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RR 2001/382 Tuvaluan: A Polynesian Language of the Central Pacific Niko Besnier Routledge London and Now York, NY 2000 xxxvi+662pp. ISBN 0 415 02456 0 Descriptive Grammars Series Keyword Foreign languages
Niko Besnier's near-definitive study of the language of Tuvalu, in the series of descriptive grammars edited by Bernard Comrie of the University of Southern California, continues the admirable standard of linguistic scholarship set by Winifred Bauer (Maori) and Veronica Du Feu (Rapanui). Besnier's grammatical description of the language spoken by some 9,500 people, in the eight constituents of Tuvala (formerly Ellice Islands) and in the Tuvaluan settlement of Kioa Island off Vanua Levu in Fiji, is the by-product of about three and a half years of field research in Tuvalu, principally on Nukulaelaw Atoll between 1979 and 1995, on various aspects of society, culture and language.
Remote from main shipping routes and lacking exploitable resources, Tuvalu was spared for the most part, the colonial exploitation witnessed elsewhere in the Pacific. A British protectorate from 1892, the group was included in 1916 in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony Conversion to Christianity (in its London Missionary Society (LMS) version) was effected by Samoan pastors trained at the LMS pastoral school in Malua, Western Samoa. A strong Samoan imprint is since discernible on many aspects of social life in Tuvalu, including the language. In 1975 the Ellice Islands left the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony and were renamed Tuvalu: "eight traditions". Tuvalu gained independence from Britain in 1978.
The Tuvaluan language is usually included in the Samoic Outlier group, as loosely defined by Andrew K. Pawley in the Journal of the Polynesian Society in 1966 and 1967. Each of the seven traditionally inhabited islands and atolls has its distinct dialect, differing from one another mostly in phonology (particularly suprasegmental phonology) and lexicon. All seven dialects have essentially the same syntactic structure. Two dialect areas are evident, the northern area...