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Endangered Languages of Austronesia

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Endangered Languages of Austronesia edited by M A RG A R E T F LO R E Y

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Editorial matter and organization: Margaret Florey 2010 © The chapters: their various authors 2010 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published by Oxford University Press 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 978–0–19–954454–7 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents List of Plates List of Maps, Figures, and Tables Notes on Contributors List of Abbreviations

vii viii x xiii PART I

OVERVIEW

1 Introduction Margaret Florey

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2 Language Documentation in the West Austronesian World and Vanuatu: An Overview Alexander K. Adelaar

PART II

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LINGUISTIC VITALITY: THEORY, ASSESSMENTS, AND CHALLENGES

3 Language Endangerment Scenarios: A Case Study from Northern Central Sulawesi Nikolaus P. Himmelmann

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4 Digging for the Roots of Language Death in Eastern Indonesia: The Cases of Kayeli and Hukumina Charles E. Grimes

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5 Maintaining Vera in Rongga: Struggles over Culture, Tradition, and Language in Modern Manggarai, Flores, Indonesia I Wayan Arka

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6 Why the Philippine Negrito Languages are Endangered Thomas N. Headland

PART III

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CAPACITY BUILDING AND REVITALIZATION INITIATIVES

7 New Directions in Field Linguistics: Training Strategies for Language Documentation in Indonesia Margaret Florey and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann

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Contents

8 Anxious Respect for Linguistic Data: The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) and the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD) Nick Thieberger 9 Preserving and Promoting Indigenous Languages in Vanuatu: Possibilities and Constraints Hannah Vari-Bogiri 10 Waima’a: Challenges for Language Documentation and Maintenance in East Timor John Hajek and John Bowden 11 To Be or Not to Be: Challenges Facing Eastern Penan in Borneo Peter Sercombe PART IV

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172 191

PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES TO REVITALIZATION AND MAINTENANCE

12 Digital Transmission of Language and Culture: Rethinking Pedagogical Models for E-Learning D. Victoria Rau and Meng-Chien Yang

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13 Neverver: A Study of Language Vitality and Community Initiatives Julie Barbour

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14 First Language Education in Multilingual Contexts in the Philippines Catherine Young

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References Index of Subjects Index of Place Names Index of Languages

257 286 295 299

List of Plates 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Last known speaker of Leliali [Chapter 4] Agta man with bow and arrows in the 1960s [Chapter 6] Headland eliciting cooking terms from Agta man [Chapter 6] Agta man making fire by friction [Chapter 6] Fire-making kit [Chapter 6] Agta boy shooting arrows [Chapter 6] Agta teens playing basketball [Chapter 6] Janet Headland recording Agta tale [Chapter 6] Workshop 1 (2006) participants and tutors [Chapter 7] Tutor Wayan Arka working with participants Jermy Balukh and Luh Anik Mayani [Chapter 7] Johanis Soriale and Bonik Amalo learning to capture and transcribe data [Chapter 7] Nikolaus Himmelmann tutoring Mariana Lewier and Dira Hildayani [Chapter 7] Participant Yusuf Sawaki learning Toolbox during Workshop 2 (2007) [Chapter 7] DVDs sent from the field for archiving with PARADISEC [Chapter 8] Tama Bawang [Chapter 11] Umian Paing and family [Chapter 11]

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables Maps 1.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 8.1 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4

The Austronesian language family Major dialects of the Buru language (1989) Immigrant settlements on Buru (1989) Indonesia showing Maluku and central Maluku Villages from which the Dutch relocated populations Probable linguistic picture prior to 1650 The Languages of Flores Island Density of items in the PARADISEC collection, an image from the search tool Vanuatu within the Pacific Vanuatu with specific places marked Santo showing Araki in relation to Tangoa and Luganville town Pentecost Island showing the two largest languages: Raga in the north and Apma (the language to which the Sowa language has shifted) in the south 10.1 Locations of East Timorese ‘national languages’ and dialects 11.1 Borneo Island with areas inhabited by Penan 13.1 Location of Neverver speakers among other indigenous languages in North-Central Malakula

4 77 77 80 81 86 91 153 160 161 165 167 174 192 227

Figures 2.1 4.1 8.1 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 14.1 14.2

Classification of Austronesian languages Speech communities on Buru Island Workflow for file transformations Participants in Yami e-learning Representation of proposed model Map of the course to the proposed model The pedagogical template Components of strong and sustainable MLE programmes Model for the phases of a three language multilingual education programme

15 76 147 212 218 220 221 248 254

Tables 3.1 4.1 6.1 7.1

Tomini-Tolitoli languages and major dialects Examples of lexical differences between Buru, Kayeli, and Hukumina Negrito languages spoken in the Philippines Evaluation of Workshop 1

49 78 112 139

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables 7.2 8.1 9.1 10.1 11.1 11.2

Evaluation of Workshop 2 A sample of Austronesian data in the PARADISEC collection Araki a dying language vs. Raga an active language Inventory of Waima’a consonant phonemes Penan and educational attainment Lexical cultural borrowings in Penan

ix 140 154 164 185 197 201

Notes on Contributors ALEXANDER K. ADELAAR is an affiliated member of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His main research interests are in Austronesian comparative-historical linguistics, especially with regard to Indonesian/Malay and the languages of west and south Borneo, Madagascar, and Taiwan. Among his many publications, Sander is author of Salako or Badameà. Sketch Grammar, Texts and Lexicon of a Kanayatn Language (West Kalimantan) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2005), Proto-Malayic: A Reconstruction of its Phonology and Part of its Morphology and Lexicon (1992) and is co-editor of The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar (2005). I WAYAN ARKA is a Fellow in Linguistics at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University and is lecturer in linguistics at Udayana University, Indonesia. His research interests include lexically based linguistic theories, language typology, language documentation, and Austronesian languages of Indonesia. He worked on the Rongga Documentation Project (2004–06), funded by the Hans Rausing ELDP, SOAS London. JULIE BARBOUR is an Assistant Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Waikato. Julie is working on a major language documentation project with the Neverver speech community of Malakula Island in Vanuatu. She is also assisting the Neverver speech community with the early phases of vernacular literacy development. Her research interests include descriptive and documentary linguistics, linguistic typology, anthropological linguistics, and vernacular literacy. JOHN BOWDEN is a Fellow in Linguistics at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. He has a long-standing interest in the languages of the east Nusantara region and has conducted major studies of Taba in north Maluku and Waima’a in East Timor. MARGARET FLOREY is a Senior Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is an experienced field linguist with endangered languages in Central Maluku, eastern Indonesia. She is actively involved in advocacy and international capacity building activities with members of Indigenous communities, particularly in Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Australia. Her research interests include the minority languages of the Austronesian and Australian language families, language endangerment, language documentation, and ethnobiology. She has published extensively on the endangered languages of the Austronesian region. Margaret serves on the Board of Governors of Terralingua, is a co-convenor of the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity, and chairs the steering committee for the International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. She has also contributed as an international expert at the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Section Experts’ Meetings on the Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage and was a member of the Organizing Committee for the inaugural InField (UC Santa Barbara). CHARLES E. GRIMES was born and raised in Mexico, educated at Cornell University and earned his doctorate in linguistics at the Australian National University in 1992. Chuck has been

Notes on Contributors

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working in central and eastern Indonesia since 1981 and has published a variety of descriptive and comparative studies on languages in Sulawesi, north and central Maluku, and east Nusa Tenggara, particularly around the Timor region. His most in-depth research has focused on the Buru language of central Maluku. He has also done additional work on Malay-based creoles and endangered vernacular languages in the region. Chuck has lectured at a number of universities around Southeast Asia, Australia, and the US, and at SIL schools in the US, Singapore, and Australia. He has been Principal of the Asia SIL school when it was located in Singapore. He is also an Adjunct Fellow in Linguistics at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. JOHN HAJEK is Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. He has worked for many years on the languages of East Timor. One special area of research activity involves Waima’a, a small Austronesian language spoken in the east of the country. THOMAS N. HEADLAND is an international anthropology consultant with SIL International, and adjunct Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington. He also teaches anthropology each summer at the University of North Dakota. His PhD is in ecological anthropology. He and his wife, Janet Headland, have been studying Agta Negrito foragers in the Philippines for most of the last forty-six years. Their most recent field trip to the Agta people was in 2008. His research interests include human ecology in tropical forests, Indigenous human rights, endangered languages, and Austronesian linguistics. He has published ten books and 100 scholarly articles and his research has been described in numerous science magazines and in over 100 newspapers. The major publication of his career (4,000 pages) will be published online in 2008, titled Agta Demographic Database: Chronicle of a Hunter-Gatherer Community in Transition. NIKOLAUS P. HIMMELMANN is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the Westfälische WilhelmsUniversität Münster, Germany. His major research interests include typology, grammaticization theory, prosody and grammar, as well as language documentation and description. He is the author of an in-depth study of the typology and grammaticization of demonstratives and articles (Deiktikon, Artikel, Nominalphrase, 1997) and co-editor of The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar (2005), Secondary Predication and Adverbial Modification (2005) and Essentials of Language Documentation (2006). He has done fieldwork in the Philippines, Sulawesi, and East Timor, and published widely on a number of core issues in Austronesian grammar, including the nature of lexical and syntactic categories and voice. D. VICTORIA RAU is Professor of Intercultural Studies at Wheaton College, USA. Her research interests are in sociolinguistic variation and applied linguistics with a focus on the Austronesian languages of Taiwan. She has published a major book on Yami Texts with Reference Grammar and Dictionary (2006), co-authored with Maa-Neu Dong, and is leading research projects on Yami language documentation and rethinking e-learning pedagogy, collaborating with Dr MengChien Yang. PETER SERCOMBE is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University, UK. He worked in Borneo from 1982 to 2002. His academic interests include cultural maintenance and adaptation, multilingualism, and the sociolinguistics of language use and language change, with particular reference to minority groups. His publications include ‘Ethnolinguistic Change:

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Some Preliminary Observations among the Penan of Brunei’ (Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 152 (2): 1996), ‘Adjacent Cross-Border Iban Communities: A Comparison with Reference to Language’ (Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 155 (4): 1999), ‘Language Maintenance and Shift: A Review of Theoretical and Regional Issues with Special Reference to Borneo’ (in Methodological Issues in Language Maintenance and Shift, M. David (ed.), Berlin: Lang Verlag, 2002), ‘Multilingualism among the Penan of Brunei’ (International Journal of Bilingualism, 7 (2): 2003) and the book Beyond the Green Myth: Hunter-Gatherers of Borneo in the 21st Century (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2007, edited with Bernard Sellato). NICK THIEBERGER is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Nick established the Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre (Port Hedland, Western Australia) in the late 1980s. He moved to the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in 1991 where he developed the Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive. He was an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne where he was also Project Manager with the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) and co-convenor of the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity. He is working with South Efate and Lelepa, two Oceanic languages of Central Vanuatu. He has developed software (Audiamus) for working with digital field recordings. A DVD of media linked to example sentences and texts accompanies his grammar of South Efate (UH Press, 2006). He is very interested in the ways in which we can improve our work practices as linguists using new technologies. HANNAH VARI-BOGIRI is a lecturer in the School of Language, Arts, and Media at the University of the South Pacific. She holds a BA, PGDipArts, and Med (Hons), GCert in Tertiary Teaching, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of the South Pacific. She is a native of Araki. Her first language is Tangoa and she also speaks Raga and is currently teaching in Port Vila. Her research interests include multilingualism, language and culture and sociolinguistic issues. Her publications include ‘A Sociolinguistic Survey of Araki: A Dying Language of Vanuatu’ (in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 26 (1): 2005), and ‘Possessive Classifier bila- in Raga Reflects Value in People’ (in Language Description, History and Development, J. Siegel, J. Lynch, D. Eades (eds.), Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007). She is currently the National Coordinator for the UNESCO project on the Preservation and Revitalization of the local languages in Vanuatu. She is also assisting with the production of a dictionary of Raga, from Pentecost Island. MENG-CHIEN YANG is Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences and Communication at Providence University, Taiwan. He is collaborating with Dr Victoria Rau on research projects on Yami language documentation and rethinking e-learning pedagogy. Meng’s publications include Constructing the M-learning Environment: An Intelligent Adaptive Web Learning Materials Clipper (DigiLife 2006) and Digital Transmission of Language and Culture (2006 with Rau). CATHERINE YOUNG is a Multilingual Education Consultant with SIL International, the Philippines. She has conducted linguistic research among the Palawano, Brooke’s Point in southern Philippines. Catherine has served as an education consultant and trainer with language communities throughout the Philippines in conjunction with both the Philippines Department of Education and NGOs.

List of Abbreviations 3p

third person

AILDI

American Indian Language Development Institute

AILLA

Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America

AN

Austronesian

ANLC

Alaska Native Language Center

CALL

Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics at Batchelor Institute in the Northern Territory

CLL

Community Language Learning approach

DEL

Documenting Endangered Languages program (US National Science Foundation)

DELAMAN

Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network

DoBes

Documentation of Endangered Languages (Volkswagen Foundation, Germany)

ELAN

Eudico Linguistic Annotator

ELAP

Endangered Languages Academic Programme

ELAR

Endangered Languages Archive

ELDP

Endangered Languages Documentation Programme

ELP

Endangered Languages Programme (Intangible Cultural Heritage Section at UNESCO)

EOPAS

Ethnographic Online Presentation and Annotation System

HRELP

Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (United Kingdom)

ICCs

Indigenous Coordination Centres

ICFP

Instituto Católico para Formação de Professores in Baucau

ICH

Intangible Cultural Heritage

ICT

information and communication technology

IGT

interlinear glossed text

INL

Instituto Nacional de Linguística (located within the National University of East Timor)

KWF

Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino/Commission on the Filipino Language LGUs Local Government Units

MALEI

Matigsalug Literacy Education Incorporated

MECYS

Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth, and Sports

MLE

multilingual education

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List of Abbreviations

MOE

Ministry of Education in Taiwan

NCIP

National Commission on Indigenous Peoples

OKMA

The Association Oxlajuuj Keej Maya’ Ajtz’iib’

OLAC

Open Language Archives Community

PARADISEC

Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures

PCER

Presidential Commission on Educational Reform

PI

principal investigator

RNLD

Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity

SIL

Summer Institute of Linguistics

STSI

Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia (Bali’s National Institute of Art)

TEK

Traditional Ecological Knowledge

TGN

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

TLP

Translation and Literacy Programme

VOC

Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (The Dutch East India Trading Company)

PART I Overview


1 Introduction Margaret Florey

1.1 Introduction The emergent field of language endangerment and language revitalization has come to greater international attention through this decade with increased publicity about the mounting threats to the world’s linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity. A growing body of literature has elucidated the critical issues and is raising awareness among indigenous communities and language activists, the fields of linguistics and allied disciplines, government agencies, non-government organizations, and the general public about the urgent need for responses at all levels to support endangered languages and cultures (for example, Abley 2003; Crystal 2000; Dalby 2003; Fishman 2001a; Grenoble and Whaley 1998a, 2006; Harmon 1996; Harrison 2007; Hinton and Hale 2001; Janse and Tol 2003; Maffi 2001; Nettle and Romaine 2000; Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2003; Tsunoda 2005). Our knowledge about the precarious situation facing indigenous languages in specific areas of the world has been expanded through reports, monographs and edited collections such as McConvell and Thieberger (2001) and McConvell (2005) for Australia; Miyaoka et al. (2007) for the Pacific; Rim, RCAP (1996) for Canada; and Brenzinger (1998) for Africa. However, the Austronesian language family remains seriously under-researched and under-represented in the literature on language shift and revitalization. This volume aims to redress that gap by exploring responses to the challenges facing Austronesian language communities today.

1.2 The Scope of this Book Both geographically and in terms of number of languages, the Austronesian language family is among the largest in the world. Some 1268 languages (or approximately 20 per cent of the world’s linguistic resources) are spoken by more than 270 million people in a region that extends 15,000 kilometres from Madagascar in the west to Rapanui (Easter Island) in the east (Adelaar 2005a; Gordon 2005). Approximately 500 of those languages are spoken in the island states of the Oceanic branch of Malayo-Polynesian.

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Map 1.1 The Austronesian language family1

However, a mere count of languages in this linguistically diverse language family belies the level of endangerment and the urgent need for documentation and revitalization (see Florey 2005a, and Adelaar in this volume). This book canvasses a range of language endangerment scenarios encountered across Austronesia. It does not aim to be representative of the languages of the Austronesian region, or of the countries in which those languages are spoken. Rather, it seeks to exemplify the variety of responses by linguists working in alliance with members of Austronesian language communities to what is increasingly being recognized as an endangerment crisis, and thus focuses selectively on areas in which much of the contemporary language documentation work is taking place. The chapters in this book were all invited from researchers who are actively involved in language documentation and who are cooperating in the development of innovative language revitalization and capacity building strategies. The authors draw on their work in Vanuatu and in the western Austronesian nations of Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and East Timor. Contributors were asked to focus on their own research and training activities with Austronesian language communities in relation to the themes of documentation and archiving, capacity building (the training of indigenous linguists and language workers), revitalization strategies, materials and/or software development, pedagogical approaches (including e-learning, literacy and orthography development), and the challenges which language activists, communities, and linguists face in revitalizing Austronesian languages. Some 200 Austronesian languages are the subject of discussion in Chapters 3–14, and an

1 Map redrawn and reproduced with permission from Darrell Tryon (ed.) 1995. Comparative Austronesian Dictionary: An Introduction to Austronesian Studies (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter).

Introduction

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additional 200 are covered in Adelaar’s overview of language documentation projects in Chapter 2.

1.3 Key Issues The chapters are organized thematically into four sections, which are described in the following section. However, a number of key issues recur across those sections. We are currently witnessing the rapid development of methods and technologies in the young field of language documentation, and several of the chapters provide definitions and detailed discussions of the documentation process, data management, new software, and archiving and the preparation of metadata (see in particular Chapters 2, 5, 8, and 10). Local, national and international policy development vis-à-vis indigenous languages are considered in reference to Vanuatu (Chapters 9 and 13), East Timor (Chapter 10), the Philippines (Chapter 14), and Indonesia (Chapter 5), and illustrate the (potential) impact of such policies on language revitalization. As languages with oral traditions are documented for the first time, the development of orthographies and the preparation of literacy materials has arisen as a critical issue for Neverver (Chapter 13), Araki and Raga in Vanuatu (Chapter 9), Waima’a in East Timor (Chapter 10), Rongga in Indonesia (Chapter 5), Yami in Taiwan (Chapter 12), Kalinga in the Philippines (Chapter 14), and Eastern Penan in Borneo (Chapter 11). The ethics and responsibilities of fieldwork also emerge as a theme as authors negotiate the ground between their goal of working within a participatory framework, the wide-ranging needs of the communities, and the various limitations posed and possibilities permitted by diverse national policies (see Chapters 7, 11, 13, and 14). Several authors also discuss situations in which a language community was initially not ready to engage with language revitalization issues. In these cases, top-down strategies were first employed to build capacity and raise community awareness of language endangerment and interest in language revitalization. Rau and Yang, for example, outline a status building strategy for Yami in Chapter 12, and Arka (Chapter 5) and VariBogiri (Chapter 9) note that the documentation phase triggered grassroots interest and that revitalization activities later followed for Rongga and Araki respectively.

