Alor–Pantar languages
Alor–Pantar | |
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Geographic distribution | Alorese is an Austronesian language. |
The Alor–Pantar languages are a family of clearly related
Languages
The family is conventionally divided into two branches, centered on the islands of
- Alor branch: Wosika, Abui, Adang–Kabola, Kafoa (Jafoo), Kui, Klon, Wersing, Sawila, Kula
- Pantar branch: Blagar, Teiwa, Kaera, Lamma, Nedebang, Retta
Tereweng is sometimes considered a separate language from Blagar, Hamap sometimes separate from Adang, and Sar sometimes from Teiwa. Abui, Kamang, and Kabola may also not be unitary languages. There is a total of 71,940 speakers.[citation needed]
External classification
It has long been recognized that the Papuan languages of the Alor archipelago (including Alor and Pantar, as well as the four small islands of Buaya, Pura, Ternate, and Tereweng in the Pantar Strait) form a well-defined group. Apparent cognates among basic vocabulary are abundant, as demonstrated for example in Stokhof’s (1975) survey of basic vocabulary, and the shape of pronominal systems is almost identical across the group.[2] The genetic relatedness of the Alor–Pantar languages has been confirmed through the reconstruction of the proto-Alor–Pantar language.[3] Relationships between the Alor–Pantar languages and at least some (though perhaps not all) of the non-Austronesian languages of Timor Island may justify the positing of a Timor–Alor–Pantar language family, however, the relationship between the AP group and the Timor languages is of second order.
Wurm et al. (1975) classified the AP languages as members of the putative Trans-New Guinea Phylum.[4] However, the authors offered little evidence for this classification and remained somewhat doubtful, noting, “whichever way they [the Timor–Alor–Pantar languages] are classified, they contain strong substratum elements of the other … phyla involved” (Wurm et al. 1975:318).
Most recently, based on an analysis of pronominal shapes Ross (2005) assigns AP to his West Trans-New Guinea linkage, a subgroup of Trans-New Guinea.[5] Yet Ross’ proposal requires that AP pronouns be derived from pTNG via a flip-flop in which second-person pronouns trade places with the third person. Compare pTNG *ŋga ‘2pro’ and *(y)a ‘3pro’ with Nedebang aŋ and gaŋ, respectively. Bottom-up reconstruction based on regular sound correspondences may shed further light on these issues.
Internal classification
Holton, et al. (2012)
Holton, et al. (2012) propose the following classificatory subgrouping for the Alor–Pantar languages, with individual languages marked by italics.[6]
"Proto-Alor–Pantar" may be synonymous with Proto-
Kaiping and Klamer (2019)
A 2019 phylogenetic study of Alor-Pantar by Kaiping and Klamer gives the following internal structure:[7]
Kaiping and Klamer (2019b) have found that the four major Alor–Pantar subgroups, namely
Pronouns
Ross (2005) postulates a "West Timor" group uniting Alor–Pantar with Bunak. He reconstructs the pronouns as:
West Timor pronouns sg pl 1ex *na *ni 1in *pi 2 *[y]a *i 3 *ga *gi
3pl *gi is not attested from Bunak, and the inclusive is just i.
Language documentation
Language documentation efforts in the early 21st century have produced a range of published documentary materials.
- Grammatical descriptions
- Dictionaries
- Kamus Pengantar Bahasa Abui (Kratochvíl & Delpada 2008)[13]
- Kamus Pengantar Bahasa Pantar Barat (Holton & Lamma Koly 2008)[14]
Proto-language
Proto-Alor–Pantar | |
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Reconstruction of | Alor–Pantar languages |
Reconstructed ancestors | Proto-Trans–New Guinea
|
A reconstruction of proto-Alor–Pantar has been proposed by Holton and Robinson (2017).[15]
Proto-Alor–Pantar consonants are:[16]
p t k q b d g m n s w j l (r)
In contrast, proto-
Lexical reconstructions by Holton and Robinson (2017) are:[6]
- proto-Alor–Pantar reconstructions (Holton and Robinson 2017)
