| Enggano | |
| States: | Indonesia |
| Region: | Enggano Island, off Sumatra |
| Ethnicity: | Enggano |
| Speakers: | 700 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| Familycolor: | Austronesian |
| Fam1: | Austronesian |
| Fam2: | Malayo-Polynesian |
| Fam3: | Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands? |
| Iso3: | eno |
| Glotto: | engg1245 |
| Glottorefname: | Enggano |
| Map: | Sumatra-Enggano.jpg |
| Mapcaption: | Enggano Island, in red |
| Notice: | IPA |
The Enggano language, or Engganese, is an Austronesian language spoken on Enggano Island off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
Enggano is notable among the Austronesian languages of western Insular Southeast Asia because of many unusual sound changes, and a low number of words shared with other Austronesian languages. There is however general consensus among Austronesianists that Enggano belongs to the Austronesian language family.[1] [2] Failure to fully identify the inherited Austronesian elements in the basic lexicon and bound morphology of Enggano resulted in occasional proposals that Enggano might be a language isolate which had adopted Austronesian loanwords.[3] [4]
When first contacted by Europeans, the Enggano people had more cultural commonalities with indigenous peoples of the Nicobar Islands than with those of Austronesian Sumatra. For instance, beehive houses were typical of both Enggano Island and the Nicobar Islands. However, there are no apparent linguistic connections with Nicobarese or other Austroasiatic languages.
The classification of Enggano was controversial, ranging from proposals that negate its inclusion in the Austronesian family all the way to classifications that place Enggano in the Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands subgroup together with other Austronesian languages of the area (e.g. Nias).
Based on the low number of apparent Austronesian cognates, Capell (1982) proposed that Enggano is a language isolate rather than Austronesian as previously assumed.[3] A similar view was echoed by Blench (2014) based on an inspection of Enggano's lexicon.[4]
Edwards (2015) demonstrates that pronouns, numerals and many affixes in Enggano can be directly derived from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Based on this evidence, together with regular sound changes from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian to Enggano, Edwards shows that Enggano clearly belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages, thus putting Capell's and Blench's proposals that Enggano is a non-Austronesian language to rest. Within Malayo-Polynesian, he considers Enggano to be a primary branch. While a large portion of its lexicon obviously cannot be derived from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, it remains unclear whether this represents a non-Austronesian substratum from an unknown source language, or the result of internally-driven lexical replacement. He notes that Enggano possesses many aberrant phonological features (such as a small phonological inventory) and a low lexical retention rate, which is more typical of Austronesian languages spoken in eastern Indonesia and Melanesia than rather than those of western Indonesia. Enggano's lexical retention rate (i.e., percentage of lexical items that are cognate with reconstructed Proto-Austronesian forms) is only 21% (46 out of 217 words), while the lexical retention rate for Malay is 59% (132.5 out of 223 words). Some non-Austronesian languages in Southeast Asia, such as Nancowry, Semelai, and Abui also have low lexical retention rates.
Enggano has historically undergone several sound changes which are more far-reaching than changes observed in other Malayo-Polynesian languages of the area. These include for example (PMP = Proto-Malayo-Polynesian):
As for the last shift, Enggano is the only western Austronesian language in which it is found, while the same change occurred independently several times in Oceanic after *k shifted to glottal stop.
An unusual feature is nasal harmony in its identifiable Austronesian vocabulary, where all stop consonants and vowels in a word became nasal after a nasal vowel, and oral after an oral vowel, so that there is no longer a phonemic distinction between them. For example, became, while nasal consonants are no longer found in 'house' or 'five' (< PMP,, cf. Malay ,).
The only major linguistic treatment of Enggano was conducted by Hans Kähler in 1937. He published a grammar (1940), a text collection (1955, 1957, 1958, 1960a, 1960b, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1975) and a dictionary (1987). However, the discussion of phonology is limited to a simple inventory and a short paragraph of basic features. The grammar and dictionary disagree with each other, and the dictionary is not consistentː some words are not legible, and doubts have been raised about the accuracy of the transcriptions. Nothofer (1992) discusses loanwords and also lists phonemes.[5] Yoder (2011) is a thesis on Enggano vowels, with some comments on consonants; it will be followed here.[6]
Note that contemporary Enggano, as discussed in Yoder (2011) and Nothofer (1992), has undergone several changes from Old Enggano, as documented by Kähler, including the fact that final vowels are regularly lost (e.g. e-papa 'cheek' becomes pap) and the split of the phoneme /o/.[7] These have an effect on the phonology.
