Linguistic Contact in East Timor

[Davi Albuquerque]

Dear colleagues,

 

I am researching languages in contact in East Timor, and I faced two problems. So, I have two questions that maybe someone could help me!

 

1- The languages of East Timor have a pattern to mark natural gender usually putting a word that means means 'man' for human/male, 'woman' for human/female, 'father' for animal/male, and 'mother' for animal/female. Ex. in Tetun-Dili: oan 'offspring'; oan-mane 'offspring-man' 'son'; oan-feto 'offspring-woman' 'daughter'. This is a typological trace of Austronesian languages? or, This can be reconstructed to any proto-language? or, This is a tentative to reproduce the grammatical gender of Indo-European languages?

 

2- Waima'a dialect of East Timor has a set of ejectives, implosives, and aspirated oclusives (Hajek and Bowden, 2002), but also others Austronesian languages of East Timor appears to have at least one of these sets. Maybe this could be due to the contact with Papuasic languages Waima'a < Makasae, and Kemak < Bunak. Is this complex phonological system a typological feature of Papuasic languages? Someone could mention others examples of Papuasic influence on Austronesian due to intense contact?

 

Thank you all.

 

Prof. Davi B. Albuquerque. 

 

http://easttimorlinguistics.blogspot.com/ 

     

 

 
 		 	   		  
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