BETWEEN LEREK AND SOLOR OF THE LAMAHOLOT : A DIALECTAL COMPARISON

MARCELINUS YERI FERNANDEZ AKOLI FKIP – UNIVERSITAS NUSA CENDANA

akolimarcel@yahoo.com.au

Presented at

KOLITA 155 – 7 APRIL 2017

ATMA JAYA INDONESIA CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY JAKARTA – INDONESIA

LAMAHOLOT MAP

Lamaholot : Lerek and Solor

Lamaholot can exactly be understood as a chain of dialects that functions as a lingua franca for several unrelated varieties around Solor archipelago.

It consists of around 33 dialects which ranges from Lewotobi and Pukaunu dialects in the westernmost parts to Lewoeleng and Lamatuka dialects in the easternmost borders.

LEREK (Painara)

Lerek or Painara (Keraf,1978:attachment VII) is a Lamoholot dialect that is spoken in the central part of Lembata island.

Koban-Uer (2012:2) claimed that the language should be named as ‘Lerek’ after its village’s name. ‘Lerek’ itself lexically means ‘flat land’.

Speaking population of Lerek is just below 2,000 (the data is from Kantor KecamatanAtadei).

Administratively, it belongs to Atadei sub-district. It is the second largest village after Kalikasa in the sub-district.

It takes about 45 minutes to go from Kalikasato Lerek by motorcycle.

Ethnically, Lerek is once again located in the map of Painara where there are also other six existing administrative villages ; ATAWOLO (LUSI LAME), WATU WAWER (ATA KORE), DULIR, ATALOJO (NUBA ATALOJO), WAIWEJAK (NUBA HERAKA) and PAULOLO (LEBA ATA).

Koban-Uer (2012:2) claimed that the six abovementioned villages speak sub-dialects of Painara which, in my observation, there are a number of internal variations of those varieties compared to Lerek.

SOLOR

1. It is 226,39 KM2.

2. The population is around 20,000 which settle in 33 villages.

3. The island is historically-acknowledged when Portuguese sailors arrived in and built their fortress named ‘Fort Henricus’. This fort is undeniably a remained evidence on the western presence in Solor island left by the Portuguese traders.

SOLOR (Keraf,1978)

West Accent

East Accent

Lamakera Dialect

SOLOR (Kroon,2016:5-7)

Pamakayo-RitaebangAccent Cluster

Tanalein-KaleluAccent Cluster

Karawatung-KelikeAccent Cluster

Wulublolon-LewograranAccent Cluster

Lamakera Dialect

2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY1. This is a descriptive-qualitative research with a

combination of recording,elicitation and literature study techniques.

2. Data collection technique : A four-day trip to Lerek village

• Collecting 200 words of Lerek in Swadesh version.

• Two recorded folktales from a 45-year-old speaker.

• the files were transcribed using ELAN. Data from Kroon’s (2016) disertation : A

Grammar of Solor – Lamaholot : A Language of Flores, Eastern Indonesia.

3. Data analysis techniques :

Comparing the 200-word vocabulary of Lerek and Solor dialects to get cognates,identical words and less similar words.

Comparing the structure of Lerek and Solor sentences to see the similarities and the differences.

Using the online language website ‘Austronesian Comparative Dictionary’ by Blust and Trussel as the source to compare the current vocabulary of both Lerek and Solor with the proto forms of Central Malayo Polynesian.

Using the descriptions of Klamer (2012) and Doyle (2010) to enlight the writer to see the linguistic situations better.

3. Discussion

LEXICOSTATISTICS

1. The 200-word Swadesh lists of both the dialects are employed to get the lexical similarity.

2. The formula is :

3. Result : with N = 200, 104 words are not similar, 96 words are similar.

4. The percentage of lexical similarity is 48 percent.

100N

cognate

5. However, it is quite hard to change the linguistic identity in Lerek as the speakers of Lerek clearly identify themselves as Lamaholot speakers. They mention many times that they are also Lamaholot people as in the past they also belonged to one of Paji teritories (Ataladjar,2015:16-18).

