Register in Mah Meri

This paper presents the results of a first phonetic investigation of register in Mah Meri, a Southern Aslian language spoken in Peninsular Malaysia, and part of the larger Austroasiatic family spread throughout South and Southeast Asia. Voice register, a complex of laryngeal and supralaryngeal properties, is a common areal feature amongst members of the Austroasiatic family (particularly the Mon-Khmer group) but has never previously been reported to occur in an Aslian language. We consider general spectral appearance, duration and f0 in order to see how well they correlate with perceived differences in register

The language of eating and drinking: a window on Orang Asli meaning-making

We make in this chapter a first probe into the lexical domain of eating and drinking as it is construed in the Aslian languages, a branch of the Austroasiatic language family spoken by a majority of the Orang Asli of the Malay Peninsula. Fundamental to human experience and representation, the domain of ingestion has received increased linguistic attention in recent years. Setting out from our own primary field data from several Aslian languages, collected over the past 25 years , we examine the form, meaning, and history of eating and drinking vocabulary and show that Aslian harbours unusual lexical strategies for ingestion. We place particular focus on ingestion events as expressed in the class of verbs. Moreover, in this seemingly restricted and mundane domain, we unpack semantic principles of wider significance to Aslian meaning-making, which speak directly to cultural distinctions within the Orang Asli sphere. In particular, we uncover a clear distinction in semantic categorisation strategies between foragers and non-foragers

Time and Place in the Prehistory of the Aslian Languages

The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of Aslian languages. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to infer a detailed picture of Aslian language history, addressing a number of outstanding questions, including (1) whether the root ancestor of Aslian was spoken in the Malay Peninsula, or whether the family had already divided before entry, and (2) the dynamics of the movement of Aslian languages across the peninsula, with a particular focus on its spread to the indigenous foragers

Hunter-Gatherer Olfaction Is Special

People struggle to name odors [1-4]. This has been attributed to a diminution of olfaction in trade-off to vision [5-10]. This presumption has been challenged recently by data from the hunter-gatherer Jahai who, unlike English speakers, find odors as easy to name as colors [4]. Is the superior olfactory performance among the Jahai because of their ecology (tropical rainforest), their language family (Aslian), or because of their subsistence (they are hunter-gatherers)? We provide novel evidence from the hunter-gatherer Semaq Beri and the non-hunter-gatherer (swidden-horticulturalist) Semelai that subsistence is the critical factor. Semaq Beri and Semelai speakers-who speak closely related languages and live in the tropical rainforest of the Malay Peninsula-took part in a controlled odor- and color-naming experiment. The swidden-horticulturalist Semelai found odors much more difficult to name than colors, replicating the typical Western finding. But for the hunter-gatherer Semaq Beri odor naming was as easy as color naming, suggesting that hunter-gatherer olfactory cognition is special

Laughing when you shouldn't Being "good" among the Batek of Peninsular Malaysia

Batek people describe their many laughter taboos with utmost seriousness, and in ethical terms of good and bad. Despite this, people often get it wrong—sometimes laughing all the more when the taboos forbid it. Because laughter can be ambiguous and impossible to control, being wrong can be accepted without the need for discussion or reflection. People thus act autonomously while holding deeply shared ethical orientations. Here, ethics can be both culturally predefined and shaped by individuals, as when it comes to laughter people draw on individual and shared concerns in an ad hoc, flexible manner. Laughter's tangled contradictions thus demonstrate that people's understandings of being “good” are mutually implicated with their understandings of what it means to be a person in relation to others

RWAAI: Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage

The Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage (RWAAI) is a digital multimedia resource dedicated to the maintenance of research materials documenting the intangible heritage of the Austroasiatic communities of Mainland Southeast Asia and India. It is the first resource dedicated to a specific language family in this diverse and dynamic region. RWAAI serves to: Consolidate both legacy and newly created materials and expertise into a unique, persistent and accessible multidisciplinary resource documenting the languages and cultures of Austroasiatic-speaking communities. Provide a digital workspace for contributors where they can store, curate and reuse their research collections. Facilitate the presentation of intangible heritage collections for fellow researchers, community members, and the general public by assisting depositors in the digitisation, cataloguing and presentation of their research collections. Bring together an international network of Austroasiatic scholars to generate new initiatives in the evolving field of eScience. Provide capacity building in MSEA to promote the documentation of intangible heritage, and sustainable archiving technology and data management. Purpose: To maintain research materials documenting the intangible heritage of the Austroasiatic communities of Mainland Southeast Asia and India.The Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage (RWAAI) är en digital multimediaresurs med syfte att underhålla forskningsmaterial som dokumenterar det immateriella kulturarvet för austroasiatiska folkgrupper på det sydostasiatiska fastlandet och i Indien. Det är den första resursen som är ägnad åt en särskild språkgrupp i denna varierande och dynamiska region. RWAAI syftar till att: Förena såväl äldre som nyskapat material och expertis till en unik, beständig och tillgänglig interdisciplinär resurs som dokumenterar språk och kultur i de austroasiatisk-talande folkgrupperna. Erbjuda ett digitalt arbetsutrymme där medarbetare kan lagra, organisera och återanvända sina forskningsmaterial. Möjliggöra presentationen av samlingar av immateriellt kulturarv för austroasiatiska talare, forskarkollegor och allmänheten genom att bistå bidragande medarbetare med digitalisering, katalogisering och presentation av deras forskningsmaterial. Sammanföra ett internationellt nätverk av austroasiatiska forskare och på så sätt skapa nya initiativ inom det framväxande eScience-området. Erbjuda kapacitetsuppbyggnad inom MSEA för att främja dokumentationen av immateriellt kulturarv, såväl som hållbar arkiveringsteknik och datahantering. Syfte: Att underhålla forskningsmaterial som dokumenterar det immateriella kulturarvet för austroasiatiska folkgrupper på det sydostasiatiska fastlandet och i Indien

A Grammar of Semelai

A1 - Authored Research Book