František Kratochvíl

The Historical Relations of the Papuan Languages of Alor and Pantar

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.

Differential argument realization in Abui

Abstract This paper discusses differential argument realization in Abui, a Papuan language (Eastern Indonesia) with semantic alignment (in terms of Donohue and Wichmann 2008; Kratochvíl 2011). The paper examines the roles of volitionality, referential hierarchy, and specificity in differential argument realization (employing light verbs and verbal agreement) and shows that their effects are observable throughout the argument realization system and can be therefore considered the counterpart of differential case marking (DOM/DSM) reported for syntactically aligned, case-marking languages (Bossong 1983; Aissen 2003; Malchukov 2005; Kittilä 2006; de Swart 2007; and others). Although Abui differential argument realization correlates with the referential hierarchy (Bickel 2008), verbal subclasses (in terms of Tsunodas 1985: 388 affectedness hierarchy) determine whether differential argument realization appears or not (cf. von Heusinger and Kaiser 2011). The paper also considers the diachronic origins of differential argument realization in Abui. Most constructions are argued to originate from two-clause constructions, such as topic/focus constructions gradually merging into singleclause structures. Information-structure related morphemes (light verbs in Abui) serialize with lexical verbs. The process starts with 1st and 2nd person participants (interlocutors) and may extend to human or human-like third persons. Grammaticalization ends in the fusion of the light verb and person prefix, creating new verbal agreement paradigms, as manifested in several central Alor-Pantar languages (Kratochvíl et al. 2011).

Children of Mon Mot — Documentation of a tira legend of the Abui community (Eastern Indonesia)

In pre-literate societies, oral tradition is anchored in the landscape, linking it with its inhabitants. The first part of this paper details the documentation of a legend of the Abui community of Alor, Eastern Indonesia. It describes the relationship of the legend with landscape and its functions in the community. We recorded the first version of the legend of the Giant Snake Mon Mot in the community of Tifolafeng in 2003. We combined linguistic, anthropological, geographic, and historical methods with fine arts resulting in a multi-faceted documentation for diverse audience. We have created a range materials from illustrated books, games, to a film documentary, made the raw data available. In the second part of the paper, we lay out our strategy for integration of mechanics of telling and listening, and the mnemotechnic structure of oral tradition with the digital humanities. We also address the need of systematic research into the response of the community, which our approach allows.