The Alor–Pantar languages are a family of clearly related

Papuan languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...

spoken on islands of the Alor archipelago near

Timor Timor (, , ) is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...

in southern Indonesia. They may be most closely related to the Papuan languages of eastern Timor, but this is not yet clear. A more distant relationship with the

Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive Language family, family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as Western New Guinea, parts of Indone ...

of the

Bomberai peninsula Bomberai Peninsula () is located in the Western New Guinea region. It is south of the Bird's Head Peninsula, and Bintuni Bay separates the two peninsulas. To the west lies the Sebakor Bay and to the south Kamrau Bay. On the southeast Arguni ...

Western New Guinea Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, and Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly Dutch and granted to Indonesia in 1962. Given the island is alternatively named Papua, the region ...

has been proposed based on pronominal evidence, but though often cited has never been firmly established.

Languages

The family is conventionally divided into two branches, centered on the islands of Alor and

Pantar Pantar (; ) is the second largest island in the Indonesian Alor Archipelago, after Alor Island, Alor. To the east is the island of Alor and other small islands in the archipelago; to the west is the Alor Strait, which separates it from the Solor ...

. * Alor branch: Wosika, Abui, Adang–Kabola, Kafoa (Jafoo), Kui,

Klon #REDIRECT Lon Lon or LON may refer to: People * Lon (photographer), pseudonym of Alonzo Hanagan, also known as "Lon of New York" * Lon (name), a list of people with the given name, nickname or surname Fictional characters * Nero Wolfe supporting c ...

, Wersing, Sawila, Kula * Pantar branch: Blagar, Teiwa, Kaera, Lamma, Nedebang,

Retta Marietta Sangai SirleafJung, E. Alex Vulture.com, May 23, 2018. rchived https://web.archive.org/web/20180523214634/https://www.vulture.com/2018/05/retta-has-a-story-to-tell.htmlon 05-23-2018

Tereweng is sometimes considered a separate language from Blagar, Hamap sometimes separate from Adang, and Sar sometimes from Teiwa. Abui, Kamang, and Kabola may also not be unitary languages. There is a total of 71,940 speakers.

External classification

It has long been recognized that the Papuan languages of the Alor archipelago (including Alor and Pantar, as well as the four small islands of Buaya, Pura, Ternate, and Tereweng in the Pantar Strait) form a well-defined group. Apparent cognates among basic vocabulary are abundant, as demonstrated for example in Stokhof’s (1975) survey of basic vocabulary, and the shape of pronominal systems is almost identical across the group. The genetic relatedness of the Alor–Pantar languages has been confirmed through the reconstruction of the proto-Alor–Pantar language. Relationships between the Alor–Pantar languages and at least some (though perhaps not all) of the non-Austronesian languages of Timor Island may justify the positing of a Timor–Alor–Pantar language family, however, the relationship between the AP group and the Timor languages is of second order. Wurm et al. (1975) classified the AP languages as members of the putative Trans-New Guinea Phylum. However, the authors offered little evidence for this classification and remained somewhat doubtful, noting, “whichever way they he Timor–Alor–Pantar languagesare classified, they contain strong substratum elements of the other … phyla involved” (Wurm et al. 1975:318). Most recently, based on an analysis of pronominal shapes Ross (2005) assigns AP to his West Trans-New Guinea linkage, a subgroup of Trans-New Guinea. Yet Ross’ proposal requires that AP pronouns be derived from pTNG via a flip-flop in which second-person pronouns trade places with the third person. Compare pTNG *ŋga ‘2pro’ and *(y)a ‘3pro’ with Nedebang aŋ and gaŋ, respectively. Bottom-up reconstruction based on regular sound correspondences may shed further light on these issues.

