Charles E. Grimes

Yet More on the Position of the Languages of Eastern Indonesia and East Timor

The line dividing the Austronesian languages into Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) is drawn east of Sulawesi and through the middle of Sumbawa. A number of phonological or semantic changes are claimed as forming the basis of this distinction, as well as the typological profile of the languages to the east being different from those to the west, and a number of lexical items being attested only east of the line. We examine the phonological and semantic innovations, as well as the erratic morphological ones, showing that none of them define the CEMP line, but indicate that (a) the Central Malayo-Polynesian (CMP)–area languages do not convincingly meet the criteria commonly accepted for a subgroup or even a linkage, (b) some of the WMP-area languages exhibit more of the same features found in at least some of the CMP-area languages than do others, and (c) many of the traits ascribed to the CMP- or CEMP-area languages can be found in more conservative WMP-area or Formosan languages as well.

Aspect and directionality in Kupang Malay serial verb constructions: Calquing on the grammars of substrate languages

Kupang Malay is a stigmatised Malay-based creole spoken in eastern Indonesia. While it shares some linguistic features with other contact varieties of Malay in the region, it is also distinguished by its own contact history and unique features in its phonology, lexicon and grammar, all showing evidence of significant influence from substrate languages. One notable feature is the pervasiveness and variety of its serial verb constructions (SVC). This paper explores the forms and functions of a limited set of Kupang SVCs, showing close parallels with similar forms and functions of SVCs in nearby substrate languages (illustrated by data from Helong, Amarasi, Dhao, and Lole). While Kupang is in a post-creole continuum with Indonesian functioning as the “high”, the Kupang SVCs described in this paper have no close parallels in Indonesian. We conclude that this presents strong evidence that Kupang is indeed a creole that has calqued at a deep level on the grammars of local languages. Since the phenomena here are previously undescribed for any of the languages – and all of them are poorly documented – this paper is deliberately rich in data. The examples given are not rare, were taken from computer searches of a text corpus, and have been doubled-checked for naturalness with groups of native speakers, given the inherent pitfalls of working in a post-creole continuum.