EuroBABEL-project 'Alor-Pantar languages: origins and theoretical impact'

Alor-Pantar languages: origins and theoretical impact. NWO EuroBABEL-project (2009-2012). Project leader: Marian Klamer

Project data

Full title		Alor-Pantar languages: origins and theoretical impact
Duration		2009-2012
Nature		EuroBABEL (ESF EUROCORES Program)
Project leader		Marian Klamer
Project members		Post-doctoral researcher (t.b.a.)

Project description

Until very recently the 15-20 languages of the Alor-Pantar (AP) archipelago in southeastern Indonesia were among the least well-documented languages of Indonesia, but a surge in field work efforts over the past decade has resulted in a wealth of new language data. This research project focuses on the extended documentation and investigation of these non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) languages.

The project is a larger international collaboration that was conceived under the European Science Foundation, EUROCORES Programme, EUROBABEL. The full ESF project is a collaboration of researchers from three countries, including the US, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

The project hosted by Leiden University represents a portion of the Dutch NWO contribution to the EUROBABEL effort. In this project, we aim to collect additional documentation on two domains that have turned out to be particularly interesting in the AP languages, and have not yet been studied in depth.

First, we investigate the domain of reference in space: how do speakers structure the spatial domain? How are locative expressions constructed? How do they use landscape terms? The AP languages employ a particularly rich array of spatial parameters, resulting in relatively complex deictic systems. Now the indigenous spatial expressions and landscape terms of AP languages are being replaced by Indonesian, which has a much simpler spatial deictic system, these rich sets of culturally, geographically and cognitively determined deictic systems are under threat.

Second, we will extend our documentation of numeral expressions in the AP languages. As far as numeral systems are concerned, the world is decimal: about 80% of the world’s languages are decimal or combine a decimal with a vigesimal (base-20) system. While bases other than 10 are extremely rare , many AP languages show traces of a quinary (base-5) system in the lower cardinals (e.g. Teiwa yes haraq ‘seven’ = yes ‘five’ + haraq ‘two’), combined with a decimal system. Numeral systems are particularly susceptible to the kinds of sociolinguistic changes that arise through language contact; numeral systems of dominant languages often replace the numeral systems of other languages, starting with the higher numerals. In this sense, numeral systems are even more endangered than languages themselves. This process is also at work in AP languages. Alongside the structure of number words, we also investigate how complex number expressions are construed, as well as their distribution inside and outside the DP. Further, we study how numerals are used as ordinals (which are not frequently found in AP languages), and in counting sequences. Numerical expressions in AP languages may also contain numeral classifiers. An often assumed (and much debated) viewpoint is that languages have numeral classifiers when their nouns are not compulsory marked for number (Greenberg 1972). Numeral classifiers are frequently found throughout the Austronesian languages of Indonesia, but are largely absent in the Papuan languages on the central and eastern parts of New Guinea. Their distribution and function in AP languages varies. Research questions to be addressed include: How are numeral classifiers distributed across the AP languages? How do they function? Which dimensions or concepts do they encode? What is their historical source? Is it possible to reconstruct proto-froms of one or more numeral classifiers? If not, then they are innovative. Could they be the result of contact with Austronesian languages? Other issues pertain to the grammatical properties of numeral classifiers: How can they be distinguished from nouns? What are their distributional properties: do they form a constituent with the numeral, or with the noun?

This project will bring new and recently-collected detailed data in these particular linguistic domains. It will also bear on the question of the linguistic origins and ultimate genetic relationships of the Alor-Pantar languages, the topic studied in the individual project led by Gary Holton at Fairbanks University Alaska. The implications for typology and theory will be investigated by the project led by Prof. Grev Corbett of the Surrey Morphology Group. Project time line: 2009-2012.