Table of Contents
- Introduction
- East Barito: Who Were the Malayo-Polynesian Migrants to Madagascar?
- Malayic Dayak: Arguments for a Bornean Homeland of Malay
- Tamanic: On the Exact Nature of the Relation Between Tamanic Languages and South Sulawesi Languages
- Land Dayak: Some Features They Have in Common With Orang Asli Languages
- Post Scriptum
- References
The autochthonous languages of Borneo have been divided into ten separate subgroups (Hudson 1978). This paper discusses four subgroups on which the author has done research.
The Southeast Barito subgroup includes Malagasy. This language underwent considerable influence from Malay and Javanese. Malay influence appears to have lasted until after the introduction of Islam in Southeast Asia, and there are also some indications that the Arabic script was introduced to Madagascar by Indonesians (possibly Javanese). The author puts forth the hypothesis that the Malagasy, rather than having sailed to Madagascar of their own accord, may have been transported there (as subordinates) by Malays.
The Malayic subgroup includes Iban and Malay. The diversity and relative archaism of the Malayic languages spoken in West Borneo suggest that the Malayic homeland may have been in this area.
The Tamanic languages are phonologically, morphosyntactically and lexically close enough to the South Sulawesi languages to form a subgroup with them. They have some striking phonological developments in common with Buginese, with which they seem to form a separate branch within the South Sulawesi language group.
The Land Dayak languages have a few striking lexical and phonological similarities in common with Aslian languages. This suggests that Land Dayak originated as the result of a language shift from Aslian to Austronesian, or that both Land Dayak and Aslian have in common a substratum from an unknown third language.
If one thing has become clear in the last one and a half centuries, it is that Borneo, in spite of some shallow appearances to the contrary, represents an amalgamation of ethnic groups with often very different origins. Where Hardeland in the mid- 19th century (Hardeland 1858, 1859) still thought it suitable to call the language of his dictionary and grammatical sketch “Dayak”, it now appears to be merely one of the Northwest Barito languages, which in turn form a branch of the West Barito grouping in the southern part of Borneo. According to Hudson (1978), the West Barito language group is but one of the ten linguistic subgroups to which the autochthonous languages of Borneo belong.
Hudson classified the Bornean languages into seven endo-Bornean groups (Land Dayak, Rejang-Baram, Kenyah-Kayan, Apo Duat, West Barito, Barito-Mahakam and East Barito[1] ) and three exo-Bornean groups (viz. Malayic Dayak, Tamanic and Sabahan[2] (see Map 1). According to Hudson, these ten groups are at least as different from each other as they are from any other (non-Bornean) Malayo-Polynesian linguistic subgroup, and the exo-Bornean groups are each closely related to some non-Bornean languages. Malayic Dayak languages are part of the Malayic sub-family (including, among others, Malay, Minangkabau and Banjarese), Tamanic languages are most closely related to South Sulawesi languages, and Sabahan languages subgroup with the Philippine languages (Hudson 1978). Apart from the autochthonous languages, there are also several Malayic, Bajau and Chinese languages which have a long history in Borneo: they are mainly spoken in coastal areas and in towns.[3]
Although preliminary, Hudson’s classification is more comprehensive and scientific than previous classifications of Bornean languages.
Through my linguistic research during the last five years I have been able to make further explorations into the history of four of Hudson’s subgroups, viz. East Barito, Malayic Dayak, Tamanic and Land Dayak. I have also been doing research on the influence of Malay and other Indonesian languages on Malagasy. During four short field trips to West Kalimantan I have collected a large corpus of data on Salako (a Malayic Dayak language) and on Embaloh (a Tamanic language), and I have collected basic wordlists for a large number of Land Dayak languages.[4] These and other linguistic data allow us to make some inferences about the origin and spread of the speakers of the languages involved. The following paragraphs, which are organized according to linguistic subgroup, detail these inferences.
Many of the arguments that I present in this paper have already been treated elsewhere, and the reader is referred to the Adelaar references (1989, 1991a, 1991b, 1994 and in press) for a fuller account of these arguments and for extensive bibliographical references. In only one instance do I put forward a viewpoint that I have not discussed previously; this concerns suggested similarities between Land Dayak languages and Central Orang Asli languages.