*Mas*ter your obligations! Colonisation-induced grammatical change in Vanuatu’s indigenous languages

Many indigenous languages of Vanuatu have a grammatical marker *mas* to express positive deontic modality (necessity and obligation). *Mas* was borrowed from Bislama, an English-lexifier creole and Vanuatu's lingua franca; the source of Bislama's *mas* is ultimately English *must*. Most of these languages lack dedicated indigenous positive deontic modality morphemes. Instead, deontic force used to be organised around the explicit encoding of prohibitions/taboos. In this talk, I will discuss the reorganisation of the deontic modality systems of Vanuatu's languages, with a focus on the socioeconomic factors that likely drove it. I will start with a historical account of the contact between the people of Vanuatu and Western Europeans. More intense contact started around the 1850s and triggered a loss of over 90% of Vanuatu's population. This was due to Blackbirding (the often forceful indentured labour on plantations in Queensland), epidemics, and violence. This put local communities, with their egalitarian social structures, in a very disadvantageous position, as colonisers were establishing religious, educational, and government institutions, in which hierarchies and the communication of obligations became crucial. I will explore the impact that colonisation had on the language ecosystems in Vanuatu more broadly, to then focus on the factors that led to the grammatical change at hand. I will draw on primary and secondary linguistic data, the historical record, my own experiences during linguistic fieldwork in Vanuatu, language ecology theory, and linguistic theories of language contact and borrowing.