Fijian () is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken by some 350,000–450,000 ethnic Fijians as a native language. In the 2013 constitution, Fijian (referred to as iTaukei) is a national language of Fiji, along with English and Hindi. Fijian is a VOS language.
Standard Fijian is based on the Bau dialect, which is an East Fijian language. A pidginized form is used by many Indo-Fijians and Chinese on the islands, while Pidgin Hindustani is used by many rural ethnic Fijians and Chinese in areas dominated by Indo-Fijians.
History
History of the language The Fijian language was introduced to Fiji 3500 years ago by the islands' first settlers. For millennia, it was the only spoken language in Fiji. In 1835, Methodist missionaries from Australia worked in Fiji to develop a written form of the language. By 1840, they had already developed a writing system, and had published various books on the different dialects of the language. After the independence of Fiji in 1970, Fijian has been used in radio, television, books, and periodicals, and has been taught in schools.
Polynesian relationship and influence on Fijian
Linguistic research on the relationship between the Fijian and Polynesian languages shows that they are not simply a case of one borrowing from the other. Instead, they are part of the same language subgroup, the Central Pacific branch of the Austronesian language family, sharing a common ancestor. This means that a large portion of their shared vocabulary consists of cognates—words with a common origin since the vast majority of similarities come from this shared linguistic heritage. However, it is also true that some words from Polynesia have been adopted into Fijian especially from Tonga, particularly in the eastern dialects.
National language debate
In May and June 2005, several prominent Fijians sought to promote the status of the Fijian language. Fiji had no official language before the 1997 Constitution, which made the Fijian language co-official with English and Fiji Hindi; however, it was not required to be taught in schools. The minister of education, Ro Teimumu Kepa, has also supported appeals to Chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs Ratu Ovini Bokini. Similar appeals have been made by Misiwini Qereqeretabua, Director of the Institute of Language and Culture, and by Apolonia Tamata, a linguistics professor at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. They have stated that recognition of the Fijian language is essential for the basic identity of the nation and acts as a unifying factor for the multicultural society of Fiji.
Mahendra Chaudhry, the leader of the Fiji Labour Party, also supported the cause to make Fijian a national language and a compulsory subject in schools with the same status as Fiji Hindi, a position echoed by Krishna Vilas of the National Reconciliation Committee.
Since 2013, when a new constitution was adopted, Fijian is established as an official language of Fiji alongside Fiji Hindi and English.
Phonology The consonant phonemes of Fijian are as shown in the following table:
+ Fijian consonant phonemes Labial Coronal Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Plosive voiceless () () () prenasalized () Fricative voiceless () () () voiced Trill plain prenasalized Approximant
The consonant written has been described as a prenasalized trill or trilled affricate . However, it is only rarely pronounced with a trilled release; the primary feature distinguishing it from is that it is postalveolar, , rather than dental/alveolar. The authors use the transcription , where the sub-dot is their convention for a postalveolar stop that is not prototypically retroflex.
The sounds and occur only in loanwords from other languages. The sounds and only occur for speakers from certain regions of the country.
The sounds and occur as allophones of and .
The glottal stop occurs in the Boumaa Fijian used to illustrate this article, but is not found in the standard language. It descends from an earlier sound in most Fijian dialects.
Note the difference in place of articulation between the voiced-voiceless fricative pairs: bilabial vs. labiodental , and dental vs. alveolar .
The vowel phonemes are:
+ Monophthongs Front Central Back short long short long short long Close Mid Open
+ Falling diphthongs Second component Firstcomponent In addition, there is the rising diphthong .
Syllables can consist of a consonant followed by a vowel (CV) or a single vowel (V). Word stress is based on moras: a short vowel is one mora, diphthongs and long vowels are two morae. Primary stress is on the penultimate mora of the phonological word. That is, if the last syllable of a word is short, then the penultimate syllable will be stressed, while if the last syllable contains either a long vowel or a diphthong, then it receives primary stress. Stress is not lexical and can shift when suffixes are attached to the root. Examples: Stress on the penultimate syllable (final short vowel): , ; Stress on the final syllable (diphthong): , (the stress extends over the whole diphthong). Stress shift: , → ,
Orthography The Fijian alphabet is based on the Latin script and consists of the following letters. There is almost a one-to-one correspondence between letters and phonemes.
+ Alphabet Capital Lowercase IPA Others ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In the 1980s, scholars compiling a dictionary added several more consonants and a few consonant clusters to the alphabet. These newcomers were necessary to handle words entering Standard Fijian from not only English, but from other Fijian languages or dialects as well. These are the most important additions: , as in and , as in .
For phonological reasons and are pronounced , rather than , (cf. Japanese chi kana, or in standard Brazilian Portuguese). Hence, the Fijian name for Fiji, , from an allophonic pronunciation of as .
In addition, the digraph stands for retroflex , or a prenasalized trill in careful pronunciation, or more commonly for some people and in some dialects.
