This chapter examines the appearance of Dutch loanwords in Ternate, a Papuan language spoken on a small volcanic island in the North Moluccas that was at the centre of the clove trade at the time of European arrival in the region. The Dutch maintained a near continuous presence in Ternate from 1606 and although communities of Dutch speakers here were at all times small, a number of loanwords bear witness to their presence and influence. We catalogue the Dutch loanwords that are peculiar to Ternate, and their dispersal into other languages of the region in order to create a picture of the dynamics and chronology of lexical borrowing from Dutch in eastern Indonesia. We argue that loanwords from Dutch indicate that Ternate was an important contact language in the early period of the Dutch presence in the Moluccas, a fact that is easily overlooked given the subsequent dominance of Malay.

Abstract This chapter draws attention to the arbitrariness of isolate classifications for many Papuan languages. So little is known about the history of the vast majority of Papuan languages that most classifications in the literature are founded neither on significant documentation nor intensive historical-comparative study. The chapter illustrates how arbitrary the boundaries are in defining isolates versus small language families of Papuan languages. To highlight this issue, I juxtapose case studies of Yawa-Saweru and Maybrat-Karon. Saweru and Karon are both referred to as divergent varieties, yet the former is classified as an independent language and the latter as a dialect. Based on existing literature, it is shown that there is no principled reason to give different classifications to Yawa-Saweru and Maybrat-Karon.

In the pre-modern period, Java and Javanese traders were at the center of a complex web of regional and long-distance trade networks extending from India and China to New Guinea. In particular, the Javanese were key players in the spice trade, transporting these from their native Moluccas to the world through the ports of Java. Despite the pivotal role of the Javanese in this trade for hundreds or possibly even a thousand years, the Javanese language has not been considered as a source for loanwords in the Moluccas. Rather, it has typically been assumed by linguists that Malay was the vehicle of transmission of loanwords in the Moluccas, including those with ultimately Javanese origins. This article challenges this prevailing narrative, showing that there is clear evidence for direct borrowing from Javanese. We show that many Javanese loanwords in the Moluccas have dispersed across the region under the influence of the powerful clove-trading sultanates, particularly Ternate and Tidore. Recognition of Javanese as an influential language in trade in the pre- and early-modern period represents an important reframing of eastern Indonesia’s linguistic history.

Multiple members of the Alor-Pantar group of Papuan languages display a cross-linguistically unusual pattern whereby certain grammatical words in the domain of phasal polarity yield an affirmative statement when standing before the predicate, whereas the occurrence of the same items after the predicate vests the clause with negative polarity. In this article, we describe this phenomenon in its different manifestations and compare it to negation and phasal polarity constructions reconstructable to Proto-Alor-Pantar. While position-dependent polarity in the domain of phasal polarity is typologically unusual, we show that it is the outcome of processes of cyclical change that are well known with respect to negation: the notion of ‘not yet’ came to be expressed by a construction in which an originally pre-predicative ‘still’ marker also occupies a post-predicate position. Erosion of the initial element of this construction then left the post-predicate ‘still’ marker as the sole exponent of ‘not yet’. Analogy with embracing constructions for standard negation and structural calquing across languages in the group can be seen to have led to the innovative patterns for expressing ‘not yet’ being shared across languages.

Abstract This chapter provides a typological overview of the Malayo-Polynesian languages spoken in the region extending south from the Kei and Aru Islands, through the Tanimbar and Southwest Moluccan Islands, to Timor and the island of Rote. Using the limited extant materials, the chapter takes a comparative look at what are some of the smallest and least known languages of Island Southeast Asia, outlining key elements of their phonology, morphology, noun phrases, grammatical relations, negative expressions, and serial verb constructions. Particular attention is given to typologically unusual patterns that have been described for these languages, including isolating word structure, synchronic metathesis with morphosyntactic functions, reduplication marking relative clauses and syntactic dependency more broadly, agreement on numerals, and split-S alignment of verbal agreement affixes. Despite some broad typological similarities, the chapter underlines the many divisions that are present in the languages. In the north of the region, Kei has several typological features that diverge from other languages in southern Maluku. Southwest Maluku languages have a divided profile, patterning in some respects like Timor languages and in other respects like Tanimbar languages and to a lesser extent Aru languages. There is also a clear typological split in Timor, with central-eastern Timor languages showing several patterns in common with one another that are typically absent in western Timor and nearby islands.