1.4 Themes and Chapters The chapters in this volume are organized thematically into four parts. 1.4.1 Overview Chapter 2 continues the introduction to this volume and provides an overview of the Austronesian language family for readers who may be less familiar with that part of the world. Adelaar begins by considering the history and classification of Austronesian languages, noting the wide range of population sizes across speech communities.

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Focusing primarily on the regions covered by the chapters in this book (the western Austronesian world and Vanuatu), Adelaar provides a country-by-country summary of the documentary and descriptive research that has taken place through the past twenty years. He highlights the role of the four major international organizations which are currently providing the greatest support for the documentation of endangered Austronesian languages—the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP), the Endangered Languages Programme (DoBes) of the Volkswagen Foundation, UNESCO’s Endangered Language Programme (ELP) within its Intangible Cultural Heritage Section, and the US National Science Foundation’s Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) program. Particular attention is given to the important role that SIL members have played in documenting and describing almost 300 western Austronesian languages. Adelaar’s chapter contributes an extensive bibliography of published and web-based resources, and also takes into account Austronesian languages that are spoken in diaspora countries, including Surinam, the Netherlands, Comoros, and Sri Lanka. 1.4.2 Linguistic vitality and theoretical issues in language endangerment The four chapters in Part II explore case studies which offer assessments of linguistic vitality in Indonesia and the Philippines and support the development of a theory of language endangerment. This section deepens our understanding of the impact of changes to the linguistic ecosystem (Mühlhäusler 1996) and, in particular, of the economic factors and marginalization of indigenous peoples that are intrinsic to language shift situations. In Chapter 3, Himmelmann proposes that language endangerment results from an endangerment scenario, held to be a specific and complex constellation of factors that co-occur to impact on language use and linguistic vitality in a given community. Himmelmann draws a distinction between the observable symptoms of language shift and their causes, noting that it is the former that have often received the greater attention in the literature. Within his framework, language endangerment is defined as a rapid decline in the number and quality of domains in which a given language is used. Case studies of language endangerment scenarios from the eleven TominiTolitoli languages of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia are used to test this approach, and further evidence is drawn from Grimes’ analysis of language shift in two languages on Buru Island in Chapter 4. Himmelmann argues that our understanding of the causes of language shift will best be advanced by a typology of endangerment scenarios. Grimes suggests that we need a long view of the past and perhaps a long view of the future to understand the dynamics underlying language shift or obsolescence that have been set in place over centuries. Grimes witnessed the Kayeli and Hukumina languages of Buru Island in eastern Indonesia moving towards silence in the last two decades of the twentieth century. In Chapter 4, he draws on the history of Buru Island and the wider region to provide a long view for these two cases, for which very few

Introduction

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documentary materials exist. Kayeli exemplifies a situation in which a language group remained in its homeland but was inundated over several hundred years by outsiders, while Hukumina illustrates the fate of a powerless community removed from its place of origin. Grimes later broadens his study to examine similar language scenarios from Ambon and Seram Islands. This chapter further demonstrates Himmelmann’s postulate that a cluster of factors commonly combines to endanger minority languages. Chapter 5 extends the documentation of endangered languages into the sphere of cultural heritage. Arka discusses the vulnerability of Vera, a ritual dance and music tradition that transmits and perpetuates Rongga identity, history, and cultural knowledge. Threats to Vera have arisen through conversion to Catholicism, modern education, and shifts of interest and the loss of Rongga language skills among young people in Flores, Indonesia. Arka places the safeguarding of Vera within the framework of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage, and argues that documentation and research are an integral part of maintenance and revitalization. The second half of this chapter introduces both ethical and technical aspects of the modern field of language documentation. Arka details the requirements of this new field vis-à-vis archiving, including the preparation of the accompanying metadata which ensures ongoing access to the data by a wide audience, including the speaker community, beyond the life of a specific project. The breadth of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) that is lost when cultural practices undergo radical change is carefully illustrated in Chapter 6, in which Headland discusses Casiguran Agta ethnobiology. Over a forty-year period of living and working in the Philippines with the Agta, Headland documented the language and the indigenous knowledge of its speakers. He draws in particular on the semantic domains of hunting and fire-making to demonstrate the impact of rapid lifestyle change on the language. Headland argues that this case adds strength to Grenoble and Whaley’s (1998b: 29) contention that the languages of hunter-gatherer populations are under more extreme pressure than groups with other kinds of socioeconomic organization. 1.4.3 Capacity building and revitalization strategies The chapters in Part III attend to the need for capacity building strategies to facilitate community directed language documentation and revitalization. International attention has been given to this issue in, for example, the papers in Austin (2003, 2004) and David et al. (2007). In this book, five complementary responses from Vanuatu, East Timor, Indonesia, and Borneo highlight the development of a more participatory linguistics, in which alliances are being built between linguists and language activists working towards the shared goal of revitalizing minority languages and cultures (Florey 2008; Penfield et al. 2008). In Chapter 7, Florey and Himmelmann discuss the planning and development of two training workshops in language documentation and revitalization skills

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for Indonesian linguists and language activists. The authors argue that in-country programs are the best means of ensuring widespread and high quality documentation in the linguistically diverse and resource-poor Asian countries in which Austronesian languages are spoken. Florey and Himmelmann evaluate the outcomes of the two language documentation workshops, and question the sustainability of capacity building activities which are embedded within individual linguistic field research projects. The authors argue that it is critical to develop training programs which build towards autonomy and indigenizing the academy (Mihesuah and Wilson 2004), and suggest that a language centre model might best meet this goal. Chapter 8 considers the question of sustainability from the perspective of data management. Thieberger contends that new technologies in language documentation permit field linguists to better support their analyses, to provide citable archival forms of data, and to repatriate materials more easily to the host community. However, these benefits derive from and require disciplined workflow and data management both in the field and in later phases of processing data. Thieberger maps methods for best practice in documentation, and in the preparation of metadata and the archiving of data (audio and video recordings, notes, photos, etc.) to ensure their durability and accessibility into the future for a wide range of stakeholders. In this case too, training in the use of new technologies and archiving practices is seen as a crucial step in ensuring their uptake. Thieberger draws on the methods he employed during the documentation of South Efate, a language of central Vanuatu, and in his experience in developing and operating the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). This searchable linguistic archive already contains a significant collection of Austronesian data, including both legacy materials and the output of recent documentation projects. The focus on Vanuatu continues in Chapter 9, in which Vari-Bogiri discusses a range of activities at the grassroots and national level that will potentially impact on the future linguistic vitality of two languages, Araki and Raga. While the more isolated Raga is still actively spoken, Araki has become seriously threatened by the introduction of non-indigenous religious practices and the associated shift to Tangoa. However, Vari-Bogiri points to a number of positive actions which have grown out of a language awareness workshop in Araki, including documentation of traditional stories and practices, adult literacy classes and the production of Araki literacy materials, and the introduction of Araki in the kindergarten. Vari-Bogiri also notes that the government of Vanuatu is now recognizing the threat to indigenous languages posed by the official languages English, French and Bislama. Initiatives to support languages include Constitutional recognition of the value of diversity, development of a Vernacular Education Policy, and the establishment of the Vanuatu National Language Council. Recent activities initiated by the government, such as the declaration of Kastom Ekonomi years in 2007 and 2008, have also begun to raise the status of traditional practices and are likely to further strengthen the aspects of Raga knowledge of and interaction with the environment which are highlighted by the author.

Introduction

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Chapter 10 tackles the complex social and linguistic situation in the youngest Austronesian nation, East Timor. Hajek and Bowden review the several key phases in the history of the linguistic situation in East Timor and demonstrate that, ironically, the status of its approximately sixteen indigenous languages is more threatened since independence than was the case through the centuries of Portuguese colonization and Indonesian occupation. The official roles played by Portuguese, Tetum, Indonesian, and English have exacerbated the struggle for survival by the indigenous languages, as demonstrated by the case of Waima’a which Hajek, Bowden, and their research partners have been documenting for the last several years. This chapter highlights the challenges of organizing and managing a documentation project in the circumstances of the development of East Timor, and also addresses some of the difficulties of implementing a capacity building program. Training was an important goal of the project in order to assist in developing local academic skills in documentation and revitalization. Although the research team was not able to realize this goal at the national level, the authors report on successes at the local level to support Waima’a language maintenance in to the future. The range of outcomes includes training in the use of software and technologies, the compilation of an electronic archive for Waima’a, the collaborative development of an orthography, and the production of sets of teaching materials. In the final chapter in this section, the background to a language maintenance project among the Eastern Penan in Sarawak and Brunei is first set by examination of the history of these people and the issues currently posing risks to the vitality of their language. Sercombe’s chapter returns to the theme raised by Headland in Chapter 6 of the particular struggles faced by hunter-gatherer populations. Like the Casiguran Agta in the Philippines, the Penan population level is stable, yet the shift from nomadism to permanent settlement is seeing a concomitant loss of traditional cultural practices and threats to the Penan’s indigenous knowledge. Sercombe has begun working with the community to compile a dictionary of Penan. In keeping with the goals of modern language documentation, this project aims to contribute to language revitalization through providing training, raising the status of Penan, and supporting a first language literacy program in the primary school. 1.4.4 Pedagogical approaches Pedagogical approaches to language revitalization and maintenance are explored in depth in Part IV with chapters focused on e-learning, vernacular literacy programs, and bilingual and first language education. In Chapter 12, Rau and Yang discuss an e-learning program for the Yami language of Taiwan. The authors propose that this could be a suitable model for building e-learning programs for other endangered indigenous languages. Yami has been the focus of a long-term documentation project by Rau, who advocates for the importance of ongoing community consultation and collaboration. This chapter outlines a later phase in the project that saw an

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Margaret Florey

interdisciplinary project team built specifically to target Yami language revitalization strategies. The authors argue that the teaching of Yami to a non-indigenous student body in a university setting permitted testing of their method and was a valuable status building strategy which increases the visibility of the endangered language and culture nationally and internationally. This project also used a workshop approach to listen to community strategies for revitalization, further raise language awareness, enhance community involvement, and address orthography issues. Chapter 13 exemplifies a project in which a linguist was asked to support community efforts to document and revitalize a language. Barbour reports on several years of collaborating with community members on the Neverver project in Vanuatu. UNESCO’s (2003) assessment model is used to demonstrate the relative vitality of Neverver in the two villages in which it is spoken. In accord with Vari-Bogiri’s comparison of Araki and Raga in Chapter 9, Barbour’s analysis underlines the association between relative isolation of a setting and the strength of linguistic vitality. The Neverver project built on earlier work by a community language activist and required the linguist to mediate sensitively between the work done by the elderly speaker and the community. Barbour considers the role, ethics and responsibilities of the linguist at some length in this chapter, and demonstrates how broad this role has become in recent years. Project activities included recording oral narratives, work towards a Neverver dictionary, documenting ethnobotanical knowledge, revising and continuing the development of a Neverver hymn book, and producing resource materials in Neverver for a vernacular kindergarten literacy program. Future community goals include collaborative Bible translation, which Barbour suggests may raise the status of Neverver alongside Bislama and English and extend its use into the domain of religion. The issue of first language education is extended in Chapter 14, in which Young promotes the value of mother tongue literacy to support language maintenance in the Philippines and, critically, to enhance educational outcomes for children in minority language communities. The author draws on case studies from Obo Manobo and Tagakaulo Kalagan in Mindanao and Lubuagan Kalinga in Luzon to outline the stages which need to be undertaken in program development, and highlights the importance of community participation and management. These cases also demonstrate the value of building partnerships which bridge across all levels, from language communities to local organizations and government bodies, and which draw on the cooperation of linguists, educators, and international advocates.

1.5 Conclusion There can be no doubt that, across the predominantly Austronesian speaking countries, too little is known about too many of the languages, and a great amount of documentation work remains to be done. Yet the chapters in this volume serve to demonstrate that Austronesian languages are now the focus of a significant number of projects which are creating and employing novel strategies in both documenting

Introduction

11

and revitalizing endangered languages. Participatory practice and capacity building resonate as core components in most modern projects. Workshop models developed for Austronesian communities are being taken up internationally. Linguists are learning and sharing new skills in training, materials production, and the development of educational programs, and are increasingly playing advocacy roles in the preparation of national and international policy. We hope that the cases and strategies presented here will continue to strengthen Austronesian languages, and that they may also serve as useful examples for language communities in other parts of the world.

2 Language Documentation in the West Austronesian World and Vanuatu: An Overview Alexander K. Adelaar

2.1 Introduction In this chapter I try to give an indication of the wide range of linguistic projects that have been undertaken through the past twenty years. As noted in the introduction to this volume, the coverage in this book leans primarily towards the western Austronesian region (Southeast Asia and Madagascar), and it also takes in the languages in Vanuatu because that country is currently the focus of quite intense documentation. My overview does not purport to be either complete or uniform in all the areas it tries to cover, but highlights the attention which is now being paid to linguistic documentation of west Austronesian and Vanuatuan languages. It is difficult to provide a comprehensive overview because the information on research either currently in progress or recently completed is not registered systematically. While there are now many web pages that give a wealth of information, they are not always complete and updated. A good number of the contemporary projects reported here are being undertaken within the framework of documentary linguistics outlined by Himmelmann (1998), Gippert et al. (2006), and Woodbury (2003). Within that framework, documentation involves a maximally large corpus of speech samples reflecting as much variation The present chapter could never have been written without the committed support of many friends and colleagues. I would like to thank the following people for their help: Sascha Aikhenvald, Karl Anderbeck, Umberto Ansaldo, I Wayan Arka, Gill Buck, Juergen Burkhardt, Adrian Clynes, Christine Dreiheller, Robert Early, Margaret Florey, Noel Gueunier, John Hajek, Nelleke and Jim Johansson, Multamia Lauder, Hsiu-chuan Liao, Ritsuko Kikusawa, David Mead, Ricardo Nolasco, Stephen Quakenbush, Phil Quick, Laurie Reid, Peter Slomanson, Karla and Jim Smith, Jim Stahl, Uri Tadmor, Grace Tan, René Van den Berg, Lalani Woods and Elizabeth Zeitoun. Special thanks to Nelleke Johansson who prepared a nine-page report on SIL activities in Sabah for the purpose of this chapter. Anthony Jukes made editorial comments on an earlier draft. The undoubtedly many errors and omissions in this account are my sole responsibility.

Overview of Language Documentation Projects

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as possible and being constantly added to; its data are transparent (i.e. sufficiently annotated to be usable by a wider audience), and it should be available to as many users as possible; it should be preservable (with information about each data item), capable of being transferred to other archiving systems, and obtained and used ethically, that is, it should meet the wishes of those who provided the information (Woodbury 2003:46–8). In addition to these documentation projects, I also aim to give an overview of the major descriptive projects that are being carried out beyond the purely documentary framework: that is to say, grammars and dictionaries that have been published in the last twenty or so years or that are still in manuscript form. Where information is readily available, I also mention the existence of text collections and literacy materials. Occasionally, this information is already provided in existing bibliographies or extensive reference lists, in which case I refer instead to those sources. I present the data according to the country to which they traditionally belong, treating these countries in a west to east order, from Madagascar to Vanuatu. I treat data from the Austronesian diaspora separately at the end of the chapter. I occasionally give information about language vitality, particularly for areas that have not been covered well in other sources and areas with which I am more familiar through my own research. While doing so I tend to concentrate on structural conditions applying to language vitality rather than on numbers of languages that are disappearing or becoming extinct. Some regions that are not primarily Austronesian are left uncovered in this chapter. They include Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Hainan in the People’s Republic of China. Other regions remain ‘underexposed’, such as the Philippines, and West Papua in Indonesia. These are all areas I am not directly familiar with, and for which information about language documentation is not easily obtained. In Section 2.2, I give an overview of the Austronesian language family, including very basic information about spread, genetic affiliations, history, typology of Austronesian languages as well the number of Austronesian languages and the size of some of its speech communities. In Section 2.3, I list the organizations that are preoccupied with language documentation and revitalization. In the remaining sections, I treat language documentation in Madagascar (Section 2.4), Malaysia (Section 2.5), Indonesia (Section 2.6), Brunei (Section 2.7), Taiwan (Section 2.8), the Philippines (Section 2.9), East Timor (Section 2.10), and Vanuatu (Section 2.11). In a final section I discuss language documentation in the diaspora countries, where Austronesian speech communities have ended up in recent times: Surinam, the Netherlands, Comoros, and Sri Lanka (Section 2.12).

