Southeast Asia in the Ancient Indian Ocean World; Combining Historical Linguistic and Archaeological Approaches

This PhD dissertation examines the role of insular Southeast Asia in the trans-regional networks of maritime trade that shaped the history of Indian Ocean. The work brings together data and approaches from archaeology, historical linguistics and other disciplines, proposing a reconstruction of cultural and linguistic contact between Southeast Asia and its maritime neighbours to the west in order to advance our historical understanding of this part of the world. Numerous biological, commercial and technical items are examined. The study underlines that the analysis of lexical data is one of the strongest tools to detect and analyse contact between two or more speech communities. It demonstrates how Southeast Asian products and concepts were mainly dispersed by speakers of Malay varieties, although other communities played a role as well. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the study offers new perspectives on the role of insular Southeast Asian agents on cultural dynamism and interethnic contact in the pre-modern Indian Ocean World

Urban Dynamics an Impression of Surabaya's Sociolinguistic Setting

This paper examines the sociolinguistic situation in the city of Surabaya, bypresenting an impression of various phenomena unique to Indonesia's secondlargest city. A surprisingly little amount of linguistic research has heretofore beencarried out on this subject, whereas it transpires from this study that enoughintriguing and unique things can be found in this Southeast Asian metropolis,both among its Javanese majority as well as its Madurese and Chinese inhabitants.Due to the lack of earlier relevant publications, this research is largely based onthe results of several fieldwork trips, which included the pleasant activities ofwatching television, interviewing people and making excursions in and aroundSurabaya to experience how languages are used in daily life. Additionally,concepts such as “language mixing”, “slang” and “attitudes towards language”are involved and considered very significant in disentangling the role andfunction of language in an urban setting

Some Introductory Notes on the Development and Characteristics of Sabah Malay

This is a preliminary description of the Malay variety used as a lingua franca in the Malaysian state of Sabah at the northernmost top of Borneo. The paper discusses a number of common linguistic features that distinguish Sabah Malay from other Malay varieties and analyses these features from a historical linguistic perspective. While it is argued that Sabah Malay has a close historical relation with other Malay dialects spoken in Borneo, especially Brunei Malay, the vernacular is also influenced phonologically and lexically by Sabah's indigenous and immigrant speech communities. Words and sentences recorded or elicited during fieldwork in various parts of Sabah illustrate these points

Tracing the Linguistic Crossroads Between Malay and Tamil

Speakers of Malay and Tamil have been in intermittent contact for roughly two millennia, yet extant academic work on the resultant processes of contact, lexical borrowing, and language mixing at the interface of these two speech communities has only exposed the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This paper presents an historical overview of language contact between Malay and Tamil through time and across the Bay of Bengal. It concludes with a call for future studies on the lexicology, dialectology, and use of colloquial language of both Malay and Tamil varieties

Urban dynamics An impression of Surabaya's sociolinguistic setting

This paper examines the sociolinguistic situation in the city of Surabaya, by presenting an impression of various phenomena unique to Indonesia’s second largest city. A surprisingly little amount of linguistic research has heretofore been carried out on this subject, whereas it transpires from this study that enough intriguing and unique things can be found in this Southeast Asian metropolis, both among its Javanese majority as well as its Madurese and Chinese inhabitants. Due to the lack of earlier relevant publications, this research is largely based on the results of several fieldwork trips, which included the pleasant activities of watching television, interviewing people and making excursions in and around Surabaya to experience how languages are used in daily life. Additionally, concepts such as “language mixing”, “slang” and “attitudes towards language” are involved and considered very significant in disentangling the role and function of language in an urban setting