Yoder and Nothofer report seven oral and seven nasal vowels:[8]
| front | central | back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| close | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | |
| mid | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | |
| open | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | |||
Vowels do not occur word-initially in Enggano apart from what Yoder analyzes as pronounced as //i u// before another vowel; these are then pronounced as semivowels pronounced as /[j w]/. (Nothofer counts these as consonants pronounced as //j, w// restricted to initial position, which avoids the problem of not uncommon pronounced as /[ji]/ being analyzed as pronounced as //ii//, when sequences of the same vowel are otherwise quite rare.) The vowels pronounced as //i ɨ u e o// are all pronounced as semivowels in vowel sequences after medial glottal consonants pronounced as //ʔ h//, as in pronounced as //kõʔĩã/ [kõʔjã]/ (a sp. tree) and pronounced as //bohoe/ [boho̯e]/ 'wild'; otherwise, apart from diphthongs, vowel sequences are disyllabic, as in pronounced as //ʔa-piah/ [ʔapi.ah]/ 'to graze'. pronounced as //i// optionally triggers a glide after a following glottal consonant, as in pronounced as //ki-ʔu/ [kiʔu ~ kiʔju]/ 'to say'. Diphthongs lower to pronounced as /[aɪ, aʊ]/ etc. before a coda stop, as in pronounced as //kipaʔãũp/ [kĩpãʔãʊ̃p]/ 'ten', and undergo metathesis when that stop is glottal, as in pronounced as //kahaiʔ kak/ [kahaʔɪkak]/ 'twenty'. An intrusive vowel pronounced as /[ə̆]/ appears between glottal stop and another consonant (though not semivowels), as in pronounced as //kaʔhɨɘ/ [kaʔ.ə̆.hɨ.ɘ]/ 'female leader'; this does not affect the pattern of stress.
The offglide of diphthongs lowers before glottal consonants, and a glottal stop may intrude when another word follows, as in pronounced as //kahaiʔ mɘh// pronounced as /[kahaʔɪmɘ̃h]/ 'another'.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Trill | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Approximant | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ ? | pronounced as /link/ ? | ||||
Yoder notes that the voiced stops pronounced as /[b~m, d~n]/ are in complementary distribution, depending on whether the word has nasal vowels, but lists them separately. Voiced oral consonants, pronounced as /[b d l r]/, do not occur in words with nasal consonants or vowels. Nasal consonants nasalize all vowels in a word, and there is therefore no contrast between pronounced as /[m n]/ and pronounced as /[b d]/ apart from the contrast between nasal and oral vowels. For example, with the oral stem 'bag', the possessive forms are 'my bag' and 'your bag', but with the nasal stem 'age', the forms are 'my age' and ’ 'your age'.
pronounced as //l// occurs in only a few native words. pronounced as //s ~ x// are infrequent and apparently a single phoneme; they only occur word finally, where they contrast with pronounced as //h//: pronounced as /[x]/ occurs after the non-front vowels pronounced as //ɨ ə u//, pronounced as /[ç]/ after the front vowels pronounced as //i a ã//, and pronounced as /[s]/ after vowel sequences ending in pronounced as //i// (including pronounced as //ii, ui//). The resulting pronounced as /[aç ãç]/ may actually be pronounced as //aix ãĩx//, as most such words are attested with alternation like pronounced as /[kaç ~ kais]/ 'box'. When a suffix is added, so that this consonant is no longer word-final, it becomes pronounced as //h//, as in ’ 'my bag' above.
Nothofer is similar, but does not list the uncommon consonants pronounced as //l// and pronounced as //s ~ x// and counts pronounced as /[j w]/ as consonants rather than allophones of vowels. Kähler's dictionary adds pronounced as //ɲ//, as well as pronounced as //f tʃ dʒ// as marginal phonemes, and claims that pronounced as //t r// are only found in southern villages. However, Yoder states that at the time of his research in 2010 there were no differences among the six villages on Enggano Island, and that initial pronounced as //t r// and final pronounced as //t d// are rare in native words. Medial pronounced as //d// and pronounced as //r// are in free variation in a few words, with older people preferring pronounced as //d// and younger speakers pronounced as //r//.
Stress was once reported to be penultimate but now appears to occur on the final syllable. Alternating syllables preceding it have secondary stress.
The main reference on the syntax and morphology of the Enggano language is the grammar produced by Hans Kähler. There are also some references to syntax and morphology in more recent work, such as Yoder (2011) and Edwards (2015). This section compares some of the findings in Kähler (1940) with those of Yoder (2011), where the language appears to have undergone some changes.