2.2 The Austronesian Language Family: Spread, History, Classification, and Other Information Austronesian languages occupy an area larger than any other language family except Indo-European. They are spoken in the Pacific from Hawai’i in the northeast, Taiwan

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Alexander K. Adelaar

in the northwest, Easter Island in the southeast, New Zealand in the southwest, and Wallis Island in the south. In Southeast Asia they are spoken in the Philippines and in most parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, and East Timor. Minorities speaking Austronesian languages are also found in some parts of Vietnam, in southwest Thailand, and along the coasts of southwest Burma and west Thailand. Much further to the west, speakers of Austronesian languages are found in Madagascar, along the east African coast. Finally, as a result of migrations in historical times, small Austronesian-speaking communities ended up in Australia (with Malay speakers in the Cocos Keeling Islands, Christmas Island, and the northwest Australian town of Broome), southwest China (a tiny group of Utsat speakers on Hainan Island), Cambodia (Malay and Cham speaking communities), Sri Lanka (Malay-speaking communities in Kandy, Colombo, and along the southwest and southeast coast), Surinam ( Javanese speakers), the Comoros (two Malagasy dialects spoken on the island of Mayotte), and the Netherlands (with Moluccan Malay and Javanese speaking communities as well as speakers of Moluccan languages, some of which are already extinct in eastern Indonesia). A notable exception in the Southeast Asian and Pacific interface is New Guinea, where the languages are largely non-Austronesian (or ‘Papuan’), although New Guinea has many Austronesian enclaves along its coast. Other exceptions are some of the islands in the vicinity of New Guinea, where non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) languages have survived in what have become predominantly Austronesian-speaking areas. These islands include Halmahera and Timor to the west of New Guinea, and New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, and the Solomon Islands to its east. The languages of the Australian continent also have different, non-Austronesian language affiliations. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first Austronesian-speaking community lived some 8,000 years ago in coastal China in an area facing Taiwan. From there, members of the community must have crossed the sea to Taiwan, where today the twenty-odd Austronesian languages are genetically more diverse than anywhere else in the Austronesian world. This genetic diversity indicates that the Austronesian stock language (‘Proto Austronesian’) first began to diverge and branch off into various daughter languages in Taiwan some 6,000 years ago. It split into possibly ten different basic (or ‘first-order’) branches. Nine of these are represented in Taiwan only and engendered the so-called ‘Formosan languages’. A tenth branch called ‘MalayoPolynesian’ includes all Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan, together more than 1,200 in number. Evidence indicates that members of the Malayo-Polynesian branch left Taiwan and crossed over to the Philippines some 4,500 years ago (2500 BC), and from there onwards spread further into Indonesia and Timor, and, later on, into the Pacific (ca. 1400 BC), mainland Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Malayo-Polynesian speakers settled in places like central Vietnam some 2,300 years ago (Bellwood 1997:120, quoting Robert Blust). The permanent human settlement of Madagascar is probably only fifteen centuries old (or less), and that of New Zealand some eight centuries. Most of the settlement of the Malay peninsula by Austronesians happened less than a thousand years ago, although Malays may have been living in


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Proto Austronesian

Formosan

Malayo-Polynesian

Western M-P

Central Eastern M-P

Central M-P

Eastern M-P

South Halmahera West-New-Guinea

Oceanic

Figure 2.1 Classification of Austronesian languages according to R. A. Blust (1999)

Kelantan (northeast Malaysia) and Pattani (in neighbouring south Thailand) for a much longer time. The Malayo-Polynesian languages, which, it is remembered, include all Austronesian languages except the Formosan languages of Taiwan, are difficult to classify. Robert Blust distinguishes a West Malayo-Polynesian and Central-East MalayoPolynesian division, with the latter splitting up further into Central Malayo-Polynesian and East Malayo-Polynesian (see Figure 2.1). East Malayo-Polynesian in turn has two subgroups, one being the South Halmahera—West New Guinea subgroup, and the other Oceanic. While East MalayoPolynesian and its lower divisions are well attested, the same cannot be said of the other subgroups. The Central-East Malayo-Polynesian and Central Malayo-Polynesian subgroups are defined on the basis of linguistic features that are also found in languages outside these subgroups. These features are therefore not critical for the definition of these subgroups (Adelaar 2005a:24–5). West Malayo-Polynesian languages seem to have some features in common and are almost all spoken in the western part of the Austronesian world in a contiguous area covering all of the Philippines, western Indonesia, and areas further to the west. However, as a subgroup they are basically a ‘rest’ category: they are defined in a negative way, namely as the Malayo-Polynesian languages that are not Central-East Malayo-Polynesian. This in itself is not enough to qualify them as a distinct genetic subgroup, and more research is needed to determine beyond reasonable doubt whether or not they qualify as such (cf. Blust 1999:68). In terms of numbers of speakers, Austronesian speech communities come in all sizes. The 75 million speakers of Javanese form the largest Austronesian speech community and the eleventh largest language community in the world. Malay has considerably fewer first language speakers, and it is moreover spoken in a variety of sometimes very divergent dialects. However, as a national language (in the form of

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Indonesian or ‘Bahasa Indonesia’ in Indonesia, or official Malay in Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore), it is used as a second language by well over one hundred million speakers (although exact figures are hard to obtain). Other Austronesian languages with speech communities of more than one million are Cebuano (20 million), Tagalog (14.5), Ilokano (8), Hiligaynon (7), Bikol (5), Waray-waray (almost 2.5), Pampangan (1.9), Maguindanao (1), and Pangasinan (1) in the Philippines; Sundanese (27), Madurese (13.7), Minangkabau (6.5), Balinese (3.9), Batak varieties (together 7), Buginese (3.5), Acehnese (3), Sasak (2.1), and Makassarese (1.6) in Indonesia (Gordon 2005), and Malagasy (14) in Madagascar (Rubino and Rasoloson 2005:456). Indonesia has reportedly more than 18 million speakers of various Malay varieties, and 22.8 million speakers of Indonesian; Malaysia has 7.18 million Malay speakers as a mother tongue. These figures for language speakers are from Ethnologue (Gordon 2005). However, it has to be borne in mind that many of the figures in this source are approximate, and some are in need of revision. 1 Apart from Malay, Austronesian languages which have become a national language are Filipino (based on Tagalog) in the Philippines, and Tetum in East Timor, as well as Fijian in Fiji, and a few other Oceanic languages.

2.3 Organizations Involved in the Documentation and Revitalization of Austronesian Languages There are four major international organizations that are directly concerned with the documentation of endangered languages, to wit the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP) in the United Kingdom, the Endangered Languages Programme (DoBes) of the Volkswagen Foundation in Germany, the Endangered Language Programme (ELP) of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Section at UNESCO, and the Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) program of the National Science Foundation in the United States of America. They are all influential in supporting the growth of the modern field of language documentation internationally, and each of them has sponsored projects in the Austronesian areas under investigation in this volume. The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project supports research, training, and archiving for endangered languages throughout the world (http://www.hrelp.org) and is administered by the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. It has three programmes. The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides research grants, the Academic Programme (ELAP) 1 For instance, the figures for Lampung (1.5) and Rejang (1) speakers are almost certainly inflated. They possibly reflect the number of ethnic Lampung and Rejang people instead. Also the large number of Betawi speakers in Jakarta (2.7) may be due to a confusion of original Betawi speakers (which are very small in number these days) and speakers of Jakarta Indonesian, which adopted many features from Betawi Malay. Ethnologue (Gordon 2005) is also inclusive in its policy towards language distinctions. Numbers of languages listed for certain areas are sometimes inflated due to a lack of information regarding the status (as a dialect or a language in its own right) of a speech form vis-à-vis other speech forms in those areas.


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runs postgraduate courses in Field Linguistics and Language Documentation and Description, and the Archive Programme (ELAR) archives and disseminates language documentations. The Volkswagen Foundation is a sponsor of academic research in Germany. In 2000 it set up the DoBes 2 Programme for the documentation of endangered languages, with the aim of documenting languages that are in immediate peril of disappearance (http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES). DoBes specifies that the resulting data should be useful for the academic community as well as for the respective speech communities and should be presented in such a way that they can be understood by the former and can be used by the latter. In 2006, the DoBes Programme was funding some thirty projects. Those dealing with Austronesian languages were the Waima’a project (East Timor), the Totoli project (North Sulawesi, Indonesia) and the Sri Lanka Malay Project, as well as projects regarding the Marquesan, Saliba, Teop, and Vurës/Vera’a languages in the Pacific. The Intangible Cultural Heritage Section of UNESCO has had an Endangered Language Programme 3 (ELP) since 2001. It contributes to the promotion of the linguistic diversity in the world by raising awareness on language endangerment, promoting writing systems and the documentation of non-written languages, ensuring the participation of speaker communities in revitalizing their own languages, stimulating good practices in language preservation, and mobilizing international cooperation. Interest in language endangerment at UNESCO began after the launch of the ‘Red Book of Languages in Danger of Disappearing’, a database with information about the state of language endangerment in different parts of the world (which can be accessed via the website www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ichel.html). The Red Book was put together at the initiative of Stephen A. Wurm in 1993. In 1995, UNESCO established an International Clearing House for Endangered Languages at Tokyo University, and a year later it published the first edition of the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing (Wurm 1996, 2nd edn 2001). UNESCO also has an affiliated organization in Japan—the Asia-Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO. 4 The Documenting Endangered Languages program (DEL) is a funding partnership between the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian Institution in the United States of America. It supports ‘fieldwork and other activities relevant to recording, documenting, and archiving endangered languages, including the preparation of lexicons, grammars, text samples, and databases. As such it also aims to exploit advances in information technology’. 5 There are of course other organizations supporting the documentation and preservation of languages, but these have as a rule a wider scope of aims and activities. 2

DoBes stands for Dokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen or ‘Documentation of Endangered Languages’. Also known as ‘Safeguarding of Endangered Language Programme’. See http://www.unesco.org/ culture/heritage/intangible/endangeredlanguages/index.shtml. 4 See http://www.accu.or.jp/en/index.shtml. 5 See http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=12816. 3

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Research councils and academic funding institutions have always provided funds for linguistic research and are now beginning to support language documentation, which is increasingly becoming a linguistic sub-discipline in its own right. Any stocktaking of initiatives to preserve the linguistic wealth in the Austronesianspeaking world should certainly include an overview of the activities of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, or SIL. The original goal of this organization was not language preservation, but bible translation. It started the documentation and description of the languages in areas where it intended to deploy missionary activities. It acted on the assumption that prospective converts would accept Christianity more readily if its message were communicated through their own language, and this required a bible translation into the languages in question. That said, nowadays SIL is evolving more in the direction of a non-profit NGO organization preoccupied with the preservation of minority languages in general, and with the wellbeing of their speakers in a broader sense. It is also by far the largest single organization involved in the study and preservation of languages (cf. Quakenbush 2007). Although matters like these are difficult to quantify, the language materials it produces make up for possibly one third of all linguistic descriptive data that are being collected globally. Their activities are not limited to language description but also include the development of orthographies and literacy programs as well as education in a broader sense, including livelihood skills. SIL has been active in Southeast Asia since 1953, where it currently has four regional branches: SIL Mainland Southeast Asia Group, SIL Indonesia Branch, SIL Malaysia Branch, and SIL Philippines Branch. 6 Its members have researched over 140 languages in Indonesia, 20 languages in Malaysia, and 105 languages in the Philippines. The Pusat Bahasa (the National Language Centre in Jakarta, Indonesia, sponsored by the Indonesian government) has been publishing language descriptions, dictionaries, sociolinguistic surveys, and other studies concerning regional languages for more than 30 years. It has done so in spite of its official policy, which used to be biased towards languages of more than one million speakers. Although sometimes of a preliminary nature and mixed quality, these Pusat Bahasa studies are an important contribution to the documentation of Indonesian languages. The Pusat Bahasa has also launched and supported the ‘Research on Cognates and Mapping of Regional Languages in Indonesia’ Project (Penelitian Kekerabatan dan Pemetaan Bahasa di Indonesia). This project started in 1992 and includes the collection of words and basic sentences for a large number of regional languages as well as social and geographical data concerning informants and the villages where each language is spoken, and audio recordings of origin myths (with transliteration) of these villages (Lauder 2006:40–4). 6 See SIL International in ASEAN. Partners in Language Development, a brochure issued by SIL International—Asia Area Office (www.sil.org). It provides the following contact emails for its Asian branches: SIL International Asia Area Office: [email protected]; SIL Indonesia Branch: info_indonesia@sil. org; SIL Mainland Southeast Asia Group: [email protected]; SIL Malaysia Branch: [email protected]; SIL Philippines Branch: [email protected].


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2.4 Documentary Linguistic Projects in Madagascar Madagascar has a population of about 14 million (Rasoloson and Rubino 2005:456). 7 Its traditional language, Malagasy, is spoken in a large number of dialects which are by and large mutually intelligible. These dialects are usually represented as coinciding with ethnic distinctions (the ‘tribes’) bearing the same name, but in reality they often do not. For instance, the Sakalava and Betsimisaraka tribes each speak several dialects which are not significantly closely related. The main dialect, Merina, is one of the most intensively studied and best documented Austronesian languages, and it became the basis of the national standard language. The written literature of one of the regional varieties, Taimoro, is at least six centuries old. Other languages spoken on the island are French and languages spoken by recent migrants. There used to be a Swahili-speaking community on the island of Nosy Be, but nowadays there are reportedly no speakers left. Another Bantu language, Makua (native to Mozambique), was once spoken in pockets all over the country but is now also practically extinct (cf. Gueunier 2003:152, which includes a 45-page Malagasy Makua lexicon). While there is no cause for concern about the vitality of Malagasy in general, its status as an official language is seriously undermined by the use of French. As the language of administration of the former colonizers, French is in competition with standard Malagasy in every public domain. It is also the medium of instruction at universities and high schools. Three factors contribute to this state of affairs: the prestige of French in former French colonies, the ongoing promotion of French in these countries, and competition of Malagasy regional tribes resenting the political and linguistic hegemony of the Merina (cf. Steinhauer 2005:80). Regional dialects, on the other hand, generally display a healthy vitality and their roles as mother tongue and home language are not impaired by either French or official Malagasy (Professor N. Gueunier, e-mail communication). There seem to be no projects focusing on language documentation in the contemporary sense in Madagascar. On the other hand, there are many grammatical studies, course books, dictionaries and other linguistic publications of Merina Malagasy (whether in its regional form or as an official language), including the rich and complete Malagasy–French and French–Malagasy dictionaries by Webber (1853, 1855) and the Rakibolana Malagasy by Rajemisa-Raolison (1985), a Malagasy-Malagasy explanatory dictionary with illustrations modelled after the French Larousse dictionary (see Dez 1988, Rasoloson and Rubino 2005, and Randriamasimanana 2007 for an inventory of scholarly works). 8 The various bilingual dictionaries for Malagasy use French, English, Russian, or German as a medium language. 7

Gordon (2005) gives 17.5 million as the population figure of Madagascar. Of these inventories, Randriamasimanana’s References on Malagasy language and linguistics (http://folk.uio.no/janengh/gassisk/, 29-8-2007) is the most extensive one, although it has several bibliographic omissions regarding Malagasy linguistic history. 8

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The study of regional varieties is patchy, and many dialects need further study, although there are various grammatical sketches and dictionaries, including recent dictionaries of Bara (Elli 1988), Tandroy (Rajaonarimanana and Lee 1996), and Tanala (Beaujard 1998a), the last two of which have a grammar sketch in the introduction. There are also recent lexical studies involving ‘Arabico-Malagasy’, the language of a corpus of secret texts held by the Antaimoro aristocracy, which contain fragments in Antaimoro Malagasy, Arabic, and a mixed Arabic-Malagasy ‘pidgin’ called Kalamo Tetsitetsy (Beaujard 1998b:5). There are no official documentary linguistic projects involving Malagasy dialects. However, Ritsuko Kikusawa (National Museum of Ethnology, Japan) conducted fieldwork in the north Betsimisaraka region for six months intermittently in the years 2003–5. She has collected texts and data on regional dialect variation and is currently preparing a description of north Betsimisaraka. Noa Mishimoto, an MA student from Kyoto University, is collecting data on the Tandroy dialect.

2.5 Malaysia Malaysia is a multicultural society where the traditional Austronesian and Aslian languages are spoken along with Chinese, North Indian, and Dravidian languages as well as English. The focus of linguistic research in Malaysia is on the national language, which is a standardized form of Malay, and there is in practice little attention for regional languages or non-standard Malay dialects. Malaysia is geographically divided into West Malaysia, or the Malay peninsula, and East Malaysia consisting of Sarawak and Sabah in North Borneo. These two parts represent different linguistic ecologies. The Austronesian languages in West Malaysia are Malay, which shows a considerable regional variety, and a very few other languages such as Duano’, which are very closely related to Malay and belong to the Malayic subgroup of (Western) Malayo Polynesian languages. Together with the Aslian languages, which have a much longer history in the peninsula and are Austro-Asiatic, 9 these Malayic languages belong to the traditional languages of the peninsula. In colonial times, the position of Malay was seriously encroached on by Chinese and English. While Bazaar Malay, its informal variant, was widely used as a lingua franca in the market and in inter-ethnic contact, it had little social prestige. However, since 1970 the Malaysian government has been actively promoting a standardized form of literary Malay in almost all public domains. Nevertheless, it has also recently re-introduced English as one of the medium languages in tertiary education and even for some science and mathematics subjects in secondary education, arguing that the use of good English is indispensable for the country if it wants to compete globally in science, technology, and other domains. 9 The Aslian languages are a diverse group of severely endangered and until very recently undescribed languages.


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The documentary linguistic projects in West Malaysia sponsored by DoBes, HRELP, and SIL all concern the Aslian languages. In East Malaysia, the role of Malay was historically less important, although that has changed in the last twenty-five years (see Collins 1990 for publications on Malay in East Malaysia). Here we find a plethora of Austronesian languages, most of which are very different from Malay. They are spoken along with Chinese varieties and Malay vernaculars. Malay did not play a dominant role until after its establishment as an official language, which happened in Sarawak in 1973, and in Sabah in 1985. In Sarawak, Sarawak Malay is traditionally the home language of only one fifth of the population, and before 1973 the primary lingua franca used to be Iban, the language of traditionally the largest ethnic group of the same name. In Sabah, Kadazan used to be the main lingua franca, and the role of Malay was even more marginal as there were hardly any mother tongue speakers of Malay. The establishment of Malay as an official language has changed all this. It has had a marginalizing effect on indigenous languages, and most notably on Iban and Kadazan, which have lost their hegemonic role. The Borneo Literary Bureau, which had been formed in Sarawak in 1958 to collect indigenous oral literature and produce reading materials in Iban and other indigenous languages, was taken over by the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (the official literacy bureau sponsored by the Malaysian government). This brought the publishing of books in indigenous languages basically to a standstill. 10 This resulted in a lack of written materials, which, together with the lack of trained teachers has had a negative effect on the teaching of Iban in primary schools and at lower secondary level (K. Smith 2003:54). The status of indigenous languages is further eroded by the Malaysian government’s emphasis on learning English in schools (K. Smith, e-mail communication). Florey (2005a) discusses languages in East Malaysia that have recently become extinct or are directly endangered. However, many indigenous languages continue to be community languages, and the most immediate threat is not just low speaker numbers. As Rensch et al. (2006:21) mention in relation to the Bidayuh language, intermarriage, urbanization, language contact, the prestige of other languages, the formal education system based on Malay, and even a lack of intergenerational transmission, are the main factors threatening their survival. For an overview of the literature on especially Sabahan languages, see King and King (1984), and (for more recent publications) Combrink et al. (2006). In 2004 and 2005 Peter Sercombe (Newcastle University, UK) conducted a documentation project sponsored by HRELP aiming at the compilation of a dictionary of Penan, a language with less than 10,000 speakers spoken by some of the Punans in interior Borneo. Penan speakers live along the Baram River in north Sarawak and in Apoh in Brunei. The dictionary will be trilingual (Penan, Malay, and English). The project also

10 According to Jimbun Tawai, Vice Chairman of the Sarawak Dayak Iban Association, in 1998 (K. Smith 2003:54).

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aims to enhance the literacy of the Penan in their own language (see Sercombe’s paper in this volume). Various other projects in Sarawak and Sabah are conducted by SIL or in association with that organization. In Sarawak, Rensch and his SIL team have been involved in the Bidayuh Language Development Project since 2000. Its goals are language revitalization, orthography development, an expansion of the literature, and facilitating the teaching of Bidayuh as a subject in schools. The team objectives include compiling a dictionary, describing the major Bidayuh varieties, training language teachers and establishing a language council (Rensch et al. 2006:23). The Bidayuh varieties in Sarawak consist of four dialect groups: Rara, Bau-Jagoi, Biatah, and Bukar-Sadong. 11 A grammar sketch of Bau-Jagoi was recently completed by one of the team members, Marilina Vega. The four dialect groups are endangered, and particularly Rara, because many of its speakers are shifting to Malay or Salako. However, this is to some extent a matter of perception. There are only three Rara villages in Sarawak, and the bulk of Rara speakers live across the border in (Indonesian) West Kalimantan, where the language is not under immediate threat. The language data collected by this team are archived by the Majlis Adat Istiadat (Native Customs Council) 12 in Kuching, a council involved in the documentation of indigenous languages and cultures. Juergen Burkhardt from Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main in Germany and a member of SIL is currently collecting linguistic data of Berawan varieties in the Lower Baram River area (Miri, Sarawak) as part of a comparative historical thesis including sketch grammars and phonologies. He is also working on Toolbox dictionaries of these varieties and of Kenyah. Jey Burkhardt is involved in the development of orthographies and literacy education among speakers of Berawan and also of Kelabit. Berawan varieties are endangered on account of their low numbers of speakers (less than a thousand each), grammar interference from Malay, and lexical loss in the speech of young speakers. Another SIL and native speaker of Kelabit, Lian David, is working on a Kelabit dictionary. In Sabah, Paul Kroeger is involved in the documentation of Kimaragang, a Dusunic language. Kimaragang is spoken in two dialects, Kimaragang proper, which is spoken in plain land, and a hills dialect called Sonsogon. Kimaragang proper is the most endangered due to the constant direct exposure of its speakers to Malay. Paul Kroeger has written extensively on the structure of this dialect (cf. Kroeger 2005) and is preparing a grammar. Jim Johansson, Janama, and Welin Jutaim are preparing an extensive Kimaragang-Malay-English dictionary. Other endangered Dusunic languages are Rungus and Tobilung. Native speakers of Rungus are preparing a new dictionary of their language. The recently founded TOBISA (Persatuan Tobilung Bersatu Sabah or

11 As far as Rensch et al.’s Bidayuhic subgroup is concerned, this is more a geographic configuration of genetically related languages than a genetic subgroup, as Rensch et al. do not systematically attempt to include Bidayuhic (Land Dayak) language across the Sarawak-Indonesia border in their comparison. 12 See http://www.nativecustoms.sarawak.gov.my/.