gloss proto-Alor-Pantar ‘bird’ *(a)dVl ‘name’ *en(i,u) ‘thatch’ *aman ‘black’ *aqana ‘vagina’ *-ar ‘two’ *araqu ‘bite’ *-asi ‘crocodile’ *bagai ‘yellow’ *bagori ‘pig’ *baj ‘leg’ *-bat ‘mat’ *bis ‘wave’ *bob ‘betel nut’ *bui ‘guard’ *bukan ‘smoke’ *bunaq ‘sing’ *dar(a) ‘slippery’ *dul(a) ‘thick’ *dumV ‘rat’ *dur ‘burn’ *ede ‘give’ *-ena ‘3sg’ *ga- ‘3gen’ *ge- ‘3pl’ *gi- ‘2sg’ *ha- ‘fish’ *habi ‘village’ *haban ‘fire, firewood’ *hada ‘yawn’ *hagur ‘breast’ *hami ‘excrement’ *has ‘empty’ *hasak ‘lime’ *hawar ‘dream’ *hipar ‘sugarcane’ *huːba ‘fruit’ *is(i) ‘laugh’ *jari ‘bad, broken’ *jasi ‘star’ *jibV ‘dog’ *jibar ‘water’ *jira ‘fly’ (v.) *jira(n) ‘five’ *jiwesin ‘mosquito’ *kin ‘fingernail’ *kusin ‘flea’ *kVt ‘walk’ *lam(ar) ‘tongue’ *-lebur ‘far’ *lete ‘crouch’ *luk(V) ‘bark’ (v.) *lVu ‘bat’ *madel ‘hear’ *magi ‘come’ *mai ‘betel vine’ *mait ‘father’ *-mam ‘bamboo’ *mari ‘(be) in/on’ *mi ‘climb’ *mid ‘nose’ *-mim ‘die’ *min(a) ‘sit’ *mis ‘banana’ *mogol ‘body hair’ *mudi ‘plant’ (v.) *mudin ‘horn’ *-muk ‘rotten’ *mVn ‘1sg’ *na- ‘eat/drink’ *nai ‘sibling (older)’ *nan(a) ‘one’ *nuk ‘throw’ *oda ‘tail’ *-ora ‘dry in sun’ *por ‘hold’ *p{i,u}nV ‘1pl.incl’ *pi- ‘spit’ *purVn ‘scorpion’ *pVr ‘goanna’ *rVsi ‘spear’ *qaba(k) ‘tens’ *qar- ‘new’ *siba ‘shark’ *sib(a,i)r ‘six’ *talam ‘saltwater’ *tam ‘fat’ *tama ‘hand/arm’ *-tan ‘pierce’ *tapai ‘stand’ *tas ‘tree’ *tei ‘bedbug’ *temek ‘ripe’ *tena ‘wake s.o.’ *-ten ‘recline’ *tia ‘expel’ *tiara ‘close’ (v.) *-tiari(n) ‘stomach’ *-tok ‘short’ *tukV ‘child’ *-uaqal ‘ear’ *-uari ‘tooth’ *uasin ‘knee’ *uku ‘mouth’ *-wa ‘sun’ *wadi ‘blood’ *wai ‘roof’ *wai ‘stone’ *war ‘coconut’ *wata ‘bathe’ *weli ‘moon’ *wur
Further reading
- Robert Forkel, Simon J Greenhill, & Tiago Tresoldi. (2019). lexibank/robinsonap: Internal Classification of the Alor-Pantar Language Family (Version v3.0) [Data set]. Zenodo.
References
- ^ "New Guinea World, West Bomberai". Archived from the original on 2020-02-29. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
- ^ Stokhof, W. A. L. 1975. Preliminary notes on the Alor and Pantar languages (East Indonesia). (Pacific Linguistics B-43). Canberra: Australian National University.
- ^ Holton, Gary, Marian Klamer, František Kratochvíl, Laura Robinson & Antoinette Schapper. 2012. The historical relation of the Papuan languages of Alor and Pantar. Oceanic Linguistics 51(1).87–122.
- ^ Wurm, S.A., C.L. Voorhoeve & K.A. McElhanon. 1975. The Trans-New Guinea Phylum in general. New Guinea Area Languages and Language Study, vol. I, Papuan Languages and the New Guinea Linguistic Scene, ed. by S.A. Wurm, 299–322. (Pacific Linguistics C-38). Canberra: Australian National University.
- ^ Ross, Malcolm. 2005. Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages. Papuan Pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples ed. by A. Pawley, R. Attenborough, J. Golson & R. Hide, 15–66. (Pacific Linguistics PL 572). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- ^ a b Holton, Gary, Marian Klamer, František Kratochvíl, Laura C. Robinson, Antoinette Schapper. 2012. "The Historical Relations of the Papuan languages of Alor and Pantar". Oceanic Linguistics, Vol. 51, No. 1, June 2012
- ^ Gereon A. Kaiping and Marian Klamer. 2019a. Subgrouping the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages using systematic Bayesian inference. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden.
- ^ Gereon Kaiping and Marian Klamer 2019b. How different methods lead to different trees for the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages. 11th International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference (APLL11), 13–15 June 2019, Leiden University.
- ^ Haan, Johnson Welem. 2001. A grammar of Adang: a Papuan language spoken on the island of Alor, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia: University of Sydney Ph.D. dissertation.
- ^ Kratochvíl, František. 2007. A Grammar of Abui. Leiden: Leiden University Ph.D. dissertation.
- ^ Baird, Louise. 2008. A Grammar of Klon: A Non–Austronesian Language of Alor, Indonesia. (Pacific Linguistics 596). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- ^ Klamer, Marian. 2010. A Grammar of Teiwa. Berlin: Mouton.
- ^ Kratochvil, Frantisek & Benny Delpada. 2008. Kamus Pengantar Bahasa Abui. Kupang, Indonesia: UBB-GMIT.
- ^ Holton, Gary & Mahalalel Lamma Koly. 2008. Kamus Pengantar Bahasa Pantar Barat. Kupang, Indonesia: UBB-GMIT. Online: [1] Archived 2014-01-03 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
External links
- Alor and Pantar Languages: Origins and Theoretical Impacts
- Alor–Pantar languages: origins and theoretical impact – University of Leiden
- Linguistic Variation in Eastern Indonesia: the Alor and Pantar Project – University of Leiden
- The Alor Pantar Languages. Edited by Marian Klamer. Language Science Press. 485pp. Free download.