The Flores–Lembata languages are a group of related Austronesian languages (geographically

Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages The Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) languages form a proposed branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages consisting of over 700 languages (Blust 1993). Distribution The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken in the Lesser Sun ...

) spoken in the

Lesser Sundas The Lesser Sunda Islands or nowadays known as Nusa Tenggara Islands ( id, Kepulauan Nusa Tenggara, formerly ) are an archipelago in Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make ...

, on eastern

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and t ...

and small islands immediately east of Flores. They are suspected of having a non-Austronesian

substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

, with extreme morphological simplification in Sika and secondarily in

Alorese Alorese (bahasa Alor) is an Austronesian language spoken on Alor and the neighboring islands of the Alor archipelago in eastern Indonesia. It is not to be confused with non-Austronesian ( Papuan) languages of the Alor–Pantar family which ar ...

, but not to a greater extent than the

Central Malayo-Polynesian languages The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages (CMP) are a proposed branch in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The languages are spoken in the Lesser Sunda and Maluku Islands of the Banda Sea, in an area corresponding ...

in general.

Languages

The generally accepted defined Flores–Lembata languages are: * Kedang * Sika * Lamaholot In addition, the following is often grouped either as a dialect of Lamaholot or its own language: * Adonara *

Lamaholot is a dialect chain. Ethnologue treats ten varieties as distinct languages.

Classification

Elias (2017) proposes the following internal classification of Flores-Lembata.Elias, Alexander. 2017. ''Subgrouping the Flores–Lembata languages using Historical Glottometry''. 9th International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference
APLL9
, 21–23 June 2017, LACITO, Paris. ;Flores-Lembata *Sika-Hewa ** Sika **Hewa *Kedang-Lamaholot ** Kedang ** Lamaholot ***Central Lamaholot ***Eastern-Western Lamaholot ****Eastern Lamaholot ****Alorese-Western Lamaholot *****

*****Western Lamaholot

Linguistic area A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lan ...

s are: *''East

Lembata Lembata is an island in the Lesser Sunda Islands, also known as Lomblen island; it is the largest island of the Solor Archipelago, in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia. It forms a separate regency of the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur. The ...

'': Kedan, Eastern Lamaholot *''Sedentary

'': Eastern Lamaholot,

, Western Lamaholot, Central Lamaholot

References

External links

LexiRumah
(part of th
Lesser Sunda linguistic databases

Reconstructing the past through languages of the present: the Lesser Sunda Islands
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flores-Lembata languages Languages of Indonesia Flores Island (Indonesia) Solor Archipelago

Languages

Classification

See also

References

Further reading

External links