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Sowa
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Pentecost Island
Extinct	c. 2000, with the death of Maurice Tabi
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic North-Central Vanuatu Central Vanuatu Sowa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sww
Glottolog	sowa1244
ELP	Sowa
Sowa is classified as Critically Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Sowa was the original language of south-centralPentecost island inVanuatu. In the 20th century it was totally displaced byApma, a neighbouring language. Sowa was closely related toSke, another south Pentecost language.

Sowa was originally spoken on both western and eastern sides of Pentecost. The river atMelsisi formed the language's north-western boundary, and its range extended southwards to a creek near the village of Levizendam.

Following the depopulation of Pentecost that occurred after the introduction of European diseases, men from Sowa-speaking areas were married women from other parts of Pentecost, who were mostly Apma speakers. As a result, by the 1960s, Apma had totally replaced Sowa as the predominant local language. The last native Sowa speaker, Maurice Tabi of Vanvat village, died in 2000.

Today, a few local people whose fathers or mothers were Sowa speakers still remember parts of the language, although none speak it fluently. A couple, including Isaiah Tabi Vahka ofWaterfall Village and Adam Bulesisbwat of Lesuubelakan, compiled short written notes on Sowa in an attempt to ensure that the language was not lost. The only linguist to have studied Sowa while the language was still alive was David Walsh, who collected a vocabulary list in 1969. Andrew Gray, a British schoolteacher atRanwadi College, worked with speakers' children in the late 2000s to try to reconstruct the basics of the language.

Some people in the former Sowa area see the language as a part of their cultural heritage and lament its loss. There is talk of reviving Sowa, although this is not a high priority for most local people, and records are insufficient to allow a fully authentic restoration of the language.

Given the close relationship between Sowa andSke language (the two are reckoned by locals to have been mutually intelligible), a case could be made for classifying the two as dialects rather than as separate languages.

In his 1976 survey ofNew Hebrides Languages,Darrell Tryon classified Sowa as a separate language, calculating its cognacy with Ske at 77% (with 80% being the approximate threshold below which two forms are considered separate languages rather than mere dialects). However, in their 2001 survey, Lynch & Crowley did not recognise Sowa as a language, noting that Tryon's data suffered from significant margins of error.

Using an updated word list, Andrew Gray calculated the cognacy of Sowa and Ske at 82%. Sowa's status as a language is therefore borderline if considered on the basis of cognacy figures alone. However, local people perceive Sowa very much as a distinct language and not as a Ske dialect, and there are significant grammatical and phonological differences between Sowa and Ske.

Theconsonants of Sowa wereb,d,g,k,l,m,n,ng (as in English "singer"),p,r,s,t, bilabialv,w,z, and labiovelarbw,mw andpw. Sowa appears to have lackedh, although this letter occasionally appears in records of Sowa as a result of un-phonetic spelling and interference from other languages.

By comparison with related languages such asApma andRaga, there appear to have been relatively few restrictions on the distribution of consonants. However, it appears that consonants occurring at the end of an utterance were modified according to Apma-like rules, withb,v and possiblyw converted top,d devoiced tot,g devoiced tok, andr dropped to produce a long vowel. Clusters of consonants within syllables were not permitted.

Unlike in neighbouringSke, there was noprenasalization of consonants in Sowa.

In addition to the five standardvowels (a,e,i,o andu), Sowa appears to have had mid-high vowelsé (intermediate betweene andi) andó (intermediate betweeno andu), like inSke andSa languages.

Long vowels (aa,ee, etc.) occurred as a result of the dropping ofr at the ends of words, and are shown to have been distinct from short vowels byminimal pairs such asme "to be red" andmee (<mer) "to be black".

Because no linguist ever worked directly with a native Sowa speaker, the language's grammar is poorly known. However, some of the basics can be deduced from the phrases that are remembered.

Personal pronouns were distinguished byperson andnumber. They were not distinguished bygender.

The basic pronouns in Sowa were:

Nouns in Sowa were generally not preceded byarticles.Plurality was indicated by placing the pronounnéé ("them") or a number after the noun.

Nouns could be eitherfree, ordirectly-possessed. Directly-possessed nouns were suffixed to indicate whom an item belonged to. For example:

dolok = my voice

dolom = your voice

dolon = his/her voice

dolon dasék = my mother's voice

Possession could also be indicated by the use ofpossessive classifiers, separate words that occur before or after the noun and take possessive suffixes. These classifiers were similar to those ofApma:

• no- for general possessions (nog wakat, "my basket")
• bile- for things that are cared for, such as crops and livestock (biled bó, "our pig")
• a- for things to be eaten (am bwet, "your taro")
• mwe- for things to be drunk (mwen ré, "his water")
• na- for associations, over which the possessor has no control (vénu naik, "my home island")

The possessive suffixes were as follows:

A verb could be transformed into a noun by the addition of anominalising suffix-an:

bwal = to fight (verb)

bwalan = a fight (noun)

Modifiers generally came after a noun:

vat = stone

vat alok = big stone

vat iru = two stones

Verbs were preceded by markers providing information on the subject and thetense,aspect andmood of an action. Some of these are difficult to reconstruct, due to inconsistencies within and between sources, but a plausible set is:

Dual (two-person) forms incorporating a particlera also existed, as inSke, but are not well remembered.

Negative phrases began with the wordatna ("absent"):

ni iko = I did it

atna ni iko = I didn't do it

In theimperative, verbs could occur on their own (unlike inApma andSke, in which they are always preceded by a subject pronoun). Verbs beginning with a pair of consonants, which would have been difficult to pronounce on their own, acquired an extra vowel in this situation:

mwi lse = I see

Lese! = Look!

Transitive andintransitive verb forms were distinguished, like inApma andSke. Transitive verbs were commonly followed with-né:

mwi rós = I move

mwi rós né vat = I move the stone

Like neighbouring languages, Sowa made extensive use ofstative verbs for descriptive purposes.

Verbs in Sowa could be linked together inserial verb constructions.

• Gray, Andrew (2012).The Languages of Pentecost Island. Manples (BFOV).ISBN 978-0-9560985-4-2.
• Lynch, John; Crowley, Terry (2001).Languages of Vanuatu: A New Survey and Bibliography. Pacific Linguistics.doi:10.15144/PL-517.
• Tabi Vahka, Isaiah (2006).Tamzon Nan Dutmekan Lon Dolod Ne Sowa [First Book of Our Language which is Sowa].
• Tryon, Darrell (1976).New Hebrides Languages: An Internal Classification. Pacific Linguistics.doi:10.15144/PL-C50.

• The Languages of Pentecost Island – further information on Sowa

• Penama languages
• Critically endangered languages
• Extinct languages of Vanuatu

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