Rote-Meto Comparative Dictionary

Abstract

Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations and symbols ix Speech varieties listed in the dictionary xi † 'Meto' is used when a form is taken from Jonker (1908) who does not specify which variety of Meto his data is from. ROTE-METO COMPARATIVE DICTIONARY xii Speech varieties (with at least four occurrences) in out-comparisons Lect Region Sub-region ISO Glottocode

Traces of Pre-modern Contacts between Timor-Alor-Pantar and Austronesian Speakers

“…To proof that a lexeme set was borrowed into tap languages, it must be demonstrably Austronesian; that is, there must be a Proto Austronesian (pan) or Proto Malayo-Polynesian (pmp) reconstructed form that has a similar form and meaning. For this evidence I drew on the etymological database by Blust and Trussel (n.d.), as well as recent historical reconstructions done on daughter stages of pmp that are relevant to the area of Alor Pantar and Timor: Proto Flores-Lembata (pfl) (Fricke 2019), located to the west of Pantar island, and Proto Rote-Meto5 (prm) (Edwards 2021), on Timor.…”

“…In many cases, the sources present reconstructed pmp forms, or they mention sets of related lexemes that cannot (yet) be reconstructed to a common proto form (indicated with a hashtag #).6 These two types of Proto Flores-Lembata and Proto Rote-Meto forms were used to compare the tap data with. In addition, I occasionally considered lexical data from a group of an languages in central and east Timor that are not grouped under Proto Rote-Meto, but are part of the higher order Timor-Babar subgroup (Edwards 2021), and for which no historical reconstructions are yet available. The diachronic 'baseline' form of the tap languages was determined by considering reconstructed forms for proto tap Holton et al 2012;Holton and Robinson 2017a).…”

“…Blust and Trussell (n.d.) give a cognate set of Proto West Malayo-Polynesian *uRsah 'sambhur deer' containing words from Philippine languages, Malay and Toba Batak. Words related to this form are found in Flores-Lembata and Timor, but they may have been borrowed from Malay rusa (Edwards 2021). Malay has likely been a regional lingua franca at least since the time of the Sri Wijaya empire (7th-9th Century), and has been used as a trade language in eastern Indonesia since before the colonial times.…”

“…Societal Structures 3.2.1 'slave' In the an languages of Timor, reflexes of pmp *qaRta 'outsider(s), alien person(s)' are found to mean 'slave' , see (19). Edwards (2021) referring to Mahdi (1994:464ff.) suggests as the meaning of *qaRta 'negrito, black person' . This is based on the semantics across a wide range of mp languages which points to the original meaning being 'black/Negrito person' which, depending on the race of the speakers, was applied either to themselves or a subjugated population.…”

“…The recent publication of the online database LexiRumah (Kaiping, Edwards & Klamer 2019) containing lexical data for 357 language varieties spoken in eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste enables a comparison of lexical data that was previously impossible. In addition, recent years have seen publications of grammar descriptions and historical reconstructions of tap languages (see the overviews in as well as reconstructions of Austronesian language groups of the Flores-Lembata region (Fricke 2019) and the Timor region (Edwards 2021)). Thus we are now in the position to examine the contact history in the region more closely.…”