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United Tobilung Association of Sabah) is actively involved in the documentation and maintenance of Tobilung, which includes the compilation a dictionary. Nelleke Johansson (née Goudzwaard) has published a reference grammar of Begak, an Ida’an dialect (Goudswaard 2005). A dictionary is in progress involving compilers who are native speakers. Richard and Kielo Brewis began work on a Timugon Murut—Malay dictionary which was later finished by Selipah Majlus (Kamus Murut 2004). Iranun (originally a Philippine language) has been losing many speakers to Malay and Bajau. Iranun people on Sabah’s west coast (and in the Lahad Datu area) began campaigning for the preservation of their language in 1995. With the help of Howard McKaughan, Karla Smith, and other members of SIL, an Iranun orthography was devised. Iranun speakers have been trained to write up literature in their own language and to use computers for the production of 67 booklets (K. Smith 2003:59–60). A dictionary is in progress, and Karla Smith is currently writing a PhD thesis on the Iranun language development project. Mark Miller has just finished a description of west coast Bajau, another non-native language of Sabah (Miller 2007). In the 1980s, SIL members together with the Kadazan Cultural Association started a campaign for the teaching of Kadazan (since 1995 called Kadazandusun) in schools. The first classes were taught in 1994. In 1996, the Kadazandusun Language Foundation was created in order to preserve, develop, and promote Kadazandusun. It has developed reading materials and a school syllabus, organized workshops for the training of teachers and writers, initiated radio broadcasts and introduced Kadazandusun sections in newspapers. There are also plans for the compilation of dictionaries of regional languages (K. Smith 2003:56–7). Apart from the projects mentioned above, the Bidayuh dictionary by Nais (1988) and the Kayan dictionary by Southwell (1990) deserve mention as well as Robert Blust’s Long Kiput language materials (2003a) and Otto Steinmayer’s (1999) grammatical sketch of Iban. The latter is a happy compromise between informativeness and wider useability.

2.6 Indonesia The Republic of Indonesia is home to the largest concentration of Austronesian languages in the world. The language situation in the various islands and island groups in this country will therefore be discussed separately. By and large, the westernmost islands of Indonesia are linguistically more homogeneous than the islands in the east of the country. With some exceptions, linguistic research has traditionally been concentrated on languages in Java, Sumatra, and Bali. However, that situation has begun to change, and especially documentary linguistic projects are predominantly found in the Lesser Sunda Islands, the Moluccas and Sulawesi. For an overview of publications on Malay in Indonesia, see Collins (1990, 1995a, 1995b, 1996).

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2.6.1 Sumatra and surrounding islands The linguistic variation in Sumatra and surrounding islands is considerable, although probably not as rich as that of Borneo and Sulawesi. While Gordon (2005) counts 49 languages in Sumatra, the actual number may be less than half of that (cf. Florey 2005a), depending on how one counts and what language definition one applies. Seven clear independent language groups can be distinguished: (1) Acehnese (in the north), (2) Batakic languages (Central-North, including the remotely related Gayo in the north), (3) Malayic (West, East, and Southeast Sumatra, including Minangkabau in West Sumatra, Kerinci in Southwest Sumatra, and the Malayic varieties on Bangka and Belitung Islands), (4) Rejang (Southwest Sumatra), (5) Lampung (South Sumatra), (6) the Barrier Island languages spoken on the islands west of Sumatra (including Simalur, Nias, and Sichule), and (7) Enggano, a Malayo-Polynesian isolate. The languages of Sumatra proper have undergone (literary and mainstream) Malay and Javanese influence for centuries, often resulting in a loss of parts of their grammatical and lexical characteristics to these historically dominating languages. This is perhaps the most obvious in South Sumatra, where Malay has had an ongoing impact on the local Rejang and Lampung languages to such an extent that their status as independent languages only became clear beyond reasonable doubt since the 1970s when they were subjected to serious linguistic analysis (cf. Walker 1976 and McGinn 1982). But it is also clear in the Batak languages. Batak sources from the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century exhibit much more ‘authentic’ forms of Batak usage than recent sources. And while the impact of Malay can be seen in every Sumatran language, Javanese influence has been very strong on Malay and Lampungic varieties of East and South Sumatra, with some sporadic lexical influence on other languages. There is currently no documentary linguistic programme focusing on this part of Indonesia. While the main linguistic varieties in each group have been studied at some point or other, there is much left to be done with regard to more regional varieties. Nevertheless, the last twenty or so years have seen the appearance of solid grammars of Lampung (Walker 1976), Rejang (McGinn 1982), Acehnese (Durie 1985), Karo Batak (Woollams 1996), Nias (L. Brown 2001), and Gayo (Eades 2005). Gérard Moussay published a grammar (1981) and dictionary (1995) of Minangkabau using French as a medium language. Fieldwork is currently being done on Riau Indonesian (David Gil, Max Planck Institute, Leipzig), Kerinci Malay (Gabriella Herzron, Delaware University), and Lampung (Karl Anderbeck, SIL Indonesia).

2.6.2 Java and Madura Linguistically, Java and Madura probably constitute the least variegated part of Indonesia, if not in relation to their size, then certainly in relation to their combined population. While about half of the Indonesian population lives on Java, the island


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represents only four distinct regional languages: Javanese, 13 Sundanese, Madurese, and Malay. The traditional inhabitants of Madura all speak Madurese. In spite of their large speech communities, the Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese languages are actually endangered in that some of their domains of usage are being taken over by Indonesian, and, to a lesser extent, in that they are not always passed on to the next generation. The decision of the Indonesian government in 1994 to introduce Javanese and other regional languages at primary and high schools has had mixed results. 14 Malay in Java is spoken in the form of Indonesian and of some local vernaculars, such as Betawi Malay and Java Malay (Adelaar and Prentice 1996). Indonesian is increasingly taught to children in urban settings, and, more particularly, if their parents are of a different language background. Jakarta Indonesian (a form of Indonesian with many adaptations from Betawi, the traditional Malay dialect of Jakarta), has become the most popular and prestigious colloquial form of Indonesian, not only in Jakarta, which is the administrative, cultural, and economic centre of Indonesia, but also in other urban centres among the educated youth. It has had much influence on colloquial registers of Indonesian elsewhere in the country. If anything, the language situation in Java clearly demonstrates that numbers of speakers alone are not necessarily an indicator of language vitality. Javanese with one of the largest speech communities in the world is under threat from Indonesian (in both its official and its colloquial varieties), and Indonesian is rapidly expanding at the expense of all other languages in the country. The languages of Java are among the best described and documented, but that does not mean that there is not much work to be done. Except for Malay, the three other languages each have a written tradition, which, in the case of Javanese, goes back to the eighth century AD. Whereas Javanese has been studied extensively for more than two centuries, much of the research has concentrated on the varieties of the court cities of Yogyakarta and Solo, which are considered the centres of Javanese culture, and on Old Javanese texts. Far too little is known about regional varieties, although the good news is that there are several research projects underway to fill this gap: Arps’ research on the Osing dialect (at Leiden University), and two projects on dialect variety in general—one coordinated by Adelaar and Ewing (at the University of Melbourne, and sponsored by the Australian Research Council) and one coordinated by O’Connor (Max Planck Institute, Leipzig). There is furthermore a recent grammar of Cirebon Javanese by Ewing (2005a). A comprehensive overview of earlier studies of Javanese is the annotated bibliography by Uhlenbeck (1964), and recent work is included in the reference list in Ogloblin (2005). Both authors published extensively on modern and

13 The Osing dialect of Javanese (spoken in East Java) is sometimes considered as a language in its own right (cf. Gordon 2005). 14 Yacinta Kurniasih (personal communication) is finishing a PhD thesis about the implications of the government policy to introduce Javanese as a compulsory subject at schools from year 1 to 10 (Kurniasih to appear).

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Old Javanese. The latest description of modern Javanese is probably the grammar by Wedhawati et al. (2006). Sundanese is also relatively well documented. Recent reference works are the dictionaries by Hardjadibrata (2003) and Danadibrata (2007). The latter is a monumental work of ca. 40,000 entries. Madurese is originally the language of Madura Island but it is also widely spoken along Java’s east coast. Given that it is one of the major languages in the country, it has not been studied nearly as intensively as Javanese and Sundanese. For both Sundanese and Madurese, regional variety remains understudied. Colloquial Indonesian has recently been discussed by Ewing (2005b) and Sneddon (2006). There are many other (smaller) publications about Colloquial Indonesian, which is receiving ample attention from linguists, literati, and social scientists alike. While Indonesian (in general) is probably the fastest growing language in the country, as mentioned above, some Indonesians consider it as being under the threat of English. As to Betawi, this community dialect is under threat of disappearance, and Grijns’ (1991) dialect study was a timely effort to safeguard descriptive and textual data. 2.6.3 Kalimantan Kalimantan is the southern part of Borneo, making up two thirds of the island. Considering the enormous landmass it represents, there is no doubt that this is linguistically one of the most poorly documented parts of Indonesia. Especially the province of West Kalimantan was until very recently almost tabula rasa, except for some wordlists and a few ritual texts collected by Dutch missionaries. This situation has slowly begun to change. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Pusat Bahasa started publishing some descriptions of Ahe (a Kanayatn dialect) and various Bidayuhic and Ibanic languages, which are of a very preliminary nature. Since the 1990s, there have appeared a short grammatical outline of Embaloh (a Tamanic language, Adelaar 1995), a description of Bekatik (Bidayuhic; Sudarsono 2002), a grammar sketch, texts, and lexicon of Salako (a dialect of Kanayatn, a Malayic language; Adelaar 2005b), and a descriptive grammar of Mualang (Ibanic; Tjia 2007). Since 2001, Uri Tadmor has been conducting language documentation involving two subdialects of Ketapang Malay, the dialect of Ketapang City and that of Balai Berkuak (Ketapang Regency). Tadmor’s project, sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig), 15 aims to compile a computerized database to be used for descriptive and dialectological research, and to publish annotated texts. While the Ketapang Malay speech community in Balai Berkuak does not show tendencies for language shift, its language is in danger of losing its distinctive features through the koineizing influence of the Ketapang City subdialect and Indonesian. Other parts of Kalimantan are currently even worse off, although they have enjoyed more attention in the past. Already in colonial times, there was a large body of 15

For information, see http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/jakarta/.


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descriptive data for Ngaju (West Barito, predominantly spoken in Central Kalimantan), and to a much lesser extent, for some other languages such as Maanyan (East Barito, Central, and South Kalimantan), and Busang (East Kalimantan; cf. Cense and Uhlenbeck 1958). More recently, the Pusat Bahasa issued various introductory descriptions and dictionaries. Other descriptive studies are the grammar sketches of Maanyan by Darmansyah H. Gudai (1985), and of Banjarese (Malayic) by Nirmala Sari (1984). One recent language documentation project was coordinated by Antonia Soriente in the Bulungan Regency in East Kalimantan. Sponsored by UNESCO’s ELP and the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, it aimed at the compilation of reading materials and dictionaries for three endangered languages, Oma Longh, Lebu’ Kulit, and Penan Benalui (Kenya-Kayan languages), and at an awareness campaign among the speakers of these languages and their training to actively participate in the documentation of their own language. A collection of short stories in Oma Longh and Lebu’ Kulit appeared recently (Soriente 2006). Another language documentation programme is being conducted by an SIL team coordinated by Lalani Woods. Based in Palangkaraya (Central Kalimantan), it used to collect mainly lexical data of Malayic and Barito varieties spoken in Central Kalimantan, but nowadays its focus has moved to developing literacy and literature in Delang (Malayic), Tewoyan (East Barito) and Siang (West Barito) communities. 2.6.4 Lesser Sunda Islands (West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara provinces) From Florey’s overview of language endangerment, it appears that in this part of Indonesia, the language situation is reasonably stable as far as languages with large speech communities are concerned, such as Bima, Manggarai, Dawan, although some of the minority languages in Flores and west Timor are endangered (Florey 2005a:53). Such stability certainly also concerns Balinese, which, allowing for sometimes considerable regional variety, is the unitary language of the island of Bali as well as the language of a sizeable minority on Lombok Island. As in the case of Javanese, Balinese has been the object of serious scholarship since colonial times, even if its documentation is far from complete and does not always meet modern linguistic criteria. Two recent studies by Adrian Clynes (1995) and I Wayan Arka (2003) have gone a long way to bring the state of description of Balinese up to date. Several documentary projects have been conducted in the Lesser Sunda Islands. From 1998 to 2003, Peter Austin led the Lombok and Sumbawa Research Project sponsored by the Australian Research Council and the University of Melbourne. It aimed at the documentation and structural, historical, and social study of Sasak and Sumbawa, which are spoken on Lombok Island and the western part of Sumbawa Island respectively. 16 16

See http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/research/projects/lombok/.

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From 2004 to 2006, I Wayan Arka collected linguistic and ethnographic data on the Rongga language on Flores with the aim to produce a grammar, basic dictionary, and teaching materials as part of a documentation project sponsored by HRELP. Rongga is a language with only 4,000 speakers who live squeezed between the two much larger speech communities of the Manggarai (with half a million speakers) and Ngada (66,000 speakers). The Rongga language and culture became marginalized through various historical circumstances in colonial times and during Suharto’s New Order regime (see Arka 2007b and in this volume). 17 Helong is currently the focus of a three year long documentation project by John Bowden. Helong is an endangered language spoken by a few thousand speakers in the region of Kupang, the administrative centre of West Timor. Apart from collecting Helong data, Bowden will also make a comparative study of language change in three Helong dialects and train staff and students at universities in Kupang in language documentation. 18 Another small documentation project led in the area in 2004 by Louise Baird involved Klon, Abui, and Teiwa, three non-Austronesian languages spoken on Alor and Pantar Islands. Klamer (1998) is a description of Kambera, a language spoken by almost half the population of Sumba Island. Mark Donohue is currently preparing a description (and ultimately also a dictionary) of Palu’e (spoken on Palu’e island off the northwest coast of Flores). 2.6.5 Sulawesi According to Ethnologue (Gordon 2005), there are 114 languages spoken in Sulawesi. Florey (2005a) gives an overview of endangered languages on this island, which is known for its linguistic diversity, although this diversity is more of a typological than a genetic nature. Mead has gone a long way to show that all central and southeastern Sulawesi languages belong to one genetic subgroup (Mead 2003; cf. also van den Berg 1996a). Although seriously understudied in the past, in recent years Sulawesi has enjoyed the attention of many linguists culminating in a good number of major works. Noorduyn (1991) provides a bibliography of earlier linguistic publications. Ratahan is spoken in the Minahasa (northern tip of Sulawesi) and is on the verge of extinction. Anthony Jukes coordinated the Documentation of Ratahan Project (2005– 2007) in co-operation with Drs Tartius Timpai. The project is sponsored by HRELP and aims at the documentation of Ratahan, and at cooperation with members of the Ratahan speech community to safeguard the survival of their language. 19 Jukes has also produced a grammar of Makassarese (Jukes 2007). Nikolaus Himmelmann and team (Claudia Leto, Jan Wohlgemut, and Jani KuhntSaptodewo) have been working since 2005 on a three-year project ‘Capacity building 17 18 19

See also http://rspas.anu.edu.au/linguistics/projects/iwa/Web-pages/RonggaProject. See www.hrelp.org/grants/projects/index.php?projid=115. See http://www.hrelp.org/grants/projects/index.php?lang=91.


