Language Management and Minority Language Maintenance in (Eastern) Indonesia: Strategic Issues

This paper discusses strategic issues in language 'management' (Spolsky 2009; Jennudd and Neustupný 1987) and its complexity in relation to the maintenance of minority languages in contemporary Indonesia. Within Indonesia it is argued that language can be managed and that it should be managed as part of a national language policy framework (among other means). This is especially pertinent in the case of threatened minority languages. The discussion focuses on how categorizing an issue as either a ‘threat’ or an ‘opportunity’ has affected the priorities and the motivations in strategic decisions and implementations of language policies in Indonesia. These labels have symbolic and instrumental values, and both can be potentially exploited to achieve positive outcomes for language survival. However, the complexity and uncertainty of the problems in dealing with minority languages and their speech communities call for a sophisticated interdisciplinary model of language management. The problems will be illustrated using cases from (eastern) Indonesia, showing how Categorization (Cognitive) Theory and Organisational Theory (Rosch 1978; Rosch and Mervis 1975; Dutton & Jackson 1981) are useful for conceptualizing strategic issues by decision makers at different levels – individuals, families, traditional organizations (adat), and government institutions. [Revisions were done during my Humboldt Fellowship stays in Germany in 2012-3.

Nominal aspect in Marori

This paper discusses nonverbal TAM (Tense-Aspect-Mood), focusing on the completive perfective stative aspect marked by -on in Marori (a Papuan language of Southern New Guinea). The nonverbal aspect is grammatical in nature, with its coding local but possibly imposing a nonlocal morphosyntactic constraint on the clausal auxiliary verb. In terms of Nordlinger and Sadler�s (2004) typology, Marori nonverbal aspect marking belongs to two types: the Independent Nominal and the Propositional Nominal Aspect types. It is demonstrated that its broad aspectual meaning, in terms of Reichenbach�s notation, is [E-R, S], which is exactly the same as the Present Perfect in English. While having this similar broad meaning as with English, its morphosyntactic realisation and constraints in the grammar are quite different. An LFG analysis accounting for the distribution of -on is proposed, making use of the inside-out mechanism to account for the non-local constraint of -on, which extends to the clausal TAM

Language management and minority language maintenance in (eastern) Indonesia: strategic issues

This paper discusses strategic issues in language �management� (Spolsky 2009; Jennudd and Neustupn� 1987) and its complexity in relation to the maintenance of minority languages in contemporary Indonesia. Within Indonesia it is argued that language can be managed and that it should be managed as part of a national language policy framework (among other means). This is especially pertinent in the case of threatened minority languages. The discussion focuses on how categorizing an issue as either a �threat� or an �opportunity� has affected the priorities and the motivations in strategic decisions and implementations of language policies in Indonesia. These labels have symbolic and instrumental values, and both can be potentially exploited to achieve positive outcomes for language survival. However, the complexity and uncertainty of the problems in dealing with minority languages and their speech communities call for a sophisticated interdisciplinary model of language management. The problems will be illustrated using cases from (eastern) Indonesia, showing how Categorization (Cognitive) Theory and Organisational Theory (Rosch 1978; Rosch and Mervis 1975; Dutton & Jackson 1981) are useful for conceptualizing strategic issues by decision makers at different levels � individuals, families, traditional organizations (adat), and government institutions

Double and backward control in Indonesian: an LFG analysis

This paper discusses syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of an Indonesian control construction allowing forward/backward double control alternations. While having a tight VP structure, the backward control structure is not monoclausal. An argument-structure based LFG analysis is proposed, accounting for the complex properties of double control structures, including ambiguity between ordinary forward and unusual backward readings

Reflections on the diversity of participation in language documentation

In this paper, I reflect on the diversity of participation in language documentation in the Indonesian context over the past two decades. I show that progress has been made in documentation research on the minority languages, with the concerted efforts of different stakeholders (community/non-community—among the latter, affiliations with universities, non-governmental organizations, the government, and other types of organizations of local speech communities). However, challenging issues remain in relation to the local communities' capacity, motivation, and leadership for helpful and long-term active participation in language documentation.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Developing a Deep Grammar of Indonesian within the ParGram Framework: Theoretical and Implementational Challenges

This paper discusses theoretical and implementational challenges in developing a deep grammar of Indonesian (IndoGram) within the lexical-functional grammar (LFG)-based Parallel Grammar (ParGram) framework, using the Xerox Linguistic Environment (XLE) pa

Challenges and Prospect of Maintaining Rongga: an Ethnographic Report

Changes in the ‘ecology of languages’ after the independence of Indonesia have resulted in changes in the social, cultural and economic settings. These changes in turn have affected the well-being of indigenous languages and cultures right across the Indonesian archipelago. This has particularly been the case in the last thirty years under the harsh campaign of Indonesianisation through the rhetoric of pembangunan (development) in the New Order era of Soeharto’s regime. Smaller indigenous languages such as Rongga, a minority language on the island of Flores, are particularly vulnerable