Lerek Solor

LAMAHOLOT

48 %

DISTINCT LANGUAGE

English PAN PMP PCMP Lerek Solor Proto-

Lamaholot

/ʤ/ /r/

rain

day

name

*quzaN

*qaleʤaw

*ŋaʤan

*quzan

*qaleʤaw

*ŋaʤan

*quzan

*qalǝʤaw

*ŋaʤan

/uʤan/

/lǝʤo/

/naʤan/

/ura/

/lǝro /

/nara/

*ʤ

*ʤ

*ʤ

3.2 Sound Correspondence

/ʤ/ /r/

What the data say to us :

1.Lerek phoneme /ʤ/ is closer to Proto-

Lamaholot than Solor phoneme /r/.

2.The split between Lerek and some Lamaholot

varieties including Solor had existed long

existed before Solor split itself from the other

Lamaholot dialects which are now located on

Adonara and Eastern parts of Flores.

PROTO LAMAHOLOT

LEREK SL NT LL LT WB WW

/ʤ/ /r//r//r//r//r//r/

3.3 Making Plural in Lerek and Solor

‘Ra’e sǝru laŋo’.

Ra’e sǝru laŋo

3pl.Subj V. N.

they burn house

‘They burn (a) house’.

‘Ra’e sǝru laŋo mitǝ.

Ra’e sǝru laŋo mitǝ

3pl.subj V. N. Adj.

they burn house black

‘They burn (a) black house’.

Ra’e sǝru laŋo mitǝ rua.

Ra’e sǝru laŋo mitǝ rua

3pl.Subj V. N. Adj. Num.

they burn house black two

‘They burn two black houses’.

SolorExamples

‘Unaj dǝbo dǝ talekǝ.

una-j dǝbo dǝ talekǝ

N.- pl. Dem. 3pl.subj V.

house-pl. the they burn

‘They burn the houses’.

‘Una mitǝmǝj dǝbo dǝ talekǝ.ˈ

Una mitǝm-ǝj dǝbo dǝ talekǝ

N. adj-pl. Dem. 3pl.subj V.

House black--pl the they burn

‘They burn the black houses’.

‘Una mitǝm ʤuaj dǝbo dǝ talekǝ.

Una mitǝm ʤua-j dǝbo dǝ talekǝ

N. Adj. Num-pl Dem. 3pl.subj V.

House black Two-pl the they burn

‘They burn the two black houses’.

LEREK EXAMPLES

So what we got from the examples :

Solor

• The Plural is lexically-marked.

• E.g. number, ‘ara’(many/much)

Lerek

• The plural is morphologically-marked.

• The morpheme is /-j/ with /-ej/ as the allophone.

• This plural marker is able to attach to any word-class that is located in the final position of the rightmost word in a noun phrase.

3.4 Papuan Features in Lerek

Once again :1. There is a regular correspondence between Solor /r/

and Lerek /ʤ/. 2. Plural marking strategy in Solor is lexically-based,

while in Lerek , it is morphologically-marked.

SOLOR LEREK

Lexically-based

Morphologically-based

Austronesian feature

Papuan Feature

Typology of Plural Marking System in Lerek and Solor

/-la/

/-ere/

CONTACT-INDUCED GRAMMATICALIZATION (Klamer,2012: 2)

FIRST STAGE

What did it happen at the first contact ?

1. It occured in Prehistoric time between Proto Lamaholot and Papuan speakers.

2. This migration, by Nick Evans (Klamer,2012:5), was a sort of PAPUANISATION of Proto Lamaholot as since that time, the Lamaholot may have acquired many non-Austronesian features which can be easily identified from the modern Lamahot. If suffix /-j/ is considered as a part of Proto-Lamaholot , then it can be assumed that this feature is a piece of evidence in which Papuan characteristics may have survived in the current linguistic situation in one of the Lamaholot dialects on Lembata island,that is, Lerek.

CONCLUSION

1. Lexically, Lerek should be considered a distinct language.

2. However, the history and the sociolinguistic situations of Lerek speakers make it clear that Lerek community still maintains their Lamaholot characteristics.

3. For these circumstances, what it is found in Lerek draws a history of how such an Austronesian variety like Lerek can possess such Papuan feature,that is, suffix /-j/.

4. Furthermore, what we learn from Solor and Lerek shows us a sort of linguistic complexity which is dominantly due to contacts of speakers from two different language groups.

TERIMA KASIH

THANK YOU

DANKE

MATUR NUWUN

KASE BANYA