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on a local and national level: Documenting Totoli’. Totoli (to the west of the Ratahan area) is the language of some 5,000 speakers in Tolitoli District, Central Sulawesi. The project is sponsored by DoBes and carried out in cooperation with Hasan Basri from the Universitas Tadulako in Palu. The projects seeks (1) to document Totoli everyday language and oral literature, including the lelegesan (a traditional singing competition), and (2) to organize workshops in Indonesia for training in language documentation (see Florey and Himmelmann, this volume). Already in 2001, Himmelmann published his Sourcebook on Tomini-Tolitoli languages, which contains a wealth of lexical material as well as important phonological and morphological information on this poorly documented subgroup in northern Central Sulawesi. This sourcebook is also generally meant as a model for efficient preliminary research on poorly described languages (Himmelmann 2001; cf. also Himmelmann, this volume). Two other important recent reference works for Sulawesi are Mark Donohue’s grammar of Tukang Besi (Donohue 1999) and Erik Zobel’s grammar sketch of Buol (Zobel 2005). SIL teams have been very active in Sulawesi. In Central Sulawesi, Phil and Beckie Quick worked together with a team of native speakers in the Pendau Language Project from 1989 to 2006. That project aims at the conservation and revitalization of the Pendau (or Umalasa) language, spoken by some 4,500 people north of Palu town. They have produced an orthography, grammar, lexicon, literature collection and recordings of music and liturgy. Phil Quick also wrote a detailed description of Pendau (Quick 2008). Susan Shore is compiling dictionaries of five Central Sulawesi languages: Napu, Bada, Behoa, Rampi, and Sedoa. She is also preparing grammars for local usage, and she works together with native speakers training them to write and edit stories in these languages. In western Central Sulawesi, Michael Martens is compiling a trilingual dictionary of Uma (Uma–English–Indonesian). Martens has built a lexical database of Kaili-Pamona and Badaic languages as well as Rampi, to be used for historical purposes. He published various works on Uma morphosyntax, most of which can be found in Dardjowidjojo (1987) and Steinhauer (1988). Laua, Martens, and Martens (2001) is a large collection of Uma folktales and Uma accounts of historical and cultural topics. Muna has been well described by René van den Berg, who wrote a Muna grammar (van den Berg 1989), a Muna–English dictionary (van den Berg 1996b), and a Muna– Indonesian dictionary (van den Berg 2001). Van den Berg is currently preparing a South Muna dictionary in collaboration with Lukas Atakasi. He is also working on a grammar sketch and wordlist of Busoa (South Buton) and, with Bob and Marilyn Busenitz, on a grammar of Balantak in East Sulawesi. Bob and Marylin Busenitz also contributed to a Balantak trilingual dictionary edited by Daniel Bradbury (Bradbury ed. 2000). Donna Evans has published a trilingual dictionary of Ledo (a Kaili language spoken in the Palu River valley), which also contains a Ledo sketch grammar (Evans 2003). David Mead made an overview of Bungku-Tolaki languages (Mead 1999). He

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is currently working on grammars and dictionaries of two members of this subgroup, Kulisusu and Mori Bawah, and has published a grammar sketch of Mori (Mead 2005). Finally, SIL members are preparing grammars and dictionaries for Moronene (David Andersen), Tolaki (Scott Youngman), and Seko Padang (Tom and Kathy Laskowske). Ruben Stoel (2005) produced a grammatical description of Manado Malay, which is the local Malay variant spoken in Manado and elsewhere in North Sulawesi, and it is historically an offshoot of Ternate Malay. 2.6.6 Moluccas Ethnologue (Gordon 2005) lists 132 Austronesian languages for the Moluccas. Florey (2005c) writes that these islands have the highest level of language endangerment in Indonesia. Six languages are known to have become extinct in recent times, and ten are moribund, especially on Seram Island, while nine other languages are seriously endangered. Reasons for this situation are contacts with non-indigenous peoples, colonization, trade, conversions to Christianity and Islam, and, recently, interethnic violence leading to loss of many lives and displacement of entire villages. Florey also notes the poor state of description for Moluccan languages. She lists nine languages with some form of grammatical description, to wit Alune (Florey 2001b, 2005b, in press), Nuaulu (Bolton 1990), Larike (Laidig and Laidig 1991a, 1991b), Buru (C. Grimes 1991), Taba (Bowden 2001), west Tarangan (Nivens 2002), Selaru (Coward 1990), Letinese (van Engelenhoven 2004) and Tugun (Hilton 1991). An Asilulu— English dictionary was published by James Collins (2003a). The Maluku Project (with Margaret Florey, Michael Ewing, Betty Litamahuputty, and Simon Musgrave) ran from 2003 to 2006 and was sponsored by HRELP and the Australian Research Council. 20 Florey, the project leader, documented the language of the Amahei, Makariki, Rutah, and Soahuku villages on Seram (Florey 2005b, in press). Ewing (2005c, in press) provided documentation of Allang, spoken in Allang, Larike, and Wakasihu villages on Ambon Island, and Musgrave worked on the documentation of the language spoken in the Tenga-Tenga, Tial, Tulehu, Liang, and Waai villages on Ambon (2005, forthcoming). The project involved fieldwork in the Moluccas as well as in the Moluccan diaspora in the Netherlands (see Netherlands) and included the training of local linguists and Community Language Workers in the Moluccas and the Netherlands. Malay has long played an important role in the Moluccas, leading to the emergence of some typically Moluccan Malay varieties. Don van Minde published a reference grammar of Ambonese Malay (van Minde 1997). 2.6.7 West Papua According to Ethnologue (Gordon 2005), only fifty-six of the 271 languages in this part of Indonesia are Austronesian. This region is beginning to receive more attention with 20

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/linguistics/maluku/project.php.


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reference works appearing and some projects underway or in preparation. Van den Heuvel recently finished a reference grammar of Biak in the Bird’s Head (van den Heuvel 2006). Descriptive information on Raja Ampat languages is found in Remijsen (2001). Yusuf Sawaki from the University Negeri Papua is commencing documentation work on Waropen. David Price (SIL) has built a large lexical database of Ambai (Yapen). Takashi Matsumura is compiling a lexicon of Irarutu, a language from the Bomberai peninsula, on which René van den Berg has recently also done research. There are furthermore unpublished SIL data on various languages including Wandamen and Mor (René van den Berg p.c.).

2.7 Brunei As noted in Florey (2005a), Martin (1996), and elsewhere, the main language in this sultanate is Brunei Malay, a vigorous language which overshadows the existence of the five other languages as well as the Kadayan Malay dialect spoken here. Some of these languages (Punan, Belait) are endangered. The Universiti Brunei Darussalam is funding two documentation projects running from May 2007 to May 2009. The Tutong Language Documentation Project aims at the compilation of digital recordings of Tutong oral texts with glosses and transcriptions in Malay and English, and possibly at the compilation of a dictionary and a description. Tutong is spoken in Tutong district, and the project members consist of three native speakers (Hajee Ramlee Tunggal, Dr Noor Azam OKMB Hajee Othman, Dr Hajee Ramlee Tingkong), and Adrian Clynes (all from Universiti Brunei Darussalam). The Belait Language and Oral History Documentation Project involves the Metting dialect in the Kiudang and Mungkom villages (Tutong district). Participants are Adrian Clynes and Hajah Asiyah, a native speaker of Metting Belait. The project aims at the compilation of digital recordings with Malay and English glosses and transcriptions of oral texts dealing with the history of the village and its traditions and literature. Here again, the long-term aims are a description and the compilation of a dictionary.

2.8 Taiwan The language situation in Taiwan is in many ways exceptional within the context of Austronesian languages and their vitality. There are 430,000 indigenous Taiwanese (making up 1.9 per cent of the total population), and there are about twenty-four Austronesian languages, some of which are extinct. All these languages are Formosan except for Yami (spoken on Orchid Island), which is a Malayo-Polynesian language and is more closely related to Philippine languages. While some of these languages have reasonably large speech communities (especially Amis, Atayal, Paiwan, and Seediq (Truku) with respectively 158,000, 76,000, 79,000, and more than 20,000 speakers), all are endangered or even extinct, as in the case of Siraya, Papora, Basay,

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Ketagalan, Kulun, Taokas, and Hoanya. 21 At least four languages are on the verge of extinction (Pazih, Thao, Saaroa, and Kavalan), and the other languages are often not transmitted adequately from one generation to the next. From the perspective of language vitality the situation here is generally more alarming than elsewhere in the Austronesian world. On the other hand, there are currently few countries with Austronesian speakers showing the same measure of involvement in salvaging and documenting languages as Taiwan. There is currently a nationwide attention for the Formosan cultural heritage. Ethnographic and linguistic research is flourishing and there is an education program since 2001 for the teaching of Formosan languages in elementary schools. It has not always been like this, and the current positive attitude cannot be disconnected from the present political and ideological climate, in which Formosan identity plays an increasingly important role in the definition of Taiwanese nationhood. Formosan languages did enjoy the special attention of historical linguists interested in Proto Austronesian since 1965, when Isidore Dyen (1965) pointed out their special genetic position within the Austronesian language family. However, very little research had been done until the 1970s, when Paul Jen-kuei Li and Shigeru Tsuchida took upon them the at first rather lonely task of describing Formosan languages (and Yami) and rescuing data from moribund languages wherever they could. It is only in recent times that they obtained support from other linguists and extensive research is being done on the various Formosan languages that are still spoken. See Tsuchida (2000a) for an overview of Japanese contributions to Formosan linguistics, Li (2000) and Zeitoun (2007a) for an overview of other contributions to the field, and Li (2004) for a collection of Paul Li’s shorter publications. More recent major publications are a Thao dictionary (Blust 2003b), Yami texts, reference grammar and dictionary (Rau and Dong 2006), a Kavalan dictionary (Li and Tsuchida 2006), Pazih texts and songs (Li and Tsuchida 2002), a Pazih dictionary (Li and Tsuchida 2001), and sketch grammars of Tsou (Zeitoun 2005) and Seediq (Tsukida 2005). A description of Nanwang Puyuma by Stacy Fang-ching Teng has recently appeared (Teng 2009). There is a collection of Nanwang Puyuma ritual texts by Josiane Cauqelin. Elizabeth Zeitoun has written a grammar of Mantauran Rukai (Zeitoun 2007b) and published annotated Mantauran Rukai narratives together with Hui-chuan Lin (Zeitoun and Lin 2003). Two Bunun descriptions are in production—by Motoyasu Nojima on Isbukun Bunun, and by Rik de Busser on Takivatan Bunun. The Taiwanese linguistic scene is also exceptional in that there are four digital language archives in the country (a situation which no doubt requires some rationalization): the Formosan Language Archive at the Academia Sinica (formosan.sinica.edu.tw), the NTU Corpus of Formosan Languages at the National Taiwanese University (corpus.linguistics.ntu.edu.tw), the Yami Archive at Providence University, and a corpus which has been produced by Josef Szakos.

21

Figures are from the Council of Indigenous Peoples,/http://www.apc.gov.tw/.


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The following projects explicitly deal with the documentation of Austronesian languages in Taiwan. At the Academia Sinica, Elizabeth Zeitoun and her colleagues have been building corpora of annotated texts, bibliographic references, and a geographic information system for eleven Formosan languages. These are stored in the Formosan Language Archive, the first digital language archive to be established in Taiwan. The data are translated into Chinese and English and are available for research as well as for pedagogical purposes. Victoria Rau and her team at Providence University coordinated a project called ‘Digital Archiving Yami Language Documentation’ (yamiproject.cs.pu.edu.tw). Originally started with a grant from HRELP in 2005–7, its goals were to document the Yami language, to prepare digital archive materials and to facilitate the preservation and dissemination of these materials (which constitute of twenty narratives, a grammar, a trilingual dictionary and multimedia pedagogical materials). It also aimed to standardize the procedures of digital archiving, to make Yami data available as learning materials, and to develop e-learning (see Rau and Yang in this volume, Rau and Yang 2007, Rau et al. 2007). Over the last twenty years, Josef Szakos (Dong Hua University, Hualian) has been collecting recordings of all genres of Tsou, Saaroa, and Kanakanavu. These are being annotated and translated and will be made publicly available. Fuhui Hsieh and Shuanfan Huang at the National Taiwan University are involved in a project for the documentation of Kavalan, Atayal, Tsou, Seediq, and Saisiyat (Hsieh and Huang 2007). Paula Radetzky obtained support from DEL for the description and documentation of Saaroa (which has only five speakers left) and Kavalan. A somewhat unorthodox project in the context of this volume is the analysis of Siraya. This is one of the languages documented by missionaries in the seventeenth century, when west Taiwan was occupied by the Dutch (1627–61). Paul Jen-kuei Li has (among others) worked intensively on the interpretation of Siraya land contracts that appeared after this occupation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Li 2002; cf. also various other publications in Li 2004). Shigeru Tsuchida (1996, 2000b) wrote on Siraya grammar, and Tsuchida and Yamada (1991) pointed to the existence of Siraya dialect variation. The present author has been working on the analysis of seventeenthcentury liturgical texts in Siraya, aiming at the publication of a grammar, a lexicon, and a glossed version of the Gospel of St Matthew (cf. Adelaar 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2006). Although this language became extinct at the beginning of the twentieth century, if not earlier, in the Tainan region in Taiwan’s southwest there is still an indigenous community that identifies as the descendants of Siraya speakers and takes a lively interest in the language (Adelaar 2007:33–4).

2.9 Philippines Information about language documentation in the Philippines has not been easy to obtain, and there are probably many more activities deployed in this country than

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appear in the present summary overview. Local organizations that are involved in language documentation are the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF, the Commission on the Filipino Language), and various local branches of SIL. 22 Ethnologue (Gordon 2005) estimates the number of languages in the Philippines at 175, spoken by a population of 86 million. Three major documentation efforts have been conducted. With support from HRELP (2006–7), Charles Macdonald is preparing a Palawan-Tagalog-English lexicon, which will eventually develop into a fully-fledged dictionary. 23 In 2003, the ELP at the UNESCO launched a project for the preservation of the Hudhud, an old oral tradition of the Ifugao (Luzon, Philippines), with the financial support of the Japanese government. 24 SIL has been active in the revitalization of Ibatan on Babuyan Claro Island in the northern Philippines since 1978. At that time, there were only 500 Ibatan speakers, and many were shifting to Ilokano. Rundell and Judi Maree and some local native speakers began a concerted effort to revive Ibatan by providing reading materials and a newspaper, initiating a writers’ club and a cooperative, and using the language in every context. The team also successfully campaigned for better infrastructure (in the form of a high school and clinic) and for granting the Ibatans a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title to their traditional land. Nowadays there are more than 1200 Ibatans, and they are officially recognized as a distinct tribe of the Philippines. There are now numerous publications in their language, which has regained status, is used in high school, and is even learned by non-Ibatans (Quakenbush 2007). The KWF (under directorship of Ricardo Nolasco) is also involved in documentation and archiving. It is planning a line map of Philippine languages, with voice, written samples and ethnographic notes. It is also co-sponsoring (with De la Salle University) a lecture workshop on Building the Philippine Corpus. Laura Robinson (University of Hawai’i) is documenting Dupaningan Agta, a ‘Negrito’ language in Cagayan province (Luzon). The ‘Negritos’ are a racially distinct minority of about 31,000 people still representing an older pre-Austronesian population (see Headland in this volume). Negrito languages are typologically and lexically somewhat different from other Philippine languages, although they still have a lot in common with them and are Malayo-Polynesian. All Negrito languages are endangered: some (Dicamay Agta, Tayabas Ayta, Katabaga) have recently become extinct, and others are about to become extinct or have very few speakers (Ata, Sorsogon Ayta, Isarog Agta, Alabat Island Agta, Camarines Norte Agta, Mt Iraya Agta, Arta, northern Alta, southern Alta, Batek, Inati). Some other

22 Their respective websites are (NCIP:) www.ncip.gov.ph, (KWF:) www.wika.pbwiki.com, and (SIL:) www.sil.org/asia/philippines). However, these websites are in need of further updating. 23 hrelp.org/grants/projects/index.php?projid=100. 24 http://www.unesco.org/culture/ICH/index.php?cp=PH.


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Philippine languages (Sinauna Tagalog 25 and Molbog) are also endangered (Florey 2005a:56–7). 26 Other projects are primarily descriptive. Hsiu-chuan Liao (Tsing Tao University, Taiwan) is analysing the structure of Ilongot (also called Bukalot), Jason Lobel (Hawai’i) is making a dialectological study of the Bisayan languages, and Sheila Zamar (Hawai’i) is currently writing about Sorsoganon (a Bisayan language). Finally, important descriptive work on Ilocano and Tagalog has been done by Carl Rubino, including an Ilocano grammar, phrasebook, and dictionary (Rubino 1997, 1998, 2000; cf. also http://iloko.tripod.com/).

2.10 East Timor East Timor has about 800,000 citizens (Hajek 2006b:121). As Hajek indicates, there are approximately twenty languages spoken in East Timor (2006:122). Four of these languages (Makasae, Bunak, Fataluku, and Makalero) are not Austronesian. Hajek (2002) gives an account of how under Indonesian rule (1976–99) the local Timorese languages were threatened in a number of ways. Before the Indonesian invasion, the indigenous languages, with the limited exception of Tetum, were very much left to their own devices. Portuguese was the language of colonial administration and education. A creolized form of Tetum was the interethnic lingua franca, except in the Fataluku-speaking area in the eastern tip of the island and in the Oe-Cussé enclave to the west. The Indonesian administration tried to replace Portuguese (and Chinese in the Chinese community) with Indonesian, an endeavour in which it largely succeeded. The only domains where it was unsuccessful were the anti-Indonesian resistance and the Catholic Church. The resistance movement Fretilin kept on using Portuguese to the extent that it became the language of resistance. In the RC Church the Indonesian administration did manage to ban the use of Portuguese for liturgical purposes, but it was replaced by Tetum instead of Indonesian. The other local languages were severely threatened by a huge influx of Indonesian migrants into East Timor and the conduct of the Indonesian army, which caused massive population displacement and the loss of more than 200,000 lives. After the Indonesian army withdrew from East Timor in 1999, Portuguese was re-introduced and promoted as the official language together with Tetum. Indonesian was abolished as an official language, as it did not enjoy much popularity as the language of the former occupier. Nevertheless, it remains widely understood among East Timorese, especially young people, who used it before 1999. Replacing it with Portuguese and Tetum is not without its problems from the point of view of education and efficiency of communication. 25

A non-Negrito language, although its speakers are Negritos. Important contributions to the study of Negrito languages over the years have been made by Laurie Reid (cf. Florey 2005a:56–7). 26

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Hajek and Bowden (this volume) note a continued increase in the vitality of Tetum, the main local lingua franca. This vitality comes at the expense of regional languages and is partly due to the growing geographical and social mobility of the East Timorese since the Indonesians withdrew from their country in 1999. However, the other indigenous languages are also surprisingly resilient considering East Timor’s tragic history. The only language which is clearly at risk is Maku’a, which has very few speakers left as a result of language shift towards the non-Austronesian language Fataluku (Hajek 2006b:122). In 2004–6, a project for the collection and initial analysis of textual material of Waima’a was sponsored by DoBes and coordinated by Nikolaus Himmelmann, John Hajek, and John Bowden. Waima’a is an endangered Austronesian language, which is spoken in small pockets and is being overshadowed by Tetum and two neighbouring languages, Galoli and, especially, Makasae. The project also provides a sketch grammar, a glossary for local usage, and literacy materials. 27 In 2003, van Engelenhoven collected and edited Maku’a data in Portugal and East Timor as part of a pilot project with support from HRELP. 28 Geoffrey Hull published Tetum–English (2004a) and English–Tetum dictionaries (2004b) and a reference grammar together with Lance Eccles (Hull and Eccles 2004). As part of the Sebastião Aparício da Silva Project, he has made grammar profiles of all East Timorese languages, which are accessible through the website of the Instituto Nacional de Linguística (http://www.asianlang.mq.edu.au/INL/).

2.11 Vanuatu With their 114 languages, the islands of Vanuatu in the Pacific constitute the linguistically most diverse part of the Austronesian world relative to their landmass. They are the arena of many language documentation activities and six projects have been funded by HRELP. Neverver (Malakula) is being documented by Julie Barbour (this volume). Her project (2004–7) aims at a detailed grammatical description and the presentation of a selection of discourse features of oral texts. It will also provide literacy materials (trilingual dictionary, school wordlist, text collections) as well as editorial help with the publication of a hymn book written by native speakers. Seke (Ske) on Pentecost Island is the focus of Kay Johnson’s documentation project (2007–9), which includes the collection of texts concerning oral history, ceremonial speech and conversation as well as the description of spatial/temporal expressions, a trilingual dictionary, ethnobotanical information, a sketch grammar, and a sociolinguistic survey. Valérie Guérin obtained a grant (2007–9) for the collection of digitalized texts and the production of a grammar and lexicon of Mafea. She also plans to convert Mafea digital information into literacy material (story books etc.) for children and adults. 27 28

http://rspas.anu.edu.au/linguistics/projects/Waimaha/eng/index.html. http://www.hrelp.org/grants/projects/index.php?projid=23.


