A grammar of Fakamae, a Polynesian Outlier of Vanuatu, with a study of Fakamae multilingualism

This thesis is a grammatical description of Fakamae which is based on data collected as part of a language documentation project undertaken with Fakamae speakers on Emae Island, Vanuatu, from 2017 to 2021. The corpus consists of 28 hours of video and/or audio recordings of Fakamae speakers. Fakamae is one of three Polynesian Outlier languages spoken in Vanuatu. It is largely undescribed and undocumented. There are approximately 200 Fakamae speakers living on Emae and roughly the same number of speakers living elsewhere. The grammar describes the language in terms of phonology, morphology, and syntax at noun phrase, verb complex, clause, and sentence levels. The thesis presents a particularly detailed analysis of the structure of the noun phrase and verb complex. It presents a detailed analysis of verb subclasses and valency changing morphology, and an analysis of serial verb constructions. Fakamae has SV/AVO constituent order and is mostly left-headed. Most modifiers follow the noun in a noun phrase, as do nominal possessors, and noun phrase complements follow the preposition. Notable typological features include an unusual vowel system in which the front-back parameter has been largely lost as a distinctive feature. This thesis also assesses the endangerment and vitality status of Fakamae and investigates multilingualism within two key Fakamae speaking communities on Emae. This thesis will make an important contribution to typological and comparative linguistics research by providing the first comprehensive grammatical description of Fakamae while there is still opportunity to do so. The study of multilingualism within Fakamae speaking communities on Emae is the first detailed account of the effects of multilingual practices on the Fakamae language in relation to both autochthonous and non-autochthonous languages. As such, this study contributes to research on small-scale multilingualism and language endangerment.