Language notes from 1770 and 1774

Spanish notes from a 1770 visit to the island record 94 words and terms. Many are clearly Polynesian, but several are not easily recognizable.^[8] For example, the numbers from one to ten seemingly have no relation to any known language. They are compared with contemporary Rapa Nui words, in parentheses:

1. cojána (ka tahi)
2. corena (ka rua)
3. cogojú (ka toru)
4. quirote (ka hā)
5. majaná (ka rima)
6. teúto (ka ono)
7. tejéa (ka hitu)
8. moroqui (ka vaꞌu)
9. vijoviri (ka iva)
10. queromata-paúpaca quacaxixiva (ka ꞌaŋahuru)

It may be that the list is a misunderstanding, and the words not related to numbers at all. The Spanish may have shown Arabic numerals to the islanders who did not understand their meaning, and likened them to some other abstraction. For example, the "moroqui" for number eight would have actually been moroki, a small fish that is used as a bait, since "8" can look like a simple drawing of a fish.^[9]

Captain James Cook visited the island four years later, and had a Tahitian interpreter with him, who, while recognizing some Polynesian words (up to 17 were written down), was not able to converse with the islanders in general. The British also attempted to record the numerals and were able to record the correct Polynesian words.^[8]

Post-Peruvian enslavement

In the 1860s the Peruvian slave raids began, as Peruvians were experiencing labor shortages and came to regard the Pacific as a vast source of free labor. Slavers raided islands as far away as Micronesia, but Rapa Nui was much closer and became a prime target.

In December 1862 eight Peruvian ships landed their crewmen and between bribery and outright violence they captured some 1,000 Rapanui, including the king, his son, and the ritual priests (one of the reasons for so many gaps in knowledge of the ancient ways). It has been estimated that 2,000 Rapanui were captured over a period of years. Those who survived to arrive in Peru were poorly treated, overworked, and exposed to diseases. Ninety percent of the Rapa Nui died within one or two years of capture.

Eventually the Bishop of Tahiti caused a public outcry and an embarrassed Peru rounded up the few survivors to return them. A shipload headed to Rapa Nui, but smallpox broke out en route and only 15 arrived at the island. They were put ashore. The resulting smallpox epidemic nearly wiped out the remaining population.

In the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1860s, Rapa Nui came under extensive outside influence from neighbouring Polynesian languages such as Tahitian. While the majority of the population that was taken to work as slaves in the Peruvian mines died of diseases and bad treatment in the 1860s, hundreds of other Islanders who left for Mangareva in the 1870s and 1880s to work as servants or labourers adopted the local form of Tahitian-Pidgin. Fischer argues that this pidgin became the basis for the modern Rapa Nui language when the surviving part of the Rapa Nui immigrants on Mangareva returned to their almost deserted home island.

Language notes from 1886

William J. Thomson, paymaster on the USS Mohican, spent twelve days on Rapa Nui from 19 to 30 December 1886. Among the data Thomson collected was the Rapa Nui calendar.

Language notes from the twentieth century

Father Sebastian Englert,^[10] a German missionary living on Easter Island during 1935–1969, published a partial Rapa Nui–Spanish dictionary in his La Tierra de Hotu Matuꞌa in 1948, trying to save what was left of the old language. Despite the many typographical mistakes, the dictionary is valuable, because it provides a wealth of examples which all appear drawn from a real corpus, part oral traditions and legends, part actual conversations.^[11]

Englert recorded vowel length, stress, and glottal stop, but was not always consistent, or perhaps the misprints make it seem so. He indicated vowel length with a circumflex, and stress with an acute accent, but only when it does not occur where expected. The glottal stop /ʔ/ is written as an apostrophe, but is often omitted. The velar nasal /ŋ/ is sometimes transcribed with a ⟨g⟩, but sometimes with a Greek eta, ⟨η⟩, as a graphic approximation of ⟨ŋ⟩.

Rongorongo

Part of a line of rongorongo script.

It is assumed that rongorongo, a possible undeciphered script once used on Rapa Nui, transcribes the old Rapa Nui language if it is indeed a true writing system.

Consonants

As present generation Rapa Nui speak Spanish as their first language in younger years and learn Rapa Nui later in life, flap /ɾ/ in word-initial position can be pronounced alveolar trill [r].

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

All vowels can be either long or short and are always long when they are stressed in the final position of a word.^{[DF 2]} Most vowel sequences are present, with the exception of *uo. The only sequence of three identical vowels is eee, also spelled ꞌēē ('yes').^{[DF 3]}

Syllable structure

Syllables in Rapa Nui are CV (consonant-vowel) or V (vowel). There are no consonant clusters or word-final consonants.^{[DF 3]}

Reduplication

The reduplication of whole nouns or syllable parts performs a variety of different functions within Rapa Nui.^{[DF 5]} To describe colours for which there is not a predefined word, the noun for an object of a like colour is duplicated to form an adjective. For example:

• ꞌehu (mist) → ꞌehu ꞌehu (dark grey)
• tea (dawn) → tea tea (white)

Besides forming adjectives from nouns, the reduplication of whole words can indicate a multiple or intensified action. For example:

• hatu (weave) → hatuhatu (fold)
• kume (undo) → kumekume (take to pieces)
• ruku (dive) → rukuruku (go diving)

There are some apparent duplicate forms for which the original form has been lost. For example:

• rohirohi (tired)

The reduplication of the initial syllable in verbs can indicate plurality of subject or object. In this example the bolded section represents the reduplication of a syllable which indicates the plurality of the subject of a transitive verb:

ꞌori (dance):

E ꞌori ro ꞌa (he/she/they is/are dancing)

E ꞌoꞌori ro ꞌa (they are all dancing)

The reduplication of the final two syllables of a verb indicates plurality or intensity. In this example the bolded section represents the reduplication of two final syllables, indicating intensity or emphasis:

hāꞌaki (tell):

Ka haꞌaki (Tell the story)

Ka haꞌakiꞌaki (Tell the whole story)

Borrowed words

Rapa Nui incorporates a number of borrowed words in which constructions such as consonant clusters or word-final consonants occur, though they do not occur naturally in the language. Historically, the practice was to transliterate unfamiliar consonants, insert vowels between clustered consonants and append word-final vowels where necessary.

e.g.: Britain (English loanword) → Peretane (Rapa Nui rendering)

More recently, loanwords – which come primarily from Spanish – retain their consonant clusters. For example, "litro" (litre).^{[DF 6]}

Word Classes

Rapa Nui can be said to have a basic two-way distinction in its words, much like other Polynesian languages. That is between full words, and particles.^{[PK 1]} Full words occur in the head of the phrase and are mostly open classes (exceptions like locationals exist). Particles occur in fixed positions before or after the head, and have a high frequency. There also exists an intermediate category, Pro-Forms, which occur in the head of a phrase, and can be preceded or followed by a particle. Unlike full words, they do not have lexical meaning, and like particles, form a closed class. Pro-forms include personal, possessive and benefactive pronouns, as well as interrogative words. Additionally, two other intermediate categories are the negator (ꞌina) and the numerals. While both of them form a closed class, they are able to function as phrase nuclei.^{[PK 1]}

Questions

Yes/no questions are distinguished from statements chiefly by a particular pattern of intonation. Where there is no expectation of a particular answer, the form remains the same as a statement. A question expecting an agreement is preceded by hoki.^{[DF 11]}

Conjunction

Original Rapa Nui has no conjunctive particles. Copulative, adversative and disjunctive notions are typically communicated by context or clause order. Modern Rapa Nui has almost completely adopted Spanish conjunctions rather than rely on this.^{[DF 12]}

Possession

Exclamation

Ko and ka are exclamatory indicators.^{[DF 16]}

ko suggests a personal reaction:

Ko te aroha (Poor thing!)

ka suggests judgement on external events:

Ka haꞌakiꞌaki (Tell the whole story!)

Compound words

Terms which did not exist in original Rapa Nui were created via compounding:^{[DF 17]}

pātia ika = ('spear fish') = harpoon

pātia kai = ('spear food') = fork

kiri vaꞌe = ('skin foot') = shoe

manu pātia = ('bird spear') = wasp

pepe hoi = ('stool horse') = saddle

pepe noho = ('stool stay') = chair

Negation

In Rapa Nui, negation is indicated by free standing morphemes.^{[PK 9]} Rapa Nui has four main negators:

ꞌina (neutral)

kai (perfective)

(e)ko (imperfective)

taꞌe (constituent negator)

Additionally there are also two additional particles/ morphemes which also contribute to negation in Rapa Nui:

kore (Existential/noun negator)

hia / ia (verb phrase particle which occurs in combination with different negators to form the meaning 'not yet')

Negation occurs as preverbal particles in the verb phrase,^{[PK 10]} with the clausal negator kai and (e)ko occurring in first position in the verbal phrase, while the constituent negator (taꞌe) occurs in second position in the verbal phrase. Clausal negators occur in the same position as aspect markers and subordinators—this means it is impossible for these elements to co-occur.^{[PK 11]} As a result, negative clauses tend to have fewer aspectual distinctions.^{[PK 12]} Hia occurs in eighth position as a post-verbal marker. Verbal negators precede adjectives.^{[PK 13]} The table below roughly depicts the positions of negators in the Verb Phrase:

Numerals

There is a system for the numerals 1–10 in both Rapa Nui and Tahitian, both of which are used, though all numbers higher than ten are expressed in Tahitian. When counting, all numerals whether Tahitian or Rapanui are preceded by ka. This is not used however, when using a number in a sentence.^{[DF 18]}

Word order

Rapa Nui is a VSO (verb–subject–object) language.^{[DF 19]} Except where verbs of sensing are used, the object of a verb is marked by the relational particle i.

Where a verb of sensing is used, the subject is marked by the agentive particle e.

Directionals

Spatial deictics is also present in Rapa Nui, in the form of two directionals: mai and atu. They indicate direction with respect to a specific deictic centre or locus.

• mai indicates movement towards the deictic centre, hence the gloss hither.
• atu indicates movement away from the deictic centre, and is as such glossed as away.^{[PK 40]} They are both reflexes of a larger system in Proto-Polynesian.^[19]

Postverbal Demonstratives

The postverbal demonstratives (PVDs) have the same form as the postnominal demonstratives, and they have the same meaning:

• nei: proximity, close to the speaker
• ena: medial distance, close to the hearer
• era: default PVD; farther distance, removed from both speaker and hearer.

How they differ from postnominal demonstratives is their function/where they can appear, as it is quite limited. They can only appear in certain syntactic contexts, listed here:

• PVDs are common after imperfective e to express a progressive or habitual action.
• The contiguous marker ka is often followed by a PVD, both in main and subordinate clauses.
• With the perfect ko V ꞌā, era is occasionally used to express an action which is well and truly finished.
• PVDs also appear in relative clauses

Overall, their main function is to provide nuance to the aspectual marker they are being used alongside.^{[PK 41]}