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Three varieties of Qatareu (spoken in Lakona Bay, Gaua Island) were documented by Hans Schmidts’ project (2004–6). Schmidt aimed at a linguistic description, a trilingual (Qatareu-Bislama-English) dictionary, and the collection of traditional stories to be used as reading material for native speakers. Peter Budd completed a PhD thesis on Bierebo (Epi Island), where, together with the local community, he is preparing an annotated corpus of audio and video data (2005–7). Budd is also producing an orthography, basic literacy materials for primary education, a Bierebo-Bislama-English dictionary, and a sketch grammar. Catriona Malau (née Hyslop) undertook a project from 2004–6 to document Vurës, which is spoken on Vanua Lava (Banks Islands) in northern Vanuatu. The project outcomes included a grammar and a Vurës–Bislama–English dictionary as well as the production of reading materials to enhance literacy among Vurës speakers. Another project conducted by Ulrike Mosel (Kiel University) and Catriona Malau is sponsored by DoBes (2006–9). It is partly an extension of Malau’s HRELP project. It aims at the documentation of Vurës and Vera’a, the two remaining languages on Vanua Lava, although primary focus is on Vera’a, which is the most endangered of the two and has not been documented at all. Anticipated outcomes are a collection of annotated audio and video recordings for both languages, and a lexical database. Between 2000 and 2003, the ELP started a language revitalization project in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, creating basic documentation and language materials to facilitate the use of various community languages. With the support of the Japanese government, this UNESCO project was prolonged in 2006 and is now focusing on 12 languages in the area under the coordination of Hannah Vari-Bogiri (this volume) at the University of the South Pacific. 29 After the unexpected death in 2005 of one of the pioneers of Vanuatu linguistics, Terry Crowley, some of his colleagues made a concerted effort to edit and publish a number of unfinished studies of languages from Malakula that he had left behind. So far, four monographs (on Nese, Naman, Tape, and Avava) have appeared, which were edited by John Lynch (Crowley 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, 2006d). Alexandre François has been working on seventeen languages in Vanuatu. He has written extensively on the structure of Mwotlap (François 2001, 2003) and is preparing a Mwotlap dictionary (François to appear). He has also written a grammar of Araki (2002). Ross Clark (1998) published a dictionary of Mele, a Polynesian outlier in Vanuatu. He is currently doing fieldwork on Santo (northwest Vanuatu). A reference grammar of South Efate resulted from Nick Thieberger’s documentation of that language (Thieberger 2006), and Ying Shing Anthony Chung has produced a descriptive grammar of Merei (2006). Cindy Schneider is finishing an Abma (Apma)–English dictionary and an Abma–English story book (Abma is spoken on Pentecost Island). Her PhD thesis, a description of Abma, has been accepted for publication by Pacific 29

http://www.unesco.org/culture/heritage/intangible/endangeredlanguages/index.shtml.

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Linguistics in Canberra. The same publisher recently printed Jill Musgrave’s grammar of Neve’ei (Malakula Island) ( J. Musgrave 2007). SIL has recently been involved in the documentation of the following languages: on Epi Island: Baki, Lewo, and Lamen; on Ambrym: Southeast Ambrym; on Malakula: Maskelynes and Uripiv; on Santo: Tangoa and Merei; and on Tanna: North Tanna, Southwest Tanna, and Kwamera. SIL has also been involved in training educators from a number of Vanuatu languages such as the languages of Pentecost (Saa and dialects, Haa, and Ef, Apma, Hano and Ske), Ambae, Epi, Paama, North Ambrym, Uripiv, Tangoa, Hog Harbor, Merei, North Tanna, South Efate, Namakura, and Nguna. This training is in line with the Department of Education’s desire to teach Class 1 students in their vernacular languages. 30 The Pacific Languages Unit at the University of the South Pacific is involved, with Robert Early working on Baki, Lewo, and Lamen (on Epi Island), and Hannah VariBogiri preparing a PhD thesis on the grammar of Raga. Vari-Bogiri is also cooperating with David Walsh and Richard Leona in the compilation of a Raga dictionary, and she is working on Araki (see Chapter 9 in this volume). Finally, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre (with Joel Simo as a permanent staff member) is very active in language matters. It has a large network of fieldworkers conducting language documentation and maintenance activities on a more informal but highly contextualized basis.

2.12 Austronesian Languages in the Diaspora Several countries have sizeable Austronesian speaking communities as a result of recent migrations. In the Sri Lanka, Comoros, Netherlands, and Surinam, these communities have a very recent history 31 . In the Netherlands, Malay and Moluccan languages are receiving a fair amount of attention due to the presence of a developed linguistic infrastructure and an engaged native speaker community. Sri Lanka Malay is enjoying the attention of many linguists, among others because of its great typological interest (having developed a typical SOV morphosyntax). 2.12.1 Malay in Sri Lanka There are some 50,000 Muslims of Malay descent in Sri Lanka. They are the descendants of soldiers, exiles and slaves brought along from Indonesia and Malaysia by the Dutch East India Company in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of military brought in from Malaysia by the British in the nineteenth century (Hussainmiya 1991). Many of these people do not speak Malay any more, especially members of the metropolitan middle class, who prefer to speak English with the hope that it will 30

The information about SIL activities in Vanuatu is from Jim Stahl (p.c.). Elsewhere (Hainan [PR China], Cambodia, Thailand), migrant communities have a much longer history. 31


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provide their children with a better career future. However, there is renewed interest in their own language and culture, especially since civil war broke out in Sri Lanka (possibly out of concern not to be associated with any of the warring fractions). Sri Lanka Malay is spoken in Colombo, Kandy, and south of Colombo in coastal places such as Galle, Hambantota, and Kirinda. The devastating tsunami just after Christmas 2004 seriously affected several coastal communities and caused a high death toll among Malays. It is only in the last 22 years that Sri Lanka Malay has received linguistic attention, with documentary contributions from Hussainmiya (1987), Bichsel (1989), Adelaar (1991), and Saldin (1996). There are possibly as many as four different Sri Lanka Malay dialects (including the dialects of Colombo, Kandy, Hambantota, and South Kirinda). The description and documentation of these dialects are the objectives of a four-year DoBes-sponsored project (2005–8) led by Umberto Ansaldo and Lisa Lim at the University of Amsterdam. Within this project, B. D. K. Saldin recently compiled a dictionary, and Sebastian Nordhoff is finishing a grammar based on the Kandy dialect in Sri Lanka’s central highlands. Peter Slomanson is preparing a grammar based on the Colombo dialect and the Kirinda dialect spoken in the southeast. For an overview of publications on Malay in Sri Lanka, see Collins (1995b). 2.12.2 Malagasy in the Comoros In 1987 there were 19,000 Malagasy speakers on the island of Mayotte in the Comoros (Gueunier 1988:143), using two dialects, Kibushi Kimaore and Kiantalaotsy. Their ancestors had been brought in to the Comoros in the nineteenth century as a result of the slave trade in East Africa. Kibushi Kimaore is closely related to the North Sakalava, North Betsimisaraka, and Tsimihety dialects in the north. Kiantalaotsy is an offshoot of the Antalaotra dialect in West Madagascar. The mutual influence of these dialects, which have developed in isolation from other Malagasy speakers, has caused them to converge a great deal (Gueunier 1988:163). There is a dictionary of Comorian Malagasy from Gueunier (1986) and an unpublished Comorian Malagasy sketch grammar by the same author. 2.12.3 Austronesian languages in the Netherlands Melayu Sini. After Indonesia became independent and the Dutch colonial army was about to be dissolved, in 1950 certain forces in the South Moluccas tried in vain to break away and establish their own independent republic. In the politically volatile situation that followed, there was fear for reprisals against Moluccan soldiers who had served in the Dutch colonial army and still lived with their families in barracks on the island of Java. As a consequence, in 1951 more than 12,500 Moluccans were brought to the Netherlands (the present number of Moluccans in the Netherlands is about 50,000). The community was linguistically not homogenous but had a common and unifying

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language. This was commonly referred to as ‘Moluccan Malay’, but was in fact Tangsi Malay (‘Barracks Malay’), a form of low Malay with elements of Ambon Malay, Java Malay, and Riau Malay used in the Dutch colonial army (Tahitu 1993:278–9). As the Moluccans initially remained rather segregated from Dutch mainstream society, they were able to preserve the Malay language reasonably well for some time, although there was always the inevitable interference from Dutch. Nowadays, however, the language is endangered in two ways. First, Moluccans have become more integrated in mainstream society and end up shifting to Dutch, and second, there is much Dutch influence and a high occurrence of Dutch code-switching in the Malay of especially young Moluccans. To distinguish this language from real Moluccan Malay, it is nowadays often called Melaju Sini (‘the Malay from here’), a term which also acknowledges the fact that it has undergone much influence from Dutch and that it is not a direct continuation of Moluccan Malay. A description of this language appeared in 1989 (Tahitu 1989). Traditional Moluccan languages. These languages, or the so-called bahasa tanah (‘regional [Moluccan] languages’), are not widely known in the Dutch Moluccan community. As time went by younger Moluccans tended to perceive their ancestral languages as one single bahasa tanah originating from Nunusaku, a mountain on Seram Island believed to be the mythical origin of the Moluccan peoples. Nevertheless, some first generation members of the community never gave up these regional languages as their mother tongue. Systematic investigation by Florey and van Engelenhoven has shown that there are in fact at least twelve Moluccan languages that survived the migration and some are still spoken in the Netherlands today (cf. Florey and van Engelenhoven 2001). Languages from the central Moluccan islands include Allang, Amahai, Haruku, and Tulehu (with unconfirmed reports of speakers of Alune, Buru, Hila, Hitu, and Kamarian). From the southeast Moluccan islands they include Ewaw and Fordate (and, unconfirmed, Dobo, Selaru, Sewasa, and Yamdena). From the southwest Moluccan islands, there are Kotalama, central Marsela, Meher, Nila, Oirata, Serua, and Wetan, (and, unconfirmed, Imroing and Tela) (Florey 2002:263). In Indonesia, many of these languages are moribund. Florey argues that the fact that they are spoken in the Netherlands is propitious as the opportunities for language maintenance activities are better in that country. This is due to the extra financial and infrastructural resources and the existence of a Moluccan community in the Netherlands, which is active and highly motivated to preserve its own cultural and linguistic heritage. The Maluku Project is also involved in documentary linguistic training of local language activists. One southwest Moluccan language in the Netherlands, for which the existence of speakers remained unconfirmed in Florey (2002), was later found to have one speaker. This is Southeast Babar, and a phonological sketch is being prepared by Steinhauer (Steinhauer 2009). Surinam Javanese. Since about 1976 there has been a Surinamese Javanese community in the Netherlands. In 2000 it had 22,000 members living throughout


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the country. Its members have started a cultural foundation, the Rukun Budi Utama, which is running, among others, a radio station called Radio Budi Utama (http://RBU.Javanen.nl/content/view/142/71/, 9 March 2000). Perukunan Budi Sejati, another sociocultural organization (in Utrecht) is organizing and supervising a Javanese course with textbooks for beginners and advanced learners. 32 2.12.4 Javanese in Surinam The small Republic of Surinam in South America has a sizeable Javanese community living in Crommewijne District, and, to a less extent, along the Surinam coast. Its members came as contract workers to work in plantations. They were brought in from Indonesia by the Dutch between 1890 and 1939, when both countries were under Dutch rule. In 1971 the community had grown to 58,900 members, some of whom left for the Netherlands when Surinam became independent in 1976 (see 2.12.3). In 1994, the number was at 65,000. 33 Apart from Surinam and the Netherlands, Javanese speaking communities are also surviving in Malaysia and New Caledonia). The Javanese from Surinam (and their relatives in the Netherlands) speak a Central Javanese dialect. It has maintained in some form the high Javanese register which is so typical of Central Javanese, although this is reportedly in decline among young speakers. The language is reasonably well maintained as a home language in the homogenous Javanese village communities but is in competition with Sranan (the English Creole which is the most widely spoken language in Surinam) and Dutch among city dwellers and young people of Javanese descent (Satya Jadoenansing and Koefoed 1991). Sranan is necessary in communication with non-Javanese, and Dutch is necessary for upwards mobility. Serious linguistic documentation of Surinamese Javanese began in 1980 with a four-year project by the University of Surinam in the capital Paramaribo aiming at the description of the three main languages in Surinam, which are, in order of number of speakers, Sranan, Sranami (a creolized form of Hindi/Urdu), and Surinamese Javanese. The project resulted in the publication of a Surinamese Javanese—Dutch dictionary by Vruggink in collaboration with Sarmo in 2001 (Vruggink 2001). An orthography was devised in 1987, which was largely inspired by the official spelling of Sranan and other languages in Surinam. The Surinamese Javanese community has a cultural journal, Cikal, and the beginning of a modern literature in Surinamese Javanese (Vruggink 2001:xxxvi). 32 33

http://home.wanadoo.nl/javas/Vertellingen/PBI/Cursusjavanen.htm. http://www.surinaamsejavanen.homestead.com/javanen.html.


PART II Linguistic Vitality: Theory, Assessments, and Challenges


3 Language Endangerment Scenarios: A Case Study from Northern Central Sulawesi Nikolaus P. Himmelmann

3.1 Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to exemplify an approach to language endangerment in which endangerment is not defined with respect to a list of more or less disparate criteria such as number and age of speakers, homogeneity of the speech community, etc. Instead, language endangerment is seen as the possible outcome of an endangerment scenario, i.e. a specific and complex constellation of varied factors, some of which may be conducive to language shift, others to language maintenance. This concept is illustrated by an attempt to assess the viability of the Tomini-Tolitoli languages, a group of eleven languages/major dialects spoken by some 145,000 people in northern Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Section 3.2 introduces a distinction between the symptoms of language endangerment and its causes and then further defines and explains the notion of a language endangerment scenario. Section 3.3 provides background information on the TominiTolitoli languages and language area, including some essential notes on its sociology This chapter was first presented at the International Workshop on South-East Asian Studies No. 11: The study of endangered languages and literatures of South-East Asia in Leiden in December 1996. I wish to thank the members of the committee on endangered languages (AGBS) of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) and John Wolff for many helpful discussions which have deeply influenced my understanding of the phenomenon of language endangerment. Some of the general views expressed here are also found in the brochure on endangered languages produced by the AGBS (Arbeitsgruppe Bedrohte Sprachen, 1995, Informationsbroschüre zur Dokumentation von bedrohten Sprachen, Köln: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft). The emigration scenario discussed in section 3.4.1 emerged in conversation with John Wolff. Many thanks to Chuck Grimes, Andrew Pawley, Phil Quick, Hein Steinhauer and Chikao Yoshimura for comments on various versions of this chapter, and Margaret Florey for a very thorough and most helpful final editing. The fieldwork on which this chapter is based was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and carried out under the auspices of the Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (LIPI) and in cooperation with the Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa, Jakarta. I am very grateful for all the support received from these agencies and the large number of individuals (more than one hundred) who contributed to this project. Full acknowledgments may be found in Himmelmann (2001).

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Nikolaus P. Himmelmann

and history. Section 3.4 describes the two basic endangerment scenarios found in Tomini-Tolitoli language communities and then illustrates their possible outcomes by assessing the viability of each Tomini-Tolitoli language and major dialect. Section 3.5 concludes. The chapter draws on those aspects in work on language shift and language death that are relevant to minority groups in a developing nation such as Indonesia, including Dorian (1989); Sasse (1992); Mühlhäusler (1992, 1996); Landry and Allard (1994); Grenoble and Whaley (1998a); Hagège (2000); and Bradley and Bradley (2002). The only in-depth discussion of language shift in Indonesia to date remains Florey (1990). See Florey (2005a) for a brief overview of the overall endangerment situation in insular Southeast Asia.

3.2 Language Endangerment: Factors vs. Scenarios In many discussions of language endangerment it is common to operate with extensive and fairly heterogeneous lists of presumed ‘reasons’ or ‘causes’ of language endangerment (cf., for example, Dressler 1987; Wurm 1996; Crystal 2000). Often the fact that children do not acquire the language any longer is singled out as the most important ‘factor’ contributing to language death. In the present contribution, the discussion of language endangerment is based on the following two assumptions:

r It is useful to make a fairly strict distinction between directly observable symptoms (indications) of language endangerment and their often not so clearly discernible causes.

r It is rarely the case that one or two or three causes or factors lead to language endangerment. Instead, language endangerment results from the specific and complex constellation of a variety of such factors. A constellation of this kind is called an endangerment scenario in this chapter. Thus, scenario is used here as a technical term and not in the much looser, non-technical sense widely attested in the literature on endangered languages (e.g. Wurm 1996:2). In the remainder of this section, these two assumptions are further elaborated. Excluded from the discussion is one possible scenario for language death, i.e. the complete physical elimination of speech communities through violence, natural disaster, or disease. This scenario differs radically from the other scenarios to be discussed below, all of which involve language shift, a phenomenon absent from, or irrelevant to, the physical elimination scenario. There is, it seems to me, basically one essential symptom for the vitality of a language, i.e. the number and quality of the domains in which it is used. With quality I refer to the importance of a given domain within the overall language ecology in a given speech community, based on the breadth and variety of linguistic behaviour found in that domain. For example, the use of a language in a working environment

Language Endangerment Scenarios

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which consists basically of short commands and acknowledgments could be seen as less relevant to the vitality of the language than its use in informal conversations between family members which touches on a broad variety of topics and involves the use of many different linguistic routines. The number of domains is important because different domains often involve different registers. Some linguistic routines may occur only in a given register. Given this view of language vitality, language endangerment may be defined as a rapid decline in the number and quality of domains in which a given language is used. One very important domain is, of course, the interaction between parents (and other caregivers) and children. Note, however, that here the fact that children do not acquire a language any more is viewed as a symptom, and not a cause, of language endangerment. Given the anthropomorphic metaphor of language death it seems admittedly correct to say that a language is going to die because the intergenerational transmission is interrupted. However, when this presumed cause of language endangerment is compared with other presumed causes such as the small number of speakers, forced migration and dispersal of the speech community, the presence of another dominant language in the area, etc., it becomes obvious that the ‘cause’ interrupted intergenerational transmission is of a different nature than the other causes in this list. That is, it is at least one step further down in the causation chain. That children don’t acquire the language any more is not some spontaneous, unpredictable event in the history of a speech community. Instead, it is caused by a variety of factors which may cause other reductions in the usage domains of a given language as well (for example, the use of a new or different language in the educational domain or for trading purposes). A change of language usage in the interaction with children clearly has more dramatic consequences than a change of language in trading interactions. Still, the nature of these changes is similar and they pertain to the same level in the chain of events leading to language shift. This level is called here the level of symptoms of language endangerment and it is strictly distinguished from the level of the causes or factors that play a role in language endangerment scenarios. The assessment of factors leading to language endangerment is much more difficult than the assessment of its symptoms. To my knowledge, there is no factor that can be shown with certainty to cause a language shift. Take, for example, the migration of whole speech communities or individuals. Migration is often seen as playing a major role in language shift, and there are many actual examples where it seems undeniable that this factor is involved (the two scenarios to be discussed below for Tomini-Tolitoli languages, the immigration and the emigration scenarios, are cases in point). However, there is also a substantial number of examples of both individuals and groups where migration does not lead to language shift. In the Tomini-Tolitoli area, for example, there are various settlements populated by Javanese or Balinese (trans-)migrants. Even in the older settlements of this kind (thirty years and older), there is no evidence for a drastic decrease in the vitality of the native languages, Balinese and Javanese,

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respectively. 1 On the individual level, one finds in practically every Tomini-Tolitoli village a Chinese trader family. Some of these families have been living in the area for two generations and longer. Despite the fact that they often are the only Chinese speaking people in a given location, many of them are bilingual in Indonesian and Chinese, having only a rudimentary knowledge of the local languages. These examples should make it clear that the potential which any single factor might have for inducing language shift is only realized in a specific and complex constellation of factors, some of which may be conducive to language shift, others to language maintenance. As noted above, the term endangerment scenario is used here to refer to such a constellation of factors which may be observed in a speech community presently undergoing language shift. Connected to this notion is the hypothesis that given a detailed description of a broad variety of endangerment scenarios from all major regions of the world, it will be possible to come up with a typology of endangerment scenarios. Such a typology, in turn, will allow for a better understanding of language endangerment (and its possible ‘cures’) than the list approach, i.e. the attempt to compute degrees of endangerment on the basis of lists of values for presumed endangerment factors. 2

