Western Pantar, sometimes referred to by the name of one of its dialects, Lamma, is a

Papuan language The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...

spoken in the western part of Pantar island in the Alor archipelago of

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 ...

. Western Pantar is spoken widely in the region by about 10,000 speakers. Although speakers often use Malay in political, religious, and educational contexts, Western Pantar remains the first language of children of the region, and is acquired to some extent by immigrants.

Dialects

There are three primary dialects. * Tubbe (spoken in Puntaru and Air Panas) * Mauta (spoken in Kakamauta, Alimakke, Lauki, Kapas, Kolihabbang, and Alikallang) * Lamma (spoken in Kalondama and Latuna) Dialect differences are primarily lexical:

Phonology

The Western Pantar consonant inventory includes: voiced and voiceless stops /p t k ’/ and /b d g/; voiceless fricatives /s h/; nasals /n m ng/; trill /r/ and lateral /l/; and glides/w/ and /j/. The glottal fricative /h/ is very lightly articulated. It occurs in both word-initial and word-medial positions. Words which begin with a glottal fricative can be difficult to distinguish from vowel-initial forms, which actually begin with a glottal stop. Consonants contrast in length with longer (

geminate In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

) counterparts (written double).

Numbers

* ''anuku'' 'one' * ''alaku'' 'two' * ''atiga'' 'three' * ''atu'' 'four' * ''yasing'' 'five' * ''hisnakkung'' 'six' * ''betalaku'' 'seven' * ''betiga'' 'eight' * ''anuktannang'' 'nine' * ''keanuku'' 'ten' * ''keanuku wali ye'' 'eleven' * ''keanuku wali alaku'' 'twelve' * ''kealaku'' 'twenty'

Classification

Western Pantar and the other non-Austronesian languages of Alor and

Pantar Pantar ( id, Pulau Pantar) is the second largest island in the Indonesian Alor Archipelago, after 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 S ...

comprise the Alor–Pantar language family. This family is often itself included within the Timor–Alor–Pantar family, a larger grouping which includes some (though perhaps not all) of the non-Austronesian languages of

Timor Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also ...

Island. The TAP group is clearly Papuan (i.e., non-Austronesian), but just how it is related to the 20 or so families which fall under the rubric ''Papuan'' is unclear. Located some 1000 km from their nearest Papuan neighbor on the New Guinea mainland, the TAP family is the most distant Papuan outlier. In contrast, the other well-known outlier, the North Halmaheran subgroup of the West Papuan family, lies a mere 300 km from its nearest Papuan neighbor, and its genetic affiliation is well established. Based on an examination of possessive prefixes, Capell (1944) originally postulated that the TAP languages were related to the West Papuan languages of North Maluku and the Bird's Head of New Guinea. This hypothesis was later countered by Wurm et al. (1975), who classified the languages as members of the Trans–New Guinea family. 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 amiliesinvolved" (Wurm et al. 1975:318). Indeed, substratum may play an important role in understanding the history of TAP languages. Ross (2005) assigns TAP to his West Trans–New Guinea linkage, a subgroup of Trans–New Guinea. The evidence for this relies entirely on pronominal shapes, and yet there is significant variation in pronoun shapes in this linkage. TAP languages share some innovations/retentions with some members of the linkage, and other innovations/retentions with yet other different members of the linkage. For example, TAP languages retain *na as a reflex of pTNG first person singular *na, whereas several other members of the linkage show metathesis here. This kind of variation is to be expected, since by a "linkage" Ross means a dialect chain which has diversified in situ via overlapping innovations. More problematic is the correspondence of second and third person pronouns, an issue which is not addressed by Ross. TAP languages show a reversal of pTNG second and third pronouns, as can be seen comparing Ross's pTNG reconstructions with Nedebang pronouns. Western Pantar pronouns can only be derived from pTNG by a flip-flop in which second person pronouns trade places with third person, a typologically unusual situation. Recent work by Donohue & Schapper (2007) suggests that both Capell and Wurm may be right and that TAP may involve an overlay of both Trans–New Guinea and West Papuan elements.Donohue, Mark & Antoinette Schapper. 2007. Towards a morphological history of the languages of Timor, Alor and Pantar. Paper presented at the Fifth East Nusantara Conference, Kupang, Indonesia. Clearly, much more work is needed in order to unravel the complex linguistic pre-history of the TAP languages. One of the main stumbling blocks to further progress is the lack of adequate primary data from the individual languages in the Trans-New Guinea group, especially the languages of the Bomberai Peninsula.

References

External links

Western Pantar language
at

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