Tag: Sumatra

Non-Malayic Languages of Sumatra and the Barrier Islands

Bradley McDonnell & Christina L. Truong

Book chapter in The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia edited by Alexander Adelaar and Antoinette Schapper

Publisher link to chapter

This chapter provides a typological overview of the Non-Malayic languages of Sumatra and the Barrier islands off of the west coast of Sumatra. This group of languages is diverse, sharing few typological features that are not a result of their shared Austronesian inheritance. The chapter includes discussions of typological phenomena of broad relevance in the domains of phonology (segmental inventories, stress, reduplication, phonological processes) and morphosyntax (case, agreement, grammatical relations, word order, tense, aspect, mood, and noun phrase structure). It also critically discusses less common typological features, such as the presence of post-ploded nasals in several languages, consonant mutation of nominals in Nias, and symmetrical voice as an important typological parameter for these languages. Finally, the chapter suggests priorities and future direction for the Non-Malayic languages of Sumatra and the Barrier Islands.

The non-Malayic languages of Sumatra and the Barrier Islands

Bradley J. McDonnell & Christina L. Truong

To appear in Adelaar, Alexander and Antoinette Schapper (eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia (Oxford Guides to the World’s Languages). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Publisher link: Forthcoming, May 2023.

In this chapter, we present a typological overview of the non-Malayic Malayo-Polynesian languages of Sumatra and the Barrier Islands (NMLS). These languages are extremely diverse. They share few typological features other than those due to their shared Austronesian inheritance, their general geographic position, and the contact they have all had with Malayic languages. Section 1 describes the consonant and vowel inventories, stress, and phonological processes. Section 2 presents an overview of common affixes and morphological processes in the languages. Section 3 covers basic syntactic properties including grammatical relations, case, agreement, word order, and noun phrase structure. Section 4 describes some aspects of tense, aspect, modality, and mood in NMLS. Section 5 summarizes the chapter and describes directions for further research including the need for more documentation and description of NMLS. The principal languages we draw on for our typological generalizations and examples include: Acehnese, Gayo, Karo Batak, Toba Batak, Simeulue, Sikule, Nias, Mentawai, Enggano Rejang, Nasal, and Lampung.