3.3 Tomini-Tolitoli Languages and Language Area3 The part of the northern Sulawesi peninsula inhabited by the Tomini-Tolitoli people is located roughly between the equator and 1◦ north latitude and around 120◦ east longitude. The peninsula is quite narrow in this part, with a chain of steep mountains running south to north, later turning west to east. This chain of mountains divides the area into two coastlines, the west coast being bordered by the Makassar Straits, and the east coast by the Tomini Bay. Table 3.1 lists the eleven major languages belonging to the Tomini-Tolitoli group, arranged in a rough geographical order (beginning in the southwest). The names in parentheses are alternate names used in the literature. The figures indicate the approximate number of speakers for each of the languages. 4 Neighbouring languages are, in the northeast, Buol (west coast) and Gorontalo (east coast), and in the south, Kaili, a network of closely related dialects which are spoken around the Palu Bay and adjoining areas, including Parigi, a town located on the east coast. The major dialects of this network found on the borders and within the Tomini-Tolitoli area are Tawaili, Ledo, Rai, and Tara. Apart from Buol, which has 1

For an in-depth study of Balinese migrations to Central Sulawesi see G. Davis 1976. Perhaps the most extreme example of this approach is the Language documentation urgency list (LDUL) proposed by D. Zaefferer in Munich (email address: [email protected]). 3 This section contains a brief synopsis of the background chapter in my sourcebook on Tomini-Tolitoli languages (Chapter 2 in Himmelmann 2001). In that chapter, the demographic, geographical, social, and historical aspects mentioned here are discussed in much greater detail. The sourcebook also features a number of maps where all the locations mentioned here can be found. 4 For reasons discussed in Himmelmann (2001:17f.,37), these figures are far from reliable. 2


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Table 3.1 Tomini-Tolitoli languages and major dialects West coast Balaesang Pendau (Ndau) Dampelas Dondo Totoli (Tolitoli)

ca. 3,200 ca. 3,200 ca. 10,300 ca. 13,000 ca. 25,000

East coast Taje (Petapa) Ampibabo-Lauje Tajio (Kasimbar) Lauje (Tinombo) Tialo (Tomini) Boano (Bolano)

ca. 350 ca. 6,000 ca. 12,000 ca. 38,000 ca. 30,000 ca. 2,700

Total: ca. 143,750

some 65,000 speakers, the other two languages have a substantially higher number of speakers than the Tomini-Tolitoli language group as a whole, Kaili some 300,000 and Gorontalo some 400,000. In terms of present day administrative units, the Tomini-Tolitoli languages are spoken in three districts (Kabupaten) of the province of Central Sulawesi: Donggala, Tolitoli and Parigi-Moutong. 5 The government of Donggala is located in Palu which is also the seat of the provincial government and today the single most dominating centre in all of Central Sulawesi. The government of Tolitoli is located in the town of Tolitoli, ca. 250 km north of Palu on the west coast. 6 The government of ParigiMoutong is found in Parigi, the major town on the east coast. The districts are further divided into subdistricts (kecamatan). Most of the speakers of Tomini-Tolitoli languages are found in thirteen kecamatan, nine on the west coast and four on the east coast. For the ensuing exposition of endangerment scenarios in the Tomini-Tolitoli area, it will be important to take note of the fact that the English word village is used here in reference to a typically Indonesian administrative unit (desa). A desa usually consists of a number of clusters of dwellings, which in turn may vary considerably in size (less than a dozen houses to 100 or more), and in addition includes substantial amounts of cultivated or uncultivated land. It is thus a much more extensive and much less tightly integrated unit than a traditional European village. See Banbara Dix Grimes (2006) for a more comprehensive explication and an investigation of how the modern administrative village structure deviates from the traditional ‘mental’ map of a given area. Following T. Li (1991), the Tomini-Tolitoli area may be divided into the following three distinct agro-ecological zones based on both bio-physical as well as social components: 7 5 Kabupaten Tolitoli was formed only in 1999 by splitting up the former Kabupaten Buol-Tolitoli. Kabupaten Parigi-Moutong is an even more recent creation which became fully operational only in 2003. Formerly, the five Kecamatan forming this new Kabupaten were part of Kabupaten Donggala. 6 Travelling along the coastline, the distance between Palu and Tolitoli is 438 km. 7 Li’s study pertains to the Tinombo region which is predominantly populated by Lauje, but her results may be applied to the Tomini-Tolitoli area as a whole with a few modifications (cf. Himmelmann 2001:49f.).

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r the coastal zone is characterized by seasonal rainfall, the vegetation consisting of mangroves, grass, bushes, and light secondary forest. The most conspicuous crops are coconuts and wet rice, but the coastal population often also own gardens in the middle hills. Other sources of income include wage work (hired farm labor and government jobs such as teachers) and fishing. 99 per cent of the coastal population is Islamic, a large majority of them actively taking part in the religious, social, and political life of the village.

r the middle hills are characterized by frequent rainfalls and a mixture of secondary

and primary forest. Middle hill people live at some distance from the coast, often in fact at the foot of the hills or on an inland plain, in village or hamlet-like settlements; they cultivate dry rice, corn and cash crops (shallots, cashews, cocoa, etc.); they are at least nominally Islamic and share the basic values of the coastal population; they are to a large extent integrated in the governmental control- and benefit-system.

r the inner hills are characterized by very frequent rainfalls and deep secondary and

primary forest. Inner hill people live close to the forest frontier in small groups of 2–3 households, plant taro and cassava as their main staple food, eat pigs, do not adapt their values, lifestyle and dressing to coastal standards, and are affiliated with either an indigenous religion or Christianity. While inner and middle hill people, to date, seem to form socially and economically fairly homogeneous groups, the coastal population is divided into economic/occupational classes. 8 The majority of the population call themselves farmers. They gain their livelihood through wage work (for the owners of large coconut plantations, sawah (wet-rice fields) or cash crop gardens), petty trade, and gardening and/or fishing. The professional fishermen form a homogeneously distinct group, who usually do not own their own equipment (and thus have to share the catch with the equipment owner) and who more often than not live in their own hamlet on the shore, the village centre usually being located up to 1 km inland. Another class is formed by the political and educational elite who control the local government and educational institutions, and a substantial part of the fertile coastal land. Finally, there is the very small, but economically the most powerful, class of traders who buy the local cash crops (copra, chocolate, garlic, etc.), finance rattan expeditions and fishing equipment, run minibus services to Palu and own stores well-stocked with household items, dry goods, hardware, etc. Most traders are Chinese or Buginese. As for the history of the Tomini-Tolitoli area, there are only very few records directly concerned with it up to the most recent times (ca. 1970). This lack of historical records is just one of a number of indications for the fact that the area has been, and continues to be, a peripheral one. It has never been a power centre dominating adjoining areas 8 As Li repeatedly points out, this state of affairs is presently undergoing rapid change through the increased cultivation of cash crops in the hill regions. Since access to fertile land is not evenly distributed, one may see in the near future class distinctions in inner and middle hill areas similar to those on the coast.


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but, instead, has always been at the very fringes of the various powers which have sought to control parts or all of Sulawesi. 9 In the current context of exemplifying the notion of an endangerment scenario, the following fairly well-established historical facts 10 are of major relevance. In the early eighteenth century, powerful Bugis and Mandar kingdoms in South Sulawesi took over the control of the Tomini-Tolitoli coast lines, in cooperation with their Kaili allies who had been subjugated by them earlier on. Their primary goal was to use the largely ‘empty’ coastal planes of the Tomini-Tolitoli area for coconut plantations. To this end, marriages were arranged between male members of the Bugis, Mandar, or Kaili nobility and female members of the Tomini-Tolitoli nobility. The task of the Tomini-Tolitoli nobility was to persuade (or force) their people to move with them from the mountains to the coastal planes and work on the plantations. In several areas this lead to a split between the members of a Tomini-Tolitoli tribe, with part of the population remaining in the mountains (the ancestors of the present day inner and middle hill people) and the other part following their nobility down to the coast (the ancestors of the present day coastal population). 11 From a sociolinguistic point of view, it is important to note that only a few outsiders (Bugis, Mandar, or Kaili) were directly involved in this enterprise. These outsiders settled in the area and learned the language. The pact between the two nobilities was continually renewed through intermarriages according to the same pattern (male Bugis/Mandar/Kaili and female Tomini-Tolitoli). This seems to have happened fairly consistently until about the 1950s as shown by the fact that most members of the present day political elite of the Tomini-Tolitoli coastal population (i.e. the descendants of the former nobility) claim to have at least one continuous chain of Bugis, Mandar or Kaili males in their ancestry. 12 Nevertheless, in the older generation it is the rule rather than the exception that the members of this elite are fluent and competent speakers of a Tomini-Tolitoli language which is generally their first (their mother’s) language (they also know Kaili and/or Bugis and Indonesian). This interactional pattern between South Sulawesi and Tomini-Tolitoli changed radically around 1900 (or 1930?) when substantial numbers of poor (common) South Sulawesi people began to migrate to the supposedly still largely empty but fertile 13 land of the Tomini-Tolitoli area. These migrants generally settled in, or close to, the established coastal villages and opened up new locations for their own plantations. They usually arrived with little more than the capital and tools necessary to stake out claims, to clear the forest and buy a first set of seedlings. They achieved an 9

See Henley (1989) for a short, but comprehensive outline of the history of Sulawesi. Compare Adriani and Kruyt (1912:117–166, 297–360), Davis (1976:94–105), Masyhuda (1977:9–52), and Nourse (1989:1–101). 11 Cf. Nourse (1989:4–11,69–101) for the Lauje version of these events. 12 It is thus not surprising that many of them have typically South Sulawesi names such as Amerang Hj. Dg. Palipa, Abrahman Dg. Mallawa, etc. 13 Compared to the very fertile volcanic soil found in Java, Bali, or Minahasa, the alluvial soil found in Central Sulawesi is rather poor. Thus, ‘fertile’ here means something like ‘land amenable to agriculture’. 10

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economic position similar to the native Tomini-Tolitoli within a generation or so, often even being economically more successful than the average Tomini-Tolitoli family in a given village. Moreover, they started almost immediately to interact socially with the Tomini-Tolitoli (the nobility probably functioning as an intermediary). The major focus of this migration was the west coast. It happened in various waves and actually continues to the present day, albeit on a much smaller scale. As will be discussed in detail in Section 3.4.2, this migration had a considerable impact on language use in the affected areas. A similar impact can be observed for the rapid change (modernization) engineered by the Indonesian government which has occurred in the region since about 1970. In some areas (in particular in the town of Tolitoli and its vicinity), this change occurred extremely fast because of the economically very successful introduction of new cash crops such as cloves (for which there was a boom in the 1970s but the value has since dropped considerably). The first and major innovation was the establishment of an extensive network of primary schools (all villages and most settlement projects today have at least one primary school, referred to as SD in Indonesian), followed by health centres, sealed roads, electricity, and television. That is, at least the coastal zones have become fully integrated parts of modern Indonesia. The power centre, of course, continues to be in Palu and the provincial government is dominated by Kaili (and people from South Sulawesi) but a number of Tomini-Tolitoli participate in the local government on the district and subdistrict levels, especially in the newly created districts Tolitoli and Parigi-Moutong. As for the middle and inner hill regions, considerable efforts have been made by the Indonesian government, missionaries and foreign aid development projects to integrate their population in the modernization process. Resettlement projects, which have the task of bringing the inner hill people closer to the coastal village centres, have been established for nearly all inner hill people. The exception are the inner hill Lauje in the Tinombo and Tomini subdistricts, as further elaborated at the end of Section 3.4.2.3. 14

3.4 Endangerment Scenarios in the Tomini-Tolitoli Area 3.4.1 Basic scenarios Leaving aside the specific features distinguishing individual speech communities in the Tomini-Tolitoli area, two basic scenarios for language endangerment may be discerned:

r the immigration scenario in which members of another speech community from outside the area ‘take over’ a Tomini-Tolitoli speech community. 14 Some of the inner hill Lauje are ‘taken care of ’—so at least it is perceived by the district and provincial administrations—by New Tribes Missionaries who have been operating in the mountains above Tinombo since the 1970s.


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r the emigration scenario in which there is a substantial, though temporary migration of members of a Tomini-Tolitoli speech community to educational and/or occupational centers in- and outside the Tomini-Tolitoli area. Before commenting in more detail on these two basic scenarios it is important to notice the following: the names as well as the brief characterizations of these two scenarios make reference to one factor (immigration and emigration, respectively). This is not to be interpreted as claiming that these are single, isolable factors causing the presently observable language endangerment in the area. Instead, as already discussed in Section 3.2, the scenarios consist of a complex constellation of a variety of factors, of which the two factors chosen for naming and characterizing the two scenarios are arguably the most conspicuous ones. The following discussion explores the sociostructural factors relevant to the two basic scenarios. It will come as no surprise to learn that they share many factors since they both involve migrations. An effort is made in any given instance to point out examples where the factor under discussion has not induced language shift, thus providing empirical support for the present approach which holds that it is never a lone factor that induces language shift. The two scenarios are based on participant observation and informal conversations. I travelled the whole area during two longer field trips (1988 and 1993), and one shorter trip in 2002. Altogether 12 months were spent on location, the time allocated for the visit of a given settlement or village varying between one day and six weeks. In all the locations mentioned below, I spent at least two weeks (exceptions to this rule are explicitly indicated). 3.4.1.1 IMMIGRATION SCENARIO The first point to note with respect to the immigration scenario is that the migrants actually have to occupy settlements and farmland which were inhabited and used before exclusively by the Tomini-Tolitoli speech community. That is, there are both past and present examples of migrations into the area which have not affected the viability of Tomini-Tolitoli speech communities. In the past, Bajau have settled in various places on the east and west coasts (e.g. Pomolulu in Kecamatan Balaesang, Simatang in Kecamatan Dampal Utara, Bajo in Kecamatan Moutong). These settlements are usually located either directly on the coast line or on smaller off-shore islands, i.e. locations not inhabited by Tomini-Tolitoli people. The interaction between Bajau and Tomini-Tolitoli seems to have been confined largely to trade, with the Bajau providing fish and the Tomini-Tolitoli produce (there is one example of closer social interaction, including quite a few intermarriages, which will be discussed in Section 3.4.2.3). Examples of modern migrations which (so far) have not affected the viability of Tomini-Tolitoli speech communities are the various large transmigration projects found throughout the area, generally populated by Javanese and/or Balinese migrants (e.g. Budi and Karya Mukti in Kecamatan Dampelas, Kota Raya in Kecamatan Tomini). The projects are located in extensive inland plains which were ‘empty’ before in the

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sense that there were no permanent Tomini-Tolitoli settlements or extensive clusters of garden locations in these plains. 15 At present, the interaction between TominiTolitoli and transmigrants is confined to small scale trade (mostly produce sold by the transmigrants to the Tomini-Tolitoli). A second point to note with respect to the immigration scenario is that a certain proportion of migrants is necessary in order for there to be an impact on language usage in the community. It is difficult to specify this number with any degree of precision. Perhaps most important in this regard is the fact that in Tomini-Tolitoli speech communities it does not take a large number of speakers of another language in order to change language usage. According to my observations, the following interrelated phenomena are found today in most villages with a population of about 20 per cent (or more) non-Tomini-Tolitoli:

r the migrants do not even have a rudimentary knowledge of the Tomini-Tolitoli language;

r whenever a non-Tomini-Tolitoli is present in a communicative situation either Indonesian or some other mutually available language (Bugis or Kaili) is used;

r the language of the public domain (meetings, political discussions, much of the everyday talk that can be overheard in the streets) is Indonesian. This observation is to be contrasted with the following two. First, if there are only a few ‘outsiders’ in a village, one or two Chinese or Bugis trader families, for example, then these ‘outsiders’ will understand enough of the local Tomini-Tolitoli language to follow everyday conversations. They will also have a fair command of some basic formulae and patterns of this language (but rarely be fluent speakers). Second, in villages where migrants form a majority, the Tomini-Tolitoli will be fluent in the majority language, usually Kaili or Bugis. In villages with a more varied population there is a strong tendency for Indonesian to be the general public domain language. However, given that Bugis form a strong minority in the overall population (say 30 per cent) then Buginese will also be used in the public domain. The preceding remarks pertain only to the interaction between Tomini-Tolitoli and out-of-area migrants. If speakers of two different Tomini-Tolitoli languages settle in the same village, it is always the case that the ‘newcomers’ have a complete command of the local language. It is, however, extremely rare that a substantial number of TominiTolitoli migrates to an established Tomini-Tolitoli settlement (the major example is the migration of Lauje to Dondo and Tialo settlements in Kecamatan Dondo and Tomini). 16 15 It is highly likely, however, that these plains were used to some extent by Tomini-Tolitoli middle and inner hill people. This is suggested by the fact that one finds various resettlement projects scattered around most transmigration areas. 16 Lauje is very similar, and closely related, to Dondo and Tialo. Dondo and Tialo are even more closely related to each other and could be considered dialects of a single language (cf. Himmelmann 2001:20).


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A somewhat special case in this regard appears to be the village of Lakuan located at the border between Totoli and Buol speaking areas (forming the northeastern-most boundary of the Tomini-Tolitoli area). Here Totoli is clearly the dominant language despite the fact that a large part of the population claims to have Buol or Dondo ancestry. A third point to note with respect to the immigration scenario is that the occupational or class background of migrants does not seem to be of particular importance for their impact on the usage of the Tomini-Tolitoli language. Migrants fall in two broad classes with respect to socioeconomic status and power. On the one hand, there are government officials (administrators, police, teachers) and traders, who usually own some land and/or capital, the former also having considerable political influence and high social prestige. On the other hand, there are poor South Sulawesi farmers who are looking for unclaimed patches of farmable land. For both classes of migrants, the impact they have on patterns of language use seems to depend essentially on their relative numbers (see above). As far as any differences in their impact may be discerned, these pertain to more circumstantial aspects such as the likelihood of a given location to attract one or the other class of migrants in substantial numbers. A substantial number of government officials and traders is found only in administrative centres (most of the subdistrict capitals belong in this category). In these centres there is, in general, no space for migrant farmers. Thus, migrant farmers are found in ‘normal’ villages. A second difference pertains to the fact that migrant farmers usually come in larger groups (and therefore quite generally make a noticeable impact on linguistic usage in the village they settle) while the number of traders and government officials in ‘normal’ villages is very small (but there is practically no village without at least one trader and one or two teachers who are not natives of the village). A fourth aspect of the immigration scenario is the degree to which the original population and more recently arrived migrants intermingle. Upon arrival, the newcomers usually have to settle at the periphery of a village. 17 Hence it is not surprising that in many villages some quarters (dusun) are heavily (or exclusively) populated by speakers of a Tomini-Tolitoli language, while others are mostly populated by speakers of an out-of-area language. While in administrative centres this pattern can be maintained over generations, in the villages it may change as fast as within one or two generations. The most important factor in this change is intermarriage, for which the most common pattern is to have a migrant man proposing to a Tomini-Tolitoli woman (a pattern already followed by the nobles in former centuries (see Section 3.3 above)). The relevance of this change for patterns of language use is this: as long as the population of a dusun is fairly homogeneous, the common everyday language in the dusun will be the native language of its inhabitants (i.e. a Tomini-Tolitoli language in a Tomini-Tolitoli dusun, Buginese in a Bugis dusun, etc.). As soon as a dusun becomes 17 Possible exceptions to this general ‘rule’ are instances where a sizeable fraction of the original village population has died at once (through violence, natural catastrophes, or disease), thus allowing the new arrivals to move into locations in the village centre.

