South Sulawesi languages

The South Sulawesi languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian language family. They are primarily spoken in the Indonesian provinces of South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi, with a small outlying pocket in West Kalimantan.

South Sulawesi
Geographic
distribution		Sulawesi, West Kalimantan
Linguistic classificationAustronesian
Proto-languageProto-South Sulawesi
Subdivisions
Glottologsout2923
Map showing the distribution of the South Sulawesi languages in Sulawesi and Kalimantan

Subgrouping

Internal classification

This classification follows Grimes & Grimes (1987) and the Ethnologue.[1][2]

The position of the Tamanic languages, spoken in West Borneo, was unclear until the end of the last century. The Dutch linguist K.A. Adelaar showed that they are especially close to Buginese and thus can be included in the South Sulawesi subgroup.[3]

Position within Austronesian

At the current state of research, the South Sulawesi languages are considered to make up a primary branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup within the Austronesian language family.[4]

South Sulawesi influence in Malagasy

Adelaar (1995) suggested that the vocabulary of Malagasy, next to its basic stratum inherited from Barito and loanwords from Malay, also contains many words that are of South Sulawesi origin.[5] Further evidence was presented by Blench (2018).[6]

Reconstruction
Proto-South Sulawesi
Reconstruction ofSouth Sulawesi languages
RegionSulawesi
Reconstructed
ancestors

Proto-South Sulawesi (PSS) has been reconstructed by Mills (1975a, 1975b).[7][8]

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close *i *ɨ *u
Mid *e *o
Open *a

The Proto-South-Sulawesi vowel *ɨ is a reflex of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) *ə. It is only preserved in Buginese, in all other languages it mostly became a (but under certain circumstances also i, u, e, and rarely o).[9]

The main sources of the mid vowels are PMP *-iq/*-ay, which became *e, and *-uq/*-aw, which became *o,[10] e.g.

PMP *putiq > PSS *pute 'white'
PMP *matay > PSS *mate 'dead'
PMP *suluq > PSS *sulo 'torch'
PMP *pisaw > PSS *piso 'knife'

Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Stop voiceless *p *t *c *k
voiced *b *d *j *g
Fricative voiceless *s
voiced *z *ɣ
Nasal *m *n *ñ *ŋ
Lateral *l
Trill *r
Approximant *w *y

The velar fricative *ɣ only appears in final position as a reflex of PMP *R,[11] while *z only is found in medial position as a reflex of PMP *j.[12]

See also

References

Citations
  1. Grimes & Grimes (1987).
  2. South Sulawesi at Ethnologue (23rd ed., 2020).
  3. Adelaar (1994).
  4. Smith (2017), p. 474.
  5. Adelaar (1995).
  6. Blench (2018).
  7. Mills (1975a).
  8. Mills (1975b).
  9. Mills (1975a), p. 262–265.
  10. Mills (1975a), p. 257.
  11. Mills (1975a), p. 360.
  12. Mills (1975a), p. 310.

Bibliography
  • Adelaar, K. A. (1994). "The classification of the Tamanic languages". In Tom Dutton; Darrell T. Tryon (eds.). Language contact and change in the Austronesian world. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 1–42.
  • Adelaar, Alexander (1995). "Asian Roots of the Malagasy: A Linguistic Perspective". Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. 151 (3): 325–356. doi:10.1163/22134379-90003036. JSTOR 27864676.
  • Blench, Roger (2018). "Interdisciplinary approaches to stratifying the peopling of Madagascar" (PDF).
  • Grimes, C. E.; Grimes, B. E. (1987). Languages of South Sulawesi. Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. doi:10.15144/PL-D78. ISBN 0858833522.
  • Mills, Roger Frederick (1975a). Proto South Sulawesi and proto Austronesian phonology (Ph.D. dissertation). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.
  • Mills, Roger Frederick (1975b). "The Reconstruction of Proto-South-Sulawesi". Archipel. 10 (1): 205–224. doi:10.3406/arch.1975.1250.
  • Smith, Alexander D. (2017). "The Western Malayo-Polynesian Problem". Oceanic Linguistics. 56 (2): 435–490. doi:10.1353/ol.2017.0021.

Further reading
  • Friberg, Barbara (1991). "Ergativity, focus and verb morphology in several South Sulawesi languages". In Ray Harlow (ed.). VICAL 2: Western Austronesian and contact languages, parts I and II: Papers from the fifth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. Auckland: Linguistic Society of New Zealand.
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