Abstract Papuan languages were present on and around the island of New Guinea before speakers of Austronesian languages dispersed across Island Southeast Asia. Interactions with speakers of Papuan languages are widely acknowledged to be important for understanding the diversification of the Austronesian family. This chapter discusses the impact of Papuan languages on the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia, paying particular attention to debates and issues encountered in the literature. It is argued that lexical transfer from Papuan languages has been little recognized, let alone examined, in the scholarship to date as a result of entrenched ideas concerning Austronesian dominance, a lack of lexical reconstruction for Papuan language families, and complexities arising from the borrowing of lexical forms back and forth between languages. By contrast, the transfer of numerous structural features from Papuan languages to Austronesian languages in the Papuan contact zone is considered uncontroversial. At the same time, the chapter warns against ascribing structural innovations in the eastern MPSEA languages to Papuan substrate or contact with a Papuan language without specific arguments to support that directionality of transfer. The chapter concludes by overviewing debates concerning the timing of Papuan features entering the Austronesian languages and their value for Austronesian subgrouping. Linguists of different persuasions have variously interpreted the same data as supporting the reconstruction of Papuan features to high nodes in the Austronesian family, or as indicating multiple transfers of the same Papuan feature into Austronesian languages at different times.

The tropical archipelago of Wallacea was first settled by anatomically modern humans (AMH) by 50 thousand years ago (kya), with descendent populations thought to have remained genetically isolated prior to the arrival of Austronesian seafarers around 3.5 kya. Modern Wallaceans exhibit a longitudinal countergradient of Papuan- and Asian-related ancestries widely considered as evidence for mixing between local populations and Austronesian seafarers, though converging multidisciplinary evidence suggests that the Papuan-related component instead comes primarily from back-migrations from New Guinea. Here, we reconstruct Wallacean population genetic history using more than 250 newly reported genomes from 12 Wallacean and three West Papuan populations and confirm that the vast majority of Papuan-related ancestry in Wallacea (~75 to 100%) comes from prehistoric migrations originating in New Guinea and only a minor fraction is attributable to the founding AMH settlers. Mixing between Papuan and local Wallacean lineages appears to have been confined to the western and central parts of the archipelago and likely occurred contemporaneously with the widespread introduction of genes from Austronesian seafarers—which now comprise between ~40 and 85% of modern Wallacean ancestry—though dating historical admixture events remains challenging due to mixing continuing into the Historical Period. In conjunction with archaeological and linguistic records, our findings point to a dynamic Wallacean population history that was profoundly reshaped by the spread of Papuan genes, languages, and culture in the past 3,500 y.

The classification of Irarutu and Koiwai, two Austronesian languages spoken in the vicinity of New Guinea’s Bomberai Peninsula, is unresolved. Competing proposals variously link the languages to the South Halmahera–West New Guinea group and the Central Malayo-Polynesian group. This article makes a novel proposal, positing that Irarutu and Koiwai subgroup together and, in turn, places them in a higher subgroup with the Seram Laut languages.

Abstract The area between the Wallace Line and Lydekker’s Line in eastern Indonesia and East Timor has long been recognized as a transitional zone between the flora and fauna of Asia and Oceania. More recently, Linguistic Wallacea, shifted slightly eastward from Biological Wallacea, has been established as a transitional zone between the Southeast Asian and Melanesian linguistic types. This volume focuses on grammatical systems of possession in Linguistic Wallacea, discussing both Austronesian and Papuan languages of the region. Typical traits include Possessor–Possessum word order and alienability contrasts, among others. The cross-familial distribution of these features suggests longstanding language contact throughout the area with borrowing both from Papuan languages into Austronesian ones and vice versa.

This paper represents a first study of the shared lexical histories of the Austronesian languages of the Kawaimina group and the Papuan languages of the Maka group spoken in East Timor, with the aim of highlighting the complexity of lexical relations between these languages. Kawaimina languages are shown to have a range of Papuan etyma, but these have not necessarily been borrowed from the Maka languages. At the same time, it can be seen that Makasae, the largest Maka language, is the immediate source for multiple apparently Austronesian etmya in the Kawaimina languages. A sizeable amount of the lexicon that is shared between Kawaimina and Maka languages has no clear origin outside of those groups or appears to have been borrowed in parallel into both group’s languages from one or more unknown languages.

