The Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands languages (also Barrier Islands–Batak languages or Sumatran languages) are a group of

Malayo-Polynesian languages The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeas ...

spoken by the

Batak Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of closely related Austronesian peoples, Austronesian ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia, who speak Batak languages. The term is used to include the Karo people ( ...

and related peoples in the interior of

North Sumatra North Sumatra () is a Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia located in the northern part of the island of Sumatra. Its capital and largest city is Medan on the east coast of the island. It borders Aceh to the northwest, Riau to the sou ...

and by the Nias,

Mentawai people Mentawai (also known as Mentawei and Mentawi) people are the Austronesian people of the Mentawai Islands (principally Siberut, Sipura, North Pagai and South Pagai) about 100 miles from West Sumatra province, Indonesia. They live a semi-nomadic hu ...

, and others on the Barrier islands (

Simeulue Simeulue is an island of Indonesia, off the west coast of Sumatra. It covers an area of 1,754 square kilometre (677 square miles), including minor offshore islands. It had a population of 80,674 at the 2010 census and 92,865 at the 2020 census ...

Nias Nias (, Nias: ''Tanö Niha'') is an island located off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Nias is also the name of the archipelago () of which the island is the centre, but also includes the Batu Islands to the southeast and the small ...

, and

Mentawai Islands Regency The Mentawai Islands Regency is a Regency (Indonesia), regency of West Sumatra Province which consists of a chain of about a hundred islands and islets approximately off the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. They cover a land area of and h ...

) off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Classification

The languages of the Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands subgroup are: * Gayo *

Batak languages __FORCETOC__ The Batak languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages spoken by the Batak people in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra and surrounding areas. Internal classification The Batak languages can be divided into two mai ...

– Sikule * Mentawai * Enggano (?) This subgroup was first proposed by Lafeber (1922), who called it "Batak-Nias". Nothofer (1986) presented lexical and phonological evidence in support of this subgroup, calling it "Barrier Islands–Batak". Nothofer, Bernd (1986). "The Barrier Island Languages in the Austronesian Language Family". In Geraghty, P., Carrington, L. and Wurm, S.A. (eds.) ''Focal II: Papers From the Fourth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics'', pp. 87–109. Pacific Linguistics, Series C, No. 94, Canberra, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University. The position of the highly divergent Enggano language is controversial. Both Lafeber (1922) and Nothofer (1986) include Enggano as a probable daughter language. This is rejected by Edwards (2015) who considers Enggano a primary branch of the

.Edwards, Owen (2015). "The Position of Enggano within Austronesian". ''Oceanic Linguistics 54''(1): 54–109 Recent research by Smith (2017) however supports the inclusion of Enggano within his tentative "Sumatran" subgroup, which is an extended version of Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands that further includes the Nasal language spoken in

Bengkulu Bengkulu (), historically known as Bencoolen, is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southwest coast of Sumatra. It was formed on 18 November 1968 by separating out the area of the historic Bencoolen Residency from the province of ...

in southwestern Sumatra.Smith, Alexander D. (2017). "The Western Malayo-Polynesian Problem". ''Oceanic Linguistics 56''(2): 435–490 Smith's proposal is supported by Billings & McDonnell (2022) who classify the Sumatran languages as follows:Billings, Blaine; McDonnell, Bradley. 2022.
Subgrouping Malayo-Polynesian languages of Sumatra and the Barrier Islands
'. Presentation given at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS 31),

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa The University of Hawaii at Mānoa is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Hawaiʻi system and houses the main offic ...

, May 18–20, 2022.
slides
*

* Northern Barrier Islands (

) * Central Barrier Islands ( Sikule,

) * Mentawai * Gayo *

Nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

* Enggano As phonological evidence for the inclusion of these languages with the Sumatran subgroup they propose: ;Mergers # PMP *j, *g > Proto-Sumatran *g #PMP *z, *d > Proto-Sumatran *d #PMP *ñ, *n > Proto-Sumatran *n #PMP *R, *r > Proto-Sumatran *r #PMP *h > Proto-Sumatran zero ;Shift (

sound change In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...

) # PMP *q > Proto-Sumatran *h

Lexicon

Edwards (2015: 78) provides the following table comparing body part vocabulary items across various languages of the

Barrier Islands Barrier islands are a coastal landform, a type of dune system and sand island, where an area of sand has been formed by wave and tidal action parallel to the mainland coast. They usually occur in chains, consisting of anything from a few is ...

. Edwards (2015: 89) considers the aberrant Enggano language as not part of the Barrier Islands-Batak languages. Proto-Sumatran lexical innovations listed by Billings & McDonnell (2022) are:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Northwest Sumatra-Barrier Islands languages Languages of Sumatra North Sumatra