Critical Survey of Studies on the Languages of Borneo PDF
Preview Critical Survey of Studies on the Languages of Borneo
Additional material to this book can be downloaded from http://extras.springer.com ISBN 978-94-011-8247-8 ISBN 978-94-011-8925-5 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-8925-5 Copyright 1958 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Martinus NijhoJf in 1958 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reduce this book or parts thereof in any form. CONTENTS Preface 1 Introduction . 3 Malay dialects 7 Kendayan Dayak and Land Dayak . 13 Melanau . . . . . . 17 Bisaya. . . . . . . . . 20 Sarawak Murut dialects. . . 21 North Borneo Murut dialects. 23 Dusun . 24 Bajau . 27 Ubian . 28 IIlanun. 28 Bulud-Upi 28 Sulu 29 Tidung dialects . 29 Sajau Basap and other Basap dialects . 31 Labu ...... . 31 Central Borneo languages 32 Punan Ba, Beketan, Ukit 36 Modang ..... . 38 Embaloh ..... . 38 Maanyan, Si(h)ong, Samihim, Dusun, Dusun De(y)ah 39 Lawangan 41 Tabuyan . 42 Ngaju .. 42 Ot Danum 45 The JPelling of geographical name! and nameJ of languageJ iJ according to the BngliJh romanization of Malay. PREFACE At the completion of this bibliography, the second of the planned series on language study in Indonesia, the authors acknowledge with gratitude the kind assistance of Father Donatus Dunselman, Dr A. H. Hill and Dr P. Voorhoeve who have read all or part of the manuscript. Also our heartfelt thanks are due to those who have provided us with information indispensable for the compilation of the bibliographical data, or have given us the opportunity to inspect their archives for linguistic literature on Borneo, i.e. the very Rev. A. Antonissen, Jesselton, North Borneo, Father W. Boon, Rector of the Catholic Mission, Mukah, Sarawak, Dr N. C. Scott, the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, London, the British and Foreign Bible Society, London, the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, the Basle Mission, Basle, Switzerland, the Rhenish Mission, Wuppertal, Germany, the Dutch Bible Society, Amsterdam. The authors greatly appreciate the grant from the Netherland Institute for International Cultural Relations which made this public ation possible. A. A. CENSE E. M. UHLENBECK 1 ]ll< AUGUST HARDELAND INTRODUCTION Among the four large islands of Indonesia it is Borneo which has been least studied from a linguistic point of view. Only very few, more extensive linguistic descriptions and collections of texts have been published. Other published data consist mainly of incidental remarks of explorers and travellers, who in their works occasionally also in cluded wordlists, terms for various institutions and sometimes a few set phrases or isolated words. The most important contribution to the knowledge of many Bornean languages is due to missionary effort. The Bible translations and other translations of christian literature, valuable when no original texts are available, are for many languages often practically the only source of information. It is impossible to provide a reliable picture of the present linguistic situation on the island by means of these data. On numerous points the mutual relation between the languages is highly uncertain, whilst their geographical distribution can either not be indicated, or only be outlined approximatively. Furthermore, the data at our disposal are of greatly differing date; the present situation will therefore often not quite correspond to the indications to be met with in the older sources. It is beyond doubt that in the course of time migration and im migration have taken place on a large scale. These movements have of course had their effect on the languages; a comparatively short period of time may suffice to create a new linguistic situation. Although no sufficient data are available to permit of giving an outline of the events which led to the present distribution, the im pression is very strong that the process of the penetration of Malay dialects in Borneo has been at work already for centuries, albeit with varying intensity. It cannot be determined to what extent groups of the population of Borneo who originally spoke other languages have exchanged their languages for these Malay dialects. In any case, it is to be observed at present that on Borneo, along the coasts and along the rivers up to deep into the interior, languages are spoken which, in spite of small differences between them, show a striking similarity with 4 Malay as it is used, with many variations, over a large area on Sumatra and in the Malay peninsula. This similarity is so striking that scholars have been fully justified in calling them Malay dialects. Other languages, which are occasionally indicated by a name of their own, like Banja rese and Sea Dayak will undoubtedly have to be counted among these dialects. Among the languages of the interior are some whose structure shows rather strong points of resemblance with the Malay dialects although it has become customary to consider them as languages by themselves. Because we do not pretend to provide a new division of the languages of Borneo we shall base ourselves on the extant literature and discuss these languages separately, beside the Malay dialects. From ethnographical literature we know that in North Borneo several groups have settled who are of Philippine origin and who continue to use Philippine languages. Beside these, however, languages of a clearly marked Philippine type are spoken over a wider area in the North. It is possible that here we have to do with immigrations that took place in a more distant past, but this is again difficult to prove. Again it should be noted that settlements of the Bajau are to be found here, i.e. of the weIlknown sea-gypsies who are also to be met with in large parts of eastern Indonesia and in the southern part of the Philippines. Large Bugis settlements are found in several places along the coasts. In Kutai and Pasir an important part of the population is Buginese. Especially in Pegatan in the south-east corner of Borneo they exercise a considerable influence. In a volume devoted to Celebes the literature on this language will be discussed. Finally the remark should be added that in some coastal areas and along a few of the great rivers Chinese dialects are spoken. They will not be discussed in this survey. The Sanscrit inscriptions found in Kutai and discussed by Vogel (BKI 74 (1918) ) fall outside the scope of our book. The first attempts to give an impression of the number and the diversity of the languages spoken on Borneo were undertaken by authors of compilations of mostly ethnographical literature. A large 5 number of wordlists of languages mainly spoken in Sarawak and British North Borneo - collected by H. Brooke Low and others - have been reproduced by Ling Roth (1), but the latter was still unable to arrive at any arrangement or even at a mere comparison of the wordlists he printed. This work was only undertaken by Sidney Ray, that remarkable student of languages, who in 1913 published an enumer ation of the material at his disposal (2): printed books and articles, as well as manuscript wordlists, i.e. those he was able to consult, or those he compiled personally during his short stay on Borneo from the end of 1898 to the beginning of 1899. In particular, he made an extensive use of a manuscript by A. B. Meyer (died in 1911). The latter had been engaged for a considerable time in compiling "a com prehensive bibliographical and statistical account of the languages of Eastern Indonesia" and had sent round for this purpose wordlists, established after the model of the linguistic Report of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits by Ray, to a number of British officials of the Sarawak Government. Not many of the data available at the time escaped Ray's attention. There is only one lexico graphical work of importance, viz. Barth's Busang-Dutch dictionary of 1910 (213) which is not to be found in his bibliography, which contains no less than 276 items. Ray's division rests mainly on a geographical basis; it is in five groups. He distinguished 1. languages of Lower Sarawak, 2. languages of Netherlands territory, 3. languages of Upper Sarawak, 4. North Borneo languages,S. Malay. Within this framework he attempted to make further distinctions, using the terms "language" and "dialect" to indicate gradations in similarity. In this way he arrived provisionally at assuming the existence of· thirty different languages for the whole of Borneo; within these thirty languages he then often distinguished between numerous dialects. For the Melanau of Lower Sarawak he mentions e.g. no less than five groups of dialects. Beside some data concerning the pronouns and numerals in these languages and some general remarks, Ray added to his bibliography a list of 211 words in the different Borneo languages, as far as the material at his disposal allowed him to do. For a survey of the literature up to 1913 Ray's work was indispensable.
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