Matbat is a heavily Papuan-influenced Austronesian language spoken in West Papua,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, on the island of

Misool Misool, formerly spelled Mysol (Dutch: Misoöl) or Misol, is one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in Southwest Papua, Indonesia. Its area is 2,034 km2. The highest point is 561 m and the main towns are Waigama, located ...

Raja Ampat islands Raja Ampat, or the ''Four Kings'', is an archipelago located off the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula on the island of New Guinea, in Indonesia's Southwest Papua province. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and shoals surrounding ...

. Its dialects are ''Magey'' and ''Tomolol''. Similar to the neighboring

Ma'ya language Ma'ya is an Austronesian language of the Raja Ampat islands in West Papua, Indonesia. It is spoken by about 6,000 people in coastal villages on the islands Misool, Salawati, and Waigeo. It is spoken on the boundary between Austronesian and Pap ...

, Matbat is one of a handful of Austronesian languages with true lexical tone rather than a pitch-accent system or complete lack of phonemic tonal contrasts as with most other Austronesian languages.

Distribution

Matbat is spoken in the following locations within

Raja Ampat Regency Raja Ampat Regency is a regency of Southwest Papua Province of Indonesia. The regency, which was formed based on the Law 26 of 2002, was inaugurated on 12 April 2003, and consists of a number of groups of islands situated off the north-west end of ...

: *Misool Timur District: Tumolol, Lenmalas, Lenmalas Timur Barat, Audam, Foley, and Eduai villages *Misool Utara District: Atkari and Salafen villages *Misool Barat District: Magei village

Phonology

The phonology of the Matbat language is summarized below: /j/ can be heard freely as �or �in word-initial position.

Tones

Matbat has five lexical tones: high falling 41, high 3, low rising 12, low level 1, and low falling 21, which in open syllables has a peaking allophone, 121. Most Matbat words are monosyllabic; additional syllables in polysyllabic words are often weak and toneless, though a few words do have two tonic syllables. Examples of some of the longer monomorphemic words are 'star', 'sea shore', 'round', 'butterfly'.

Evolution

Tonogenesis Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

in Matbat remains unclear. Some Matbat reflexes of

Proto-Malayo-Polynesian Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which is by far the largest branch (by current speakers) of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian is ancestral to all Austronesi ...

(PMP) proto-forms are listed below. * PMP *bunuq > Mayá ''bu³n'' ‘kill’ * PMP *penuq > ''fo¹²n'' ‘full’ * PMP *salaq > ''sa³l'' ‘error’ * PMP *qateluR (> *teluR) > ''to¹²l'' ‘egg’ * PMP *matay > ''ma¹²t'' ‘die’ * PMP *kutu > ''u³t'' ‘louse’

Distribution

Phonology

Tones

Evolution

References

Further reading