The pronouns listed in Kähler (1940) are as follows:
| Pronoun | Independent | Enclitic | Proclitic I | Proclitic II | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1sg | -'u | ||||
| 1du. | -ka | ka- | ka- | ||
| 1pl. | -ka'a | ka- -a'a | ka- -a'a | ||
| 1pl. | -dai, -nãĩ | ||||
| 2sg | -bu, -mũ | u- | |||
| 2pl | -du, -nũ | u- -a'a | |||
| 3sg | -dia, -nĩã | i- | ka- | ||
| 3pl | -da, -nã | da- | ki-/di- |
The pronouns listed in Yoder (2011) are as follows:
| Pronoun | Independent | Suffix |
|---|---|---|
| 1sg | -’ | |
| we. | ||
| we. | -k | |
| 2sg | -b ~ -m | |
| 2pl | -du ~ -nu | |
| 3sg | -d(e) ~ -n(e) | |
| 3pl | ||
| this | ||
| that | ||
| who | ||
| what |
According to Kähler, nouns in Enggano can be subcategorised into three different classes: humans, proper nouns and common nouns. They take different articles to indicate singular and plural reference:
| Human | e- | ka- | |
| Proper | ∅- | ∅- | |
| Common | e- | e- |
Nouns with an oblique function, e.g. those expressing nominal possessors, subjects of gerunds and any noun that follows the oblique marker, take the article u- in place of e-. Finally, locative nouns take the locative prefix i-.
Nouns in Enggano can be modified by demonstratives and relative clauses. As in other Austronesian languages, these typically follow the nominal head. There are three demonstratives in Enggano:
| Proximal | this | ||
| Medial | that | ||
| Distal | that |
Kähler describes some processes of nominal derivation in Enggano. Specifically, he notes that instrumental nouns can be formed via the addition of a vowel or paV- to a verbal root, e.g. 'to chisel' > 'a chisel' or 'to sew' > 'needle'. Locative nouns are formed with an -a suffix, e.g. 'gather' > 'gathering place'.
Adjectives commonly have prefixes ka-, ka’-, ki-; the first two are attested in derivation, and the last is assumed as it is very common and many such adjectives otherwise appear to be reduplicated, as in 'smooth' (Yoder 2011).
Verbs may have one or two prefixes and sometimes a suffix. According to Kähler, verbs are typically marked with the prefix ki- or bu- (allomorphs b-, mu-, m-, -ub-, -um-) or occur in bare form. Verbs modified with bu- occur in main clauses and take a set of agreement markers (§16). Kähler treats these as shortened pronouns. Verbs in bare form take a different set of agreement markers and occur following the negator keaba'a (§ 15). Kähler calls these 'modified forms'.
| 1sg | ˀu- | ˀu | |
| 1du.incl | ka- | ka- | |
| 1pl.incl | ka- -aˀa | ka- -aˀa | |
| 1pl.excl | ˀu- -ˀai | ˀu- -ˀai | |
| 2sg | ˀo- | u- | |
| 2pl | ˀo- -aˀa | u- -aˀa | |
| 3sg | ka- | i- | |
| 3pl | da-/di-/ki- | da- |
Attested prefixes in Yoder (2011) are ba-, ba’-, ia-, iah-, ka-, ka’-, kah-, ki-, kir-, ko-, pa-, pah-, ’a-. The functions of these are unknown. Ki- and pa- may occur together, as in , , ,, all glossed as 'give'. The three attested verbal suffixes are -i, -ar, -a’ (Yoder 2011).
Future tense is marked through an -a suffix. Past tense/perfective aspect is marked through the auxiliary verb hooː
The counting system is, or at least once was, vigesimal: Kähler recorded 'one man' = 20, 'five man' = 100, 'one our-body' = 400. (The last may be based on two people counting together: each time I count all twenty of my digits, you count one of yours, so that when you have counted all of your digits, the number is 20×20 = 400.) However, most people now use Malay numerals when speaking Enggano, especially for higher numbers. Yoder (2011) recorded the following:[10]
| Numeral | Enggano | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 5 | ||
| 6 | ||
| 7 | ||
| 8 | , | |
| 9 | , | |
| 10 | ||
| 20 |
Numbers above 10 and 20 are formed with 'and': 'ten and two' for 12, 'twenty and ten' for 30. is 'person', so twenty is 'one person'. Multiples of twenty are formed from, as in '70', '100' (also from Malay).