Individual projectsThe Word Class Typology project (carried out by members of the Surrey Morphology Group) combines the investigation of grammatical categories in a broad sample of languages with the use of explicit formal and statistical frameworks for the expression of typological and theoretical generalizations. Two phenomena in the Alor-Pantar languages are particularly interesting for us:
The Alor-Pantar languages represent one of only two groups of non-Austronesian languages in Indonesia outside of the island of New Guinea; the remaining languages of Indonesia belong to the Austronesian family. A comparison of pronouns suggests a genetic relationship between the Alor-Pantar languages and New Guinea languages located some 1000 km distant. The Linguistic History project (U of Alaska Fairbanks, PI Gary Holton) will bring new and recently-collected data to bear on the question of the linguistic origins and ultimate genetic relationships of the Alor-Pantar languages.