Youth culture and urban pride The sociolinguistics of East Javanese slang

This study offers an overview of the characteristics and social functions ofyouth slang in the Indonesian province of East Java. It examines Boso Walikan and various types of Surabayan slang. Boso Walikan emerged in Malang as a secret language that was deliberately made unintelligible to outsiders. Over the decades, large parts of Malang’s urban population developed proficiency in the language and appropriated it as an identity marker. The situation in nearby Surabaya is different. While lacking a uniform local slang comparable to that of Malang, several communities make an effort to differentiate themselves through specific linguistic habits, which are briefly introduced. These case studies tell us not only how young people shape their speech, they illustrate how the East Javanese dialect deals with linguistic variety, lexical borrowing and innovation.KeywordsSlang, youth language, Boso Walikan, East Java, Malang, Surabaya

Detecting pre-modern lexical influence from South India in Maritime Southeast Asia

Commercial and cultural links between South India and Maritime Southeast Asia have been strong and regular since antiquity. This paper adds a linguistic dimension to our understanding of ancient interethnic contact in the region through an exploration of the hitherto poorly understood lexical contributions from Dravidian languages, such as Tamil and Malayāḷam, to the languages of Maritime Southeast Asia. First, the sound changes are addressed that loanwords undergo upon their adoption into West-Malayo-Polynesian languages. The paper continues by postulating examples of respectively Tamil loans attested in the Old Javanese literature, loanwords from Malayāḷam, and Tamil loans not attested in early literature but borrowed across a wide geographical range, including the Philippines and Madagascar, which would attest to their pre-colonial transmission. The paper then examines the issue of Indo-Aryan loanwords in the languages of Southeast Asia that were transmitted through speakers of Dravidian languages, addressing the sound correspondences we may expect in such a scenario. Cumulatively, it is argued that linguistic influence from South India was considerable, providing a novel line of evidence to reconstruct the past of the Bay of Bengal.Les liens commerciaux et culturels entre l’Inde du Sud et l’Asie du Sud-Est insulaire ont été forts et réguliers depuis l’antiquité. Cet article ajoute une dimension linguistique à notre compréhension des anciennes relations interethniques dans la région, à travers une exploration des contributions lexicales jusqu’ici mal comprises des langues dravidiennes, telles que le tamoul et le malayāḷam, en faveur des langues d’Asie du Sud-Est maritime. Tout d’abord, les changements sonores sont abordés afin de montrer que les emprunts subissent une altération dès leur adoption dans les langues malayo-polynésiennes occidentales. Ensuite, cette contribution fournit des exemples de mots empruntés du tamoul que l’on retrouve dans la littérature en vieux javanais, mais aussi des mots empruntés du malayāḷam et du tamoul qui n’ont pas été retrouvés dans la littérature ancienne, mais puisés dans une vaste étendue géographique, dont les Philippines et Madagascar, ce qui témoigne d’une transmission pré-coloniale. Cette recherche examine ensuite la question des emprunts indo-aryens dans les langues de l’Asie du Sud-Est qui ont été transmis par des locuteurs de langues dravidiennes, en s'intéressant aux correspondances sonores auxquelles on peut s'attendre dans un tel scénario. Au final, l'auteur avance que l’influence linguistique de l’Inde du Sud a été considérable. Cette influence fournit une nouvelle source de données pour reconstituer le passé de la baie du Bengale

Utterance-final particles in Klang Valley Malay

This paper examines a group of small morphemes analysed as “utterance-final particles” in the Malay variety of the Klang Valley, West Malaysia. It provides a preliminary investigation into their usage and diachronic evolution, connecting fieldwork-based findings with extant research on other Malay varieties. There is no univocal definition of utterance-final particles – known by other scholars as “discourse particles” or “pragmatic particles” – nor broad agreement on the term’s conceptual validity. Most previous research on Malay varieties approaches these units as unbound morphemes with no grammatical and little obvious lexical meaning, relegating their functionality to the realm of pragmatics. This study calls attention to data from Klang Valley Malay to demonstrate that particles cannot easily be divided into “grammatical” and “pragmatic” categories. Most utterance-final particles discussed here are etymologically derived from verbs, adverbs, interjections and other word classes and can at best be classified as “part-time” pragmatic particles. They display varying levels of grammaticality and pragmaticality depending on their intonation and syntactic position.</div