Linguistic Contact in East Timor

Wed Jan 13 09:29:39 UTC 2010

The message below bounced (I don't know why), so I am re-posting it.

--Malcolm (List 'owner')

From: "Catharina Williams-van Klinken" <cvk at iinet.net.au>
Date: 13 January 2010 8:17:11 PM AEDT
To: <an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au>
Subject: RE: [An-lang] Linguistic Contact in East Timor

So too in East Timor, 'bapa' (from Indonesian 'bapak') can be used to
identify any Indonesian, whether male or female; for instance one can say
someone is 'bapa', or talk about the Indonesian occupation as 'tempu bapa'.
However as a term of address, East Timorese do distinguish between 'Ibu' and
'Pak' - as you would expect after 24 years of Indonesian rule.

Tetun Dili has a high proportion of Portuguese loans. For common ones with
natural gender, Portuguese gender is retained; such as 'mestri/mestra' for
male/female teachers. However for less common loans, many people use the
Tetun system of adding 'mane/feto' (male/female) after the loan; e.g.
'moderador feto' = 'female moderator' instead of Portuguese 'moderadora',
which is used by more Portuguese-influenced speakers.

Catharina Williams-van Klinken

-----Original Message-----
From: an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au [mailto:an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au] On
Behalf Of David Gil
Sent: Wednesday, 13 January 2010 2:54 PM
To: Waruno Mahdi
Cc: Austronesian languages
Subject: Re: [An-lang] Linguistic Contact in East Timor

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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