Avava language
Avava (Navava), also known as Katbol, Tembimbe-Katbol, or Bangsa’ is an Oceanic language of central Malekula, Vanuatu.At the end of a prosodic unit – in citation form, utterance-finally and when speaking slowly – word-final vowels other than /i/ tend to be replaced with "diphthongs" /Vi/.Word-initial vowels present in citation form tend to be lost when the word is linked to others, e.g. when the subject of a verb or possessed by a pronoun.A notable variant of the same phoneme shown with short vowels is when /u/ undergoes centralisation to [ʉ] in two different settings: in closed syllables between a bilabial trill and a following alveolar consonant, and in non-final syllables between a bilabial trill and alveolar consonant[clarification needed].Prenasalization is maintained after oral consonants, e.g. [ⁿdirⁿdir] 'earthquake', but is lost after a nasal, e.g. [luᵑɡamɡem] 'bamboo roof pins'.ran'dawn'→→ran-ian'dawning'ran → ran-ian'dawn' → 'dawning'sasar'teach'→→sasar-ian'teaching'sasar → sasar-ian'teach' → 'teaching'In some cases, the nominalized form of a reduplicated verb contains the unreduplicated root.kan'eat'→→a-kan-iar'food'kan → a-kan-iar'eat' → 'food'per'work'→→e-per-ian'job'per → e-per-ian'work' → 'job'The prefix, ma-, when added to the name of a place, refers to a person that is from that specified area.