013 | series = Studies in Language Change | isbn = 978-1-61451-058-1 | contribution-url =https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_2013_Shadows-of-bygone-lives-The-histories-of-spiritual-words-in-northern-Vanuatu.pdf | chapter-format = | url=
• {{cite web |url=https://pangloss.cnrs.fr/corpus/Volow?lang=en&mode=pro&seeMore=true |title=Presentation of the Volow language and audio archive |last=François |first=Alexandre |author-mask=2 |date=2021 |website=Pangloss Collection |location=Paris |publisher=CNRS |access-date=28 Sep 2022 |quote= |ref=pangloss}}

References

1. [https://marama.huma-num.fr/AF-field.htm#Vanuatu List of Banks islands languages].
2. See [[#Ray
3. Tryon, Darrell T.]] (1976). ''New Hebrides languages: An internal classification''. C-50, vi + 550 pages. [[Pacific Linguistics]], Australian National University. {{doi. 10.15144/PL-C50
4. {{Harvcoltxt. François. 2012
5. [[#pangloss. François (2021)]].
6. {{Harvcoltxt. François. 2005b
7. {{Harvcoltxt. François. 2013
8. [[Löyöp language. Löyöp]] still preserves some voiced traces of these phonemes, e.g. when it [[Proto-Torres–Banks language#Regular sound changes from Proto-Oceanic. reflects *ᵑg]] as {{IPA. /ŋ/ in the syllable-final position of modern words: e.g. POc *waᵑga(ŋ) 'canoe' > {{abbrlink. {{sc. lyp. Löyöp language {{IPA. urr. n-ɔŋ. .
9. {{Harvcoltxt. François. 2005a

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::