Marian Klamer - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Marian Klamer

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence 4 cc This paper compares the g... more Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence 4 cc This paper compares the grammar and lexicon of Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken in eastern Indonesia, with its closest genealogical relative, Lamaholot, spoken on east Flores, as well as with its geographical neighbours, the Papuan languages of Pantar. It focusses on the question how Alorese came to have the grammar and lexicon it has today. It is shown that Alorese and Lamaholot share a number of syntactic features which signal Papuan influences that must have been part of Proto-Lamaholot, suggesting (prehistoric) Papuan presence in the Lamaholot homeland in east Flores/Solor/ Adonara/ Lembata. The data indicate that Proto-Lamaholot had a rich morphology, which was completely shed by Alorese after it split from Lamaholot. At the same time, lexical congruence between Alorese and its current Papuan neighbours is limited, and syntactic congruence virtually absent. Combining the comparative linguistic data with what little is known about the history of the Alorese, I propose a scenario whereby Lamaholot was acquired as non-native language by spouses from different Papuan clans who were brought into the Lamaholot communities that settled on the coast of Pantar at least 600 years ago. Their morphologically simplified language was transferred to their children. The history of Alorese as reconstructed here suggests that at different time depths, different language contact situations had different

... In Kalam and Kobon (Davies 1984; Page 245. ... Kalam and Kobon verb complexes have been analy... more ... In Kalam and Kobon (Davies 1984; Page 245. ... Kalam and Kobon verb complexes have been analyzed as serial verb constructions. Consider now the Kalam example in Table 16. The data come from Pawley (1969, 2005) and from Pawley and Lane (1998). ...

ABSTRACT This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of numeral forms and systems in the Alor-Pant... more ABSTRACT This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of numeral forms and systems in the Alor-Pantar (AP) languages. The AP family reflects a typologically rare combina-tion of mono-morphemic 'six' with quinary forms for numerals 'seven' to 'nine', a pattern which we reconstruct to go back to proto-AP. We focus on the structure of cardinal numerals, highlighting the diversity of the numeral systems involved. We reconstruct numeral forms to different levels of the AP family, and argue that AP numeral systems have been complicated at different stages by reorganisations of patterns of numeral formation and by borrowings. This has led to patchwork numeral systems in the modern languages, incorporating to different extents: (i) quaternary, quinary and decimal bases; (ii) additive, subtractive and multiplicative procedures, and; (iii) non-numeral lexemes such as 'single' and 'take away'. Com-plementing the historical reconstruction with an areal perspective, we compare the numerals in the AP family with those of the Austronesian languages in their immediate vicinity and show that contact-induced borrowing of forms and struc-tures has affected numeral paradigms in both AP languages and their Austronesian neighbors.

Oceanic Linguistics, Jun 1, 2004

... Because these two features occur in both Austronesian and Papuan languages in Hal-mahera, the... more ... Because these two features occur in both Austronesian and Papuan languages in Hal-mahera, the Moluccas, and the Bird's Head, they can be ... I suggested that this area would at least includeHalmahera, the Moluccas and the Bird's Head, and exclude Sumba, Flores, and ...

Oceanic Linguistics, 2012

The historical relations of the Papuan languages scattered across the islands of the Alor archipe... more The historical relations of the Papuan languages scattered across the islands of the Alor archipelago, Timor, and Kisar in southeast Indonesia have remained largely conjectural. This paper makes a first step toward demonstrating that the languages of Alor and Pantar form a single genealogical group. Applying the comparative method to primary lexical data from twelve languages sampled across the islands of the Alor-Pantar archipelago, we use form-meaning pairings in basic cognate sets to establish regular sound correspondences that support the view that these languages are genetically related. We reconstruct 97 Proto[&mdash]Alor-Pantar vocabulary items and propose an internal subgrouping based on shared innovations. Finally, we compare Alor-Pantar with Papuan languages of Timor and with Trans-New Guinea languages, concluding that there is no lexical evidence supporting the inclusion of Alor-Pantar languages in the Trans-New Guinea family.

... Kedang has no case marking on NPs, nor on pronouns -- except for the 1sg pronoun, see (19). T... more ... Kedang has no case marking on NPs, nor on pronouns -- except for the 1sg pronoun, see (19). The remaining pronouns differentiate A/S from P only by position relative to the verb: S/A pronouns precede the verb, P pronouns follow it. (19) Kedang free pronouns (cf. ...

Yearbook of Morphology, 2001

... keia intervenes between N and V. in (13b) it is the auxiliary hetak: (11) a. Keta neon kadoli... more ... keia intervenes between N and V. in (13b) it is the auxiliary hetak: (11) a. Keta neon kadolik don't emotion tremble 'Don't (let your) heart tremble' b. Emi neon keta ... We therefore analyze the pattern in (lla) as one where the VN predicate is interpreted as a verbal compound. ...

