Linguistic Contact in East Timor

[David Gil]

Just a footnote to Waruno's excellent summary ...

Any white person who has spent any time in Indonesia will be more than 
familiar with the recent Indonesian loan from English "mister", whose 
denotation is, simply 'white person', and is unmarked not just for 
number but also for gender ...

David


> The situation in Malay is similar to that described by Paz Naylor
> for Tgalog/Cebuano/Hiligaynon.
> The language did not originally have gender-specific terms, other
> than for 'man', 'woman', 'mother', 'father', 'aunt', 'uncle',
> 'elder brother', perhaps also 'elder sister'.
>
> Gender specificification in reference to animals was expressed
> by immediate postposition of _jantan_ 'male' / _betina_ 'female'
> behind the animal gender-neutral name. It is already widespread
> in earliest (16th century) manuscipts, and does not appear to
> reflect late external influence.
>
> In reference to humans, the corresponding attributes were and
> still are _lelaki_ 'male' / _perempuan_ 'female', these being
> otherwise the words for 'man' and 'woman' respectively.
> This usage is likewise already attested in early manuscripts,
> but not as frequently as the means for animals. And then, the
> most frequent head-word before the attribute was _anak_ 'child',
> resulting in expressions for 'boy/son' and 'girl/daughter'.
> Another head-word already involved in earliest sources was _raja_
> 'king', a loanword from Sanskrit. For example, the Sejarah Melayu
> (Malay Annals) has _raja perempuan_ 'female king, reigning queen'
> (i.e. not simply 'king's wife').
>
> I therefore suspect, that this means of gender-differentiation may
> have been relatively recent, after acquaintance with Sanskrit.
> It seems significant, that the term for 'madam, milady' in earliest
> manucripts was _tuan putri_ ('master, sir, milord' + Sanskrit
> loanword for 'daughter'). Malay borrowing from Sanskrit already
> began in the first millennium AD, and that included gender specific
> nouns, particularly _putra_ 'son' and _putri_ 'daughter'. But
> usage was diferent for the two: whereas the former was fully
> incorporated into the language, even giving rise to various
> derivations (e.g. _berputrakan_ 'to have as son'), the latter
> is almost exclusively used either in the exression _tuan putri_,
> or as part of proper names (for women of nobility). In a quick
> search (using Ian Proudfoot's MCP), I only came across a single
> deviant example in Hikayat Bayan Budiman, in which _putri_ is
> used in the singular as well as in the plural in the meaning
> 'princess'.
>
>
> The problem remains somewhat uncertain, because I cannot tell how
> ancient the original Malay gender-specific honorific articles _hang_
> (before a man's name) and _dang_ (before a woman's name) are. They
> already appear in old folkore, suggesting a rather early origin.
>
> Otherwise, contact with Sanksrit, subsequently with Arabic and Persian,
> later with Portuguese and Dutch, does not seem to have had noticeable
> influence on gender specification in Malay. The principal exception
> was perhaps the word _nyonya_ 'Missus' (from Creole Portuguese) as
> female counterpart to _tuan_ 'Mr.'.
>
> This only changed in the 1930-a, when a new means appeared in Indonesian
> Malay. The Malay word _saudara_ 'sibling' had come to be used as term of
> address between indigenous Indonesians (somewhat like the word _citoyen_
> in the French Revolution). Political gender-correctness then demanded a
> term for female compatriots (_citoyenne_), so in analogy to the
> Sanskritisms _putra_ 'son, prince' / _putri_ 'daughter, princess' (modern
> meanings), one artificially formed the term _saudari_ as female counterpart
> to _saudara_. Subsequently (mainly after 1945 this became a productive
> means, e.g. _mahasiswa_/_mahasiswi_ for male/female student.
>
> In modern Indonesian, gender specification is quite common and involves
> a number of borrowed features, also a.o. from Javanese.
> Sorry this got so long.
>
> Aloha,
> Waruno
>
>
>
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>
>   


-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/


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