Is it worth documenting "just a dialect"? Making the case for Suru Kavian (Pentecost Island)

Abstract

Apma, with approximately 8,000 speakers, has three main dialects: Suru Mwerani (SM), Suru Rabwanga (SR), and Suru Kavian (SK). Despite high cognancy rates between SM, SR, and SK, preliminary fieldwork has revealed phonotactic, lexical, and morpho-syntactic differences between SK on the one hand, and SM/SR on the other. SK speakers view their variety as unique, and have expressed a desire to maintain and develop it as distinct from other Apma varieties. This paper explores the unique linguistic features of SK, describes preliminary social and language development questions that have arisen at the outset of the dialect documentation process, reviews how others have incorporated language variation into their grammars, and argues that dialect documentation is worthwhile and important for not only the community of speakers, but also for increasing our understanding of areal language ecology.