Internal classification

Holton, et al. (2012)

Holton, et al. (2012) propose the following classificatory subgrouping for the Alor–Pantar languages, with individual languages marked by italics.Holton, Gary, Marian Klamer, František Kratochvíl, Laura C. Robinson, Antoinette Schapper. 2012. "The Historical Relations of the Papuan languages of Alor and Pantar". Oceanic Linguistics, Vol. 51, No. 1, June 2012 *''Proto-Alor–Pantar'' ** ''Teiwa'' ** ''Nedebang'' ** ''Kaera'' **'' Western Pantar (Mauta, Tubbe, Lamma)'' **Alor (*k, *q merge) *** ''Kui'' *** ''Abui'' *** ''Kamang'' ***''? Kafoa (Jafoo)'' ***West Alor (*s > ) **** ''Klon'' ****Straits (*k > Ø, *g > ) *****Blagar–Retta ****** ''Blagar'' ****** ''Retta'' ***** ''Adang'' ***East Alor (*b > , *s > ) **** Tanglapui ***** ''Sawila'' ***** ''Kula'' ****'' Wersing (Kolana)'' "Proto-Alor–Pantar" may be synonymous with Proto- Timor–Alor–Pantar, as the languages outside the Alor branch do not seem to form a valid node with it against the Oirata–Makasai languages of East Timor and

Bunak language The Bunak language (also known as Bunaq, Buna, Bunake, pronounced ) is the language of the Bunak people of the mountainous region of central Timor, split between the political boundary between West Timor, Indonesia, particularly in Lamaknen Dis ...

on the Timorese border. However, the relationship is distant.

Kaiping and Klamer (2019)

A 2019 phylogenetic study of Alor-Pantar by Kaiping and Klamer gives the following internal structure: *Alor-Pantar **East Alor *** ''Kamang'' *** ''Wersing''; ''Sawila''- ''Kula'' **Nuclear Alor-Pantar ***Alor ****Central Alor ***** ''Klon'' ***** ''Abui''- ''Kafoa''; ''Kiriman''- ''Kui'' ****West Alor ***** ''Kabola''; ''Adang''-''Lawahing'' ***** ''Hamap''; ''Adang''-''Otvai'' ***Pantar-Straits **** ''Western Pantar'' ****Pantar ***** ''Klamu'', ''Teiwa'' ***** ''Kaera''; ''Reta''- ''Blagar'' Kaiping and Klamer (2019b) have found that the four major Alor–Pantar subgroups, namely

, Blagar, Central Alor, and East Alor, form different

phylogenetic tree A phylogenetic tree or phylogeny is a graphical representation which shows the evolutionary history between a set of species or taxa during a specific time.Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA. In ...

s depending on the methodology that is applied.

Pronouns

Ross (2005) postulates a "West Timor" group uniting Alor–Pantar with Bunak. He reconstructs the pronouns as: : *gi is not attested from Bunak, and the inclusive is just ''i''.

Language documentation

Language documentation efforts in the early 21st century have produced a range of published documentary materials. *Grammatical descriptions **A Grammar of Adang (Haan 2001) **A Grammar of Abui (Kratochvíl 2007) **A Grammar of

(Baird 2008) **A Grammar of Teiwa (Klamer 2010) *Dictionaries **Kamus Pengantar Bahasa Abui (Kratochvíl & Delpada 2008) **Kamus Pengantar Bahasa Pantar Barat (Holton & Lamma Koly 2008)

Proto-language

A reconstruction of proto-Alor–Pantar has been proposed by Holton and Robinson (2017).Gary Holton & Laura C. Robinson. 2017. The internal history of the Alor-Pantar language family. In Marian Klamer (ed.),
The Alor-Pantar languages
', 49–91. Berlin:

Language Science Press Language Science Press (LSP) is an open access scholarly publishing house specializing in linguistics, formally set up in 2014. Language Science Press publishes books on a central storage and archiving server in combination with print on-demand ...

. Proto-Alor–Pantar consonants are: : In contrast, proto- Timor-Alor-Pantar does not have the

voiceless uvular stop The voiceless uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is pronounced like a voiceless velar plosive , except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula. The symbol in ...

/q/. Lexical reconstructions by Holton and Robinson (2017) are: ;proto-Alor–Pantar reconstructions (Holton and Robinson 2017) :

References

External links

Alor and Pantar Languages: Origins and Theoretical Impacts
* ttp://hum.leiden.edu/lias/research/sas/indonesian.html Linguistic Variation in Eastern Indonesia: the Alor and Pantar Project – University of Leiden
The Alor Pantar Languages. Edited by Marian Klamer

. 485pp. Free download. {{DEFAULTSORT:Alor-Pantar languages Timor–Alor–Pantar languages Languages of Indonesia