The vowel letters have roughly their IPA values, . The vowel length contrast is not usually indicated in writing, except in dictionaries and textbooks for learners of the language, where it is indicated by a macron over the vowel in question; Dixon, in the work cited below, doubles all long vowels in his spelling system. Diphthongs are , pronounced .
Morpho-syntax Note: the examples in this section are from Bouma dialect. It is not Standard Fijian, which is based on the Bauan dialect.
Negation In order to negate a phrase or clause in Fijian, certain verbs are used to create this distinction. These verbs of negation are known as semi-auxiliary verbs. Semi-auxiliary verbs fulfil the functions of main verbs (in terms of syntactic form and pattern) and have a NP or complement clause as their subject (complements clauses within negation are introduced by relators (which refers to an event, which is generally a non-specific unit) or (which refers is translated as "should", referring to the event within the complement clause should occur)). Within a complement clause, the semi-auxiliary verb qualifies the predicate.
Semi-auxiliary verbs One semi-auxiliary verb used to express negation in Fijian is . This semi-auxiliary can be translated as either "there are no-" or "it is not the case that", depending on the subject it relates to. In terms of numerical expression, is also used to express the quantity "none". This negator can be used in almost all situations, with the exception of the imperative or in a (classifier) clauses. When takes a NP as its subject, the meaning "there are no-" is assumed:
Predicate clauses can also be negated in Fijian with the semi-auxiliary verb . This can only be completed when the predicate is placed into a complement clause. The subject of must also be , which introduces the complement clause. It is then translated as "it is not the case that (predicate clause)". An example of this construction is shown here:
Hence, the only way a verb (which is generally the head of a predicate phrase) can be negated in Fijian is when it forms part of the [ VERB] construction. However, in Fijian the head of a predicate phrase may belong to almost any word class. If another word (e.g. a noun) is used, the structure of negation alters. This distinction can be shown through diverse examples of the negating NPs in Fijian. The below examples show the difference between a noun as the head of a NP and a noun as the head of a predicate in a complement clause, within negation:
NP as subject of
as the subject of
Additionally, can also work with relator which introduces interrogative clauses. This combination creates a form translatable as "or not":
Another common negator is or , which is translatable as "don't, not". Differently to , this semi-auxiliary verb is used for imperatives and in clauses. Therefore, these semi-auxiliaries are fixed, and cannot be used interchangeably. and have the same meaning, however may be more intense; in most instances either semi-auxiliary verb can be used. ~ can take a NP as its subject, but most commonly takes the complement as a subject, which is demonstrated below:
An example of ~ used in imperative structure can be seen here:
In the case of pronouns, they can only be negated when they form part of the NP, when acting as the predicate head. Therefore, pronouns cannot be the NP subject of semi-auxiliary verbs or ~ in the way that general nouns can.
Combining semi-auxiliary verbs and ~ can be combined with other auxiliary verbs to produce diverse constructions. Both and ~ can connect with semi-auxiliary to negate the concept of possibility which is attached to the verb (resulting in constructions such as and ).
Modifiers in negation Two main modifiers, and play key roles in negation in Fijian, and work in conjunction with semi-auxiliary verbs. is added after negators and ~ , and functions as an intensity marker. The construction is translatable as . The construction requires an adjective (or an adverb which results from an adjective), and must take (complement clause) as its subject in order to function. can be found in position immediately after , but may also be found after the relator without changing the meaning of the phrase. The primary construction is shown below:
Similarly, to , the modifier can also be used in conjunction with and ~ . This combination is used to stress the negative sense and aspect of a phrase.
Pronouns and person markers The pronominal system of Fijian is remarkably rich. Like many other languages, it recognises three persons; first person (speaker), second person (addressee), and third person (all other). There is no distinction between human, non-human, animate, or inanimate. Four numbers are represented; singular, dual, paucal, and plural—'paucal' refers to more than two people who have some relationship, as a family or work group; if none, 'plural' is used. Like many other Oceanic languages, Fijian pronouns are marked for number and clusivity.
+Bouma Fijian pronounsPersonNumbersingulardualpaucalplural1INCLsubjectobjectcardinal1EXCLsubject ~ objectcardinal2subject ~ ~ ~ objectcardinal3subjectobjectcardinal
Forms and function Each pronoun can have five forms, but some person-number combinations may have the same form for more than one function, as can be seen in the table above.
The forms are:
Cardinal – used when a pronoun occurs as the head of a NP. A cardinal pronoun is usually preceded by the proper article , except when preceded by a preposition:
Subject – the first constituent of a predicate, acts as person marking. Examples can be seen in examples (1) and (2) above: and , and (3) below:
Object – follows the -final form of a transitive verb:
Possessive suffix – attaches to inalienable nouns, and
Possessive – precedes the NP head of the 'possessed' constituent in a possessive construction.