This article presents a typological survey of patterns of adnominal possession in 85 Austronesian and Papuan languages of Linguistic Wallacea, providing a more granular picture of possessive constructions in the region than previously available. The features treated are possessive word orders, locus of possessive marking, possessive classification systems, and multifunctionality of adnominal possessive markers. Unlike their relatives to the west, the Austronesian languages of Linguistic Wallacea tend to show Possessor-Possessum ordering and have an alienability distinction, often instantiated through contrastive direct and indirect constructions. In terms of broad typological features, contact with and shift from Papuan languages can be shown to have caused widespread remodeling of the adnominal possessive patterns in Austronesian languages of the area. However, their distribution and formal manifestations make clear that they are not the result of a single Papuan contact event in a single Austronesian common ancestor but must go back to multiple localized contact events across Linguistic Wallacea. Subregional patterns are often found clustered in smaller groups of languages and are the result of local processes of contact and change including morphologization and morphological loss. These become apparent when tracking changes in historically related form-function pairs in possessive constructions.

Typological studies have repeatedly expressed doubt about the possibility of relative clause markers grammaticalizing from possessive markers. At the same time, cross-linguistic studies of attribution have provided substantial evidence for markers of adjectival attribution deriving from possessive markers. Given that simple adjectival attributive constructions are accepted to expand readily into relative clause constructions, there is an apparent discordance in the typological literature on the diachronic sources of their markers. Using data from the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages of south-eastern Wallacea, the present article argues that the link between possessive and relative clause markers, by way of an adjectival attributive marker, should also be uncontroversial.

This paper demonstrates the existence of the Greater West Bomberai family, bringing the Timor-Alor-Pantar language family of the Lesser Sunda islands into a genealogical unit with the Papuan languages of the western part of the Bomberai peninsula in New Guinea. Applying the comparative method to the increasingly available data from these languages, we demonstrate their relatedness on the basis of 47 lexical cognate sets with largely regular sound correspondences. Grammatical evidence in the form of pronouns is further invoked to demonstrate the relatedness of these languages. Loans from Austronesian languages have been identified and eliminated from our comparisons. Establishing the family has repercussions for our view of Island Southeast Asian prehistory, entailing the existence of maritime Papuan-language speaking groups from an early time.

Abstract In this article I demonstrate that there is a pervasive lexico-semantic association bones are strength in the languages of Melanesia, but that its linguistic expression is highly varied; languages are scattered along a lexical-to-clausal cline in their expression of the association between bone and strength, with a large number of language-specific idioms based on the association to be observed in Melanesia. I argue that the striking areality of this lexico-semantic association is readily missed in top-down approaches to lexical semantic typology that rely, for instance, on databases of word lists, or on narrow search domains limited to the meanings of simplex lexemes.

This is a comprehensive grammar of the Papuan language Bunaq as spoken in the district of Lamaknen. Bunaq belongs to the Timor-Alor-Pantar language family, which comprises the westernmost Papuan languages. Surrounded on all sides by Austronesian languages, Bunaq has developed in isolation from other members of the family, and as a result shows a range of unique morphosyntactic patterns. This grammar provides a detailed synchronic description of Bunaq based on a functional-typological approach. Following additional fieldwork and containing new material and analyses, this book is a thoroughly revised version of the author’s 2010 PhD thesis, which won the Pāṇini Award of the Association for Linguistic Typology.

This article seeks to identify traces of language contact between speakers of Australian languages and speakers of Austronesian languages other than Macassans. I put forward evidence for lexical borrowing into northern Australian languages from Austronesian languages in South and East Sulawesi, Maluku and Timor-Rote, as well as from Austronesian languages of the Sama-Bajau and Oceanic subgroups. Although the evidence is fragmentary, the presence of these borrowings could be taken to indicate a more varied history of contact with Australia than the Macassan-dominated linguistic data suggest.

Title : The Papuan Languages of Timor, Alor and Pantar (Volume 2) ISBN : 978-1-61451-906-5, Hard cover Editor : Antoinette Schapper Publisher : De Gruyter, 2017, 358 pp.

Abstract This paper addresses the issue of isolating word structure and its origins in the Austronesian and Papuan languages of eastern Timor. McWhorter (2007) claims that both groups of languages evidence extensive loss of grammatical complexity as a result of “interrupted transmission” due to significant non-native acquisition. I refute McWhorter’s assertion that the eastern Timor languages are not “normal” through a detailed exposition of their morphological complexities. Whilst recognising that they are isolating leaning, I argue that there is nothing “unnatural” about the grammars of these languages and that phonological changes within the Timorese Sprachbund provide sufficient explanation of their morphological profiles.