The linguistic situation of East Nusantara is extremely complex. It is therefore useful to distin... more The linguistic situation of East Nusantara is extremely complex. It is therefore useful to distinguish between three different (though often overlapping) ways to study this area linguistically: a genetic, an areal, and a typological approach. A genetic approach studies features of the East Nusantara languages in order to reconstruct the genetic relations that might exist among them. An areal approach is concerned with the diffusion of structural features across language boundaries within East Nusantara. In a typological approach to this area, a particular set of languages is compared with respect to their synchronic structural features. The three approaches render different results, because the data under consideration are selected on different grounds. A typological approach selects a set of languages to compare structurally. This selection can take place using various criteria such as the geographical position of the languages or their genetic af²liation. The outcome of a typologi...

This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of numeral forms and systems in the Alor-Pantar (AP) l... more This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of numeral forms and systems in the Alor-Pantar (AP) languages. The AP family reflects a typologically rare combina-tion of mono-morphemic 'six' with quinary forms for numerals 'seven' to 'nine', a pattern which we reconstruct to go back to proto-AP. We focus on the structure of cardinal numerals, highlighting the diversity of the numeral systems involved. We reconstruct numeral forms to different levels of the AP family, and argue that AP numeral systems have been complicated at different stages by reorganisations of patterns of numeral formation and by borrowings. This has led to patchwork numeral systems in the modern languages, incorporating to different extents: (i) quaternary, quinary and decimal bases; (ii) additive, subtractive and multiplicative procedures, and; (iii) non-numeral lexemes such as 'single' and 'take away'. Com-plementing the historical reconstruction with an areal perspective, ...

This paper focusses on the role of language contact in the development of the grammar of Alorese ... more This paper focusses on the role of language contact in the development of the grammar of Alorese (Bahasa Alor; Klamer forthcoming). Surrounded by Non-Austronesian languages, Alorese is the only indigenous Austronesian language spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar in eastern Indonesia. As a case study of language contact between Papuan and Austronesian languages, the paper focuses on those morphological and syntactic features of Alorese that diverge from proto (Central) Malayo Polynesian grammatical features, that is, could not have been inherited. The hypothesis is that these features are not independent developments, but diffused from Non-Austronesian languages. An obvious scenario would be that diffusion took place through contact between Alorese and its present-day Non-Austronesian neighbours on Alor and Pantar. This is the view expressed in Klamer (2007). In the first section of the paper I test that scenario. I compare the non-p(C)MP features of Alorese with its closest gen...

Marian Klamer (ed.), The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology, pp. 375–412, Sep 6, 2014

We investigate the variation in form, syntax and semantics of the plural words found across the A... more We investigate the variation in form, syntax and semantics of the plural words found across the Alor-Pantar languages. We study five Alor-Pantar languages: Western Pantar, Teiwa, Abui, Kamang and Wersing. We show that plural words in Alor-Pantar family are diachronically instable: although proto-Alor-Pantar had a plural number word *non, many AP languages have innovated new plural words. Plural words in these languages exhibit not only a wide variety of different syntactic properties but also variable semantics, thus likening them more to the range exhibited by affixal plural number than previously recognized.

Marian Klamer (ed.), The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology, pp. 337–373, Sep 6, 2014

The indigenous numerals of the Alor-Pantar languages, as well as the indigenous structures for a... more The indigenous numerals of the Alor-Pantar languages, as well as the indigenous structures for arithmetic operations are currently under pressure from Indonesian, and will inevitably be replaced with Indonesian forms and structures. This chapter presents a documentary record of the forms and patterns currently in use to express numerals and arithmetic operations in the Alor-Pantar languages. We describe the structure of cardinal, ordinal and distributive numerals, and how operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions are expressed.

The Papuan language Teiwa has a small set of sortal numeral classifiers: one human classifier, th... more The Papuan language Teiwa has a small set of sortal numeral classifiers: one human classifier, three fruit classifiers, and a general classifier. The classifiers vary widely in function and distribution, and it is argued that it is unlikely that they have inherited. Instead, it is proposed that Teiwa inherited a class of part-of-whole nouns from which certain members were recruited to be grammaticalised into numeral classifiers through the reanalysis of ambiguous structures. Two more factors have enhanced this development. First, the existence of number neutral nouns in Teiwa implies that nouns must be individuated before they can be counted, a function fulfilled by numeral classifiers. Second, areal pressure from Austronesian classifier languages has reinforced the development of classifiers. Connecting the numeral classifier system of Teiwa with those of its sister languages and the wider linguistic context of eastern Indonesia, we can thus identify structural, semantic and areal ...

This chapter presents an introduction to the Alor-Pantar languages, and to the chapters of the vo... more This chapter presents an introduction to the Alor-Pantar languages, and to the chapters of the volume. It discusses the current linguistic ecology of Alor and Pan-tar, the history of research on the languages, presents an overview of the history of research in the area and describes the state of the art of the (pre-)history of speaker groups on the islands. A typological overview of the family is presented, followed by a discussion of specific sets of lexical items. Throughout the chapter I provide pointers to individual chapters of the volume that contain more detailed information or references.