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more heterogeneous with respect to linguistic affiliations, either Indonesian or, if it was originally inhabited mainly by migrants, the migrants’ native language becomes the medium of everyday conversation. I have not come across an instance where a TominiTolitoli language dominates in a quarter shared by Tomini-Tolitoli and a substantial minority group of out-of-area migrants. Note that the sociolinguistic impact of intermingling on the dusun level is much more pervasive than the impact of intermingling on the village level. On the village level, this impact is generally restricted to the public domain, often only to the more formal interactions in the public domain (such as school, village meeting, paying an official visit to the village head, etc.). On the dusun level it potentially encompasses all linguistic domains. Minimally, it influences all linguistic interactions from which the next door neighbours are not to be excluded. Given that the yard surrounding a house and the ‘living room’ (i.e. the space in a house designated for entertaining guests) are semi-public spaces in which the neighbours have a ‘right’ to know what’s going on, the domains not directly influenced by the linguistic norms holding at the dusun-level are the kind of linguistic interactions that take place in the kitchen and the space allocated to eating (sometimes part of the kitchen) and sleeping. In the case of intermarriages, a non-Tomini-Tolitoli language will be used in these spaces as well. Exempt from the general ‘rule’ stated in the preceding paragraph are older speakers (70 and above). These speakers tend to use their native language when conversing among themselves as well as when conversing with younger people (provided these know the language). In both instances it is considered socially acceptable that some of the people present in the communicative situation are excluded from the conversation in the sense that they are unable to fully understand what is being said. One major reason for this exception seems to be the fact that older speakers often only have a poor command of the ‘new’ everyday language. In other words, in those instances where older speakers are fluent in the dominant non-Tomini-Tolitoli language they will also use this language in everyday interaction. As briefly mentioned above, the three major candidates for being the everyday language in a dusun with mixed population are Indonesian, Bugis, and Kaili. Kaili is often well known by older speakers of a Tomini-Tolitoli language because it seems to have been a lingua franca in the area for quite some time (200–300 years?). Hence it is least likely to find older speakers regularly using a Tomini-Tolitoli language in a dusun (or village) where Kaili has become the everyday language. Similar observations hold for some parts of the west coast where Bugis has been a dominant language for at least 100 years (in particular, northern Dampelas-Sojol, Dampal Selatan, and Dampal Utara). Overall, it holds true that of the said three languages, Indonesian is least known among the older generation of Tomini-Tolitoli speakers. Note, however, that there is a substantial minority of older speakers who are fluent and competent speakers of Indonesian. A fifth aspect of the immigration scenario pertains to the location of the farmed land with respect to the village centre. Wet-rice fields (sawah) and coconut plantations are


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generally found in the environs of the village. Hence it is possible to work these sites from the home in the village. Garden locations, on the other hand, can be located at a considerable distance from the village centre. Working there means commuting between the village home and a temporary lodging in the garden. The time spent in the garden is essentially determined by economic factors. If the garden is the major source of a family’s income it is not unusual for such a family to spend most of its time in the garden, paying only occasional visits to the village centre (on market days, for example). A major conflict arises when a family has children of school age. Since the school is always located in the village centre, this means that the family is either split between village home and garden location or that the children only sporadically attend school. The latter is the clearly disfavoured option chosen only if the garden requires the work of all family members at a time. Well-to-do families hire labour for doing most of the work in the garden, paying only occasional visits to the garden location. Those who have a job in the village centre (teachers, for example) work their gardens irregularly. The relevance of this factor is to be seen in relation to the preceding one: the garden locations are generally inhabited only by the nuclear family (parents and unmarried children), the next neighbour being relatively far away (at least 100 metres). Thus, language usage in the garden is solely determined by the family members. If husband and wife are native speakers of a Tomini-Tolitoli language, the family will use this TominiTolitoli language for everyday conversation. The more time spent in the garden the less the linguistic usage within the nuclear family is influenced by the linguistic norms on the dusun and village levels. To conclude this discussion of the immigration scenario, note that none of the factors mentioned necessarily leads to language shift. Although the arrival of a substantial number of migrants in a given area certainly has some impact on language usage everywhere in the world, none of the factors mentioned above excludes the possibility that a situation of stable bilingualism arises in the wake of the migration. As far as I could ascertain, it is not the case that the migrants violently entered Tomini-Tolitoli territory and subjugated the native population, forcing their linguistic and cultural practices on them. Instead, the Tomini-Tolitoli seem to adjust themselves readily to the migrants. This is particularly obvious in those instances where a relatively small minority of migrants (20–30 per cent of the overall population) has a considerable impact on linguistic usage. I will return briefly to this issue in section 3.4.1.3 after discussing the emigration scenario, for which the same observation holds. 3.4.1.2 EMIGRATION SCENARIO The emigration scenario is characterized by the following cluster of interrelated factors: apart from farming, all other work opportunities open to Tomini-Tolitoli people require them to live outside their native village for an extended period of time. At present, there is actually just one such alternative work opportunity, i.e. to work for the government. There is hardly any industry in the whole province of Central Sulawesi, and the few fishery and logging companies that exist are

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financed by foreign capital and bring their own labour. The trading networks are firmly controlled by Bugis and Chinese traders and generally do not involve Tomini-Tolitoli people (apart from a few people who function as the local representative of a larger company at the village level). Government employees work either in the extensive administrative network established by the Indonesian government since 1965 (the basic layout of the national administration is copied at the provincial, district and subdistricts levels) or in the educational sector (most teachers are government employees 18 ). With the exception of primary school teachers, they rarely work in, or close to, their native villages, at least not early in their careers. That is, they live and work in an environment where Indonesian is the everyday language. Of some importance in this regard is the fact that there are special housing programmes for government employees, a factor contributing to their relative isolation from the surrounding community. A fairly typical example is a high school (or more precisely: upper secondary school, usually referred to as SMA in Indonesia), of which there are quite a few in the larger villages throughout Central Sulawesi. The teachers in such a school usually come from a variety of linguistic backgrounds, including the native languages of North, Central, and South Sulawesi, and Balinese. The teachers’ houses are built on the school ground. They converse in Indonesian among themselves and interact only minimally with the community in which the school is located. The relevance of this scenario for usage patterns consists of the fact that Indonesian is also the language commonly used at home even if husband and wife share the same native language. Most importantly, their children acquire Indonesian as their native language and hardly acquire much knowledge about any other language (depending on the degree of contact and interaction with grandparents and other relatives, which will be commented on shortly). Note that this phenomenon is not restricted to the families of Tomini-Tolitoli speakers but pertains to all families of government employees irrespective of their linguistic background (at least in the parts of Central Sulawesi I have visited). It also includes, for example, Bugis 19 who otherwise are known to display a particularly strong allegiance to their native language. Moreover, this is not a recent phenomenon. Several government officials I met—who were in their thirties and forties and whose parents were also government employees—claimed to have grown up learning only Indonesian and knowing only bits and pieces of native Sulawesi languages. So far, the exposition of the emigration scenario has been concerned with the nuclear family. However, the impact of this scenario is not confined to the nuclear family but may also affect language usage in the native village of such families. This is so because the ‘migrant’ family remains closely linked to the village by a bundle of personal and 18 There are a number of private schools in the area sponsored by Islamic organizations. Their number has increased constantly during the 1990s and in late 2002 there was such a school in almost every village. 19 The Bugis in the area typically work in the administrative sector (including the judicial system) rather than as teachers.


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economic ties. Economically, such a family often will own some land in the native village which, though not worked by themselves but by hired labour, provides a highly welcome additional income. In fact, the cash income earned through the government position often allows more senior employees to extend their property in the native village. 20 The existence of such property ensures that government employees return regularly to their native village. It is also a strong incentive to seek appointments close to the native village during the later stages of one’s career 21 and to return for good to the village on retirement (the regular retirement age is 55). The impact such government employed families may have on language usage in their native village is very similar to that of the out-of-area migrants discussed above with respect to the immigration scenario. As in the immigration scenario, these families have a noticeable impact on usage patterns only if a certain number of them is present in a given dusun. They then will form a network of people who consistently use Indonesian when talking among themselves. They are used to speaking Indonesian at home and their children do not know the native language of the village. Their relatives and neighbours will tend to assimilate to this state of affairs and also use Indonesian in most interactions with these families. Apart from this direct influence the families of government employees have through their actual linguistic practices, there is also a more subtle and indirect influence. In general, such families will enjoy a relatively high social prestige because of their education and their economic power. Their good command of Indonesian is seen as one major factor in their success. Hence, all families aspiring to similar achievements will tend to emphasize the use of Indonesian in their linguistic interactions. Some families actually adopt an Indonesian-only policy in conversing with their children even if their economic resources are fairly limited (and hence the prospect of a higher education for their children rather dim). The major ‘prerequisite’ for the emigration scenario, then, is that a number of families are present in one village and generation with the economic means to afford a higher education for (some of ) their children. Becoming a government employee is a lengthy and expensive process because one has to pass middle school (‘lower secondary school’ or SMP) and high school (SMA) and do some basic course work at university. Since SMPs and SMAs are not found in every village, the students have to leave their families and live as boarders in larger villages or administrative centres. To receive a university education they have to move to the provincial capital, Palu, or even further away to Makassar (formerly Ujung Pandang) in South Sulawesi, or to Surabaya in Java. 20 It is very difficult to acquire land for gardens close to the location of an employee’s work because most of the land in the vicinity will be already in somebody’s possession. This holds in particular of the cities (Palu and Tolitoli) but is also true for all subdistrict capitals. Furthermore, for many employees it would not make much sense to acquire land close to their work location because they are very often shifted between various work locations, in particular in the wake of promotions. 21 New government employees are expected to take on inconvenient assignments as a sign of their gratitude for having been accepted into government service. They also lack the contacts and experience necessary for influencing one’s appointments.

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Given that the extensive network of primary schools presently found in the area has only been built up since the early 1970s, it should not come as a surprise that up to that date very few Tomini-Tolitoli families were aware of the possibilities of education. Thus, one finds only a few Tomini-Tolitoli teachers who are fifty years old or older, and even fewer Tomini-Tolitoli in the same age bracket in other government positions (the positions are generally on the subdistrict level and never exceed the district level). These older Tomini-Tolitoli government employees are usually part of the traditional elite whose economic power rests on their extensive coconut plantations and the relations with their Kaili and South Sulawesi kin, established and continually renewed by intermarriage for at least 200 years (cf. Section 3.3 above). The 1970s not only brought more accessible primary schools but also a first boom in cash crops other than coconuts, which allowed many of the poorer relatives of the old elite to pursue careers in the rapidly expanding government agencies. That is, within the generation of the thirty and forty year olds there are several areas within the Tomini-Tolitoli region where the effects of the emigration scenario are clearly visible (details in Section 3.4.2.2). Note that, at present, the overall impact of this scenario is still relatively minor since there are not many villages where enough people have the economic power to pursue careers outside the village. In the not too distant future, however, it may well turn out to be the major scenario for a quickly progressing language shift in those areas which to date have remained relatively unaffected by the immigration scenario (but see the qualifications in Section 3.4.2.3). 3.4.1.3 COMMONALITIES AND ‘DEEPER CAUSES’ In concluding this section, note that the two scenarios are partially in complementary distribution: only areas where extensive stretches of land have been cultivated for some time have the economic potential for the emigration scenario. Extensive cultivation precludes one instantiation of the immigration scenario, i.e. the one involving farming migrants, since there is no land left for newcomers to cultivate. Conversely, areas with lots of ‘empty’ space inviting newcomers to settle permanently lack the economic potential for temporary migrations in pursuit of higher education. Furthermore, both scenarios also share some more or less circumstantial factors which potentially contribute to the ongoing language shift. These include the following three:

r the extensive network of primary schools throughout the area which was already mentioned above. This is correlated with the fact that in all villages there is at least one linguistic domain in which Indonesian is the dominant language. The decentralization policy setting in in Indonesia after the fall of the Suharto government in 1998 has brought more autonomy to regional and local government agencies, including the educational sector (compare, for example, Indonesian Government Regulation No. 25/2000 on educational decentralization and Law No 20/2003 on the National Education System). Primary schools now have the option to include


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classes in the local vernacular in their curriculum, but to date (i.e. 2007) little use has been made of this option. 22

r the rapid introduction of television which began in the late 1980s. In 1993 at least one or two television sets were found in practically every village. The social consequences of the introduction of television are quite noticeable, because watching television has become almost immediately the most favoured evening entertainment. The programmes are nowadays almost all in Indonesian or have at least Indonesian subtitles (in the early days of Indonesian television, many English language series and movies were shown, often with few or no subtitles).

r the much improved transportation system—better roads providing for faster,

cheaper and more regular transportation—which allows a higher degree of general mobility. This is particularly relevant for the emigration scenario since it gives the employees in the administrative centers the possibility to spend weekends and short holidays in their native villages. This used to be impossible at times when most journeys took a minimum of 8–10 hours and were highly unpredictable because of constantly changing road conditions. More importantly perhaps, both scenarios as outlined here are similar in that they pertain to the somewhat shallow or superficial level of the outwardly observable. That is, one could easily argue that they do not get to the ‘real’ or ‘deeper’ causes of language shift. Thus, for example, it is obvious that the migratory movements which play an essential role in both scenarios are not spontaneous happenings which are not amenable to further explanation or motivation. Instead, they most certainly have their deeper causes in economic motives and forces. The farmers migrating to the TominiTotoli area all come from heavily overpopulated areas (South Sulawesi, Java, Bali) where it is hardly possible to get access to enough land to support oneself and a family by farming. Young members of Tomini-Tolitoli speech communities want to get a better education in order to be able to get better paid and relatively secure jobs. While there can be no doubt about the relevance of such deeper economic forces, I would hold that the kind of more ‘superficial’ scenario sketched here still is an important facet in a coherent and comprehensive theory of language endangerment. We will return to this point in the conclusion (Section 3.5). Another aspect of both scenarios that demands explanation on a deeper level pertains to the fact that in both scenarios it is possible for a minority to influence the linguistic usage patterns of a majority of native Tomini-Tolitoli in the direction of a reduction in the usage domains of the Tomini-Tolitoli language. Most importantly, in both scenarios it is not at all obvious why the changes induced by the arrival of out-of-area migrants or a substantial number of native government employees do not lead to relatively stable bi- or multilingual settings. This is particularly surprising 22 See Mochtar (2005) for a first investigation of the impact of the new policy options on curriculum development and language maintenance in the area, focusing on Totoli.

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because multilingualism seems to have been the norm in the area for centuries. And bilingualism is the norm for many of the out-of-state migrants, such as the Bugis, Chinese, and Bajau, many of whom are bilingual in Indonesian and their native languages. It seems to me that none of the sociostructural factors discussed so far can account for this essential aspect. It is also not obvious whether and how the individual decisions leading to mono- rather than multilingualism could be conditioned by economic factors or considerations (other than in a trivializing Marxist view that all social cognition and behaviour is rooted in economic power relations). Instead, it seems necessary to turn to factors related to social psychology and their sociohistorical sources in order to address this question in a fruitful manner. This is a topic well beyond the scope of this chapter and the expertise of its author. Two relatively superficial aspects of relevance for such a study, however, are fairly clear. First, the Tomini-Tolitoli area has been, and continues to be, at the outer periphery of a power and dominance network whose main centre is in Makassar (controlled by Bugis and Makasar) and whose intermediary centre today is in Palu (controlled by Kaili and migrants from South Sulawesi). This has been the case for at least two hundred, probably three hundred years. One small piece of evidence for this power network is the fact that the predecessors of the present university in Palu, Universitas Tadulako, were two out-of-state branches of higher education institutions in Makassar, i.e. Universitas Hasanuddin and IKIP (teachers college) Ujung Pandang. These two branches were integrated into the new Universitas Tadulako in 1981. The majority of the staff of the present Universitas Tadulako continues to be from South Sulawesi. Second, many Tomini-Tolitoli speakers admit that they feel ashamed (Indonesian malu) to use their native language in the presence of native speakers of out-of-area languages such as Kaili, Bugis or Gorontalo (but not Balinese or Chinese!). Several times I met people who tried to hide their linguistic affiliations, claiming to be native speakers of Buginese. 3.4.2 The present state of the Tomini-Tolitoli languages From the preceding discussion one prognosis clearly emerges: if the Tomini-Tolitoli languages have a future at all, it will be as part of a complex language ecology which involves at least one non-Tomini-Tolitoli language, dominating the linguistic interactions in the political, administrative and educational domains, i.e. Indonesian. This is not a totally new scenario since individual and societal bi- and multilingualism have been a common phenomenon in the area for quite a long time. What is threatened, however, is the relative stability of the former bi- and multilingual settings and the role the Tomini-Tolitoli languages had to play in these settings. The ongoing sociocultural changes will affect the usage of the Tomini-Tolitoli languages, generally in the direction of a reduction in their use. Inasmuch as all Tomini-Tolitoli languages face (further) reductions in their usage domains, it can be claimed that they are all endangered. Such an assessment, however, is of fairly


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limited value since it obfuscates the quite substantial differences that exist between the various speech communities with respect to their potential of (re-)developing a stable multilingual setting which includes a Tomini-Tolitoli language. Taking this potential as the major parameter, a fairly broad distinction between three kinds of Tomini-Tolitoli speech communities can be made:

r those where the prerequisites for a stable multilingual setting including a TominiTolitoli language no longer seem to exist. The Tomini-Tolitoli languages in these communities may be characterized as moribund.

r those where it is unlikely that a stable multilingual setting including a Tomini-

Tolitoli language will re-emerge. Here one could distinguish various degrees of likelihood (‘from highly unlikely’ to ‘not very likely’). The Tomini-Tolitoli languages in these communities may be characterized as endangered.

r those where there is, in principle, a potential for a prominent role of the Tomini-

Tolitoli language in the emerging new language ecology, provided that the process of language shift currently in its incipient stages is brought to a halt. The Tomini-Tolitoli languages in these communities may be characterized as vital, but long-term endangered. The following review of the present state of the Tomini-Tolitoli languages is organized in accordance with these three broad classes. 3.4.2.1 MORIBUND LANGUAGES Moribund languages are here defined as languages whose domains of use are already extremely limited and, in particular, do not include any longer regular verbal interactions with children. Typically, speakers still having a relatively full command of the language are in their fifties or older. There are two such languages in the area, i.e. Taje and Dampal. In both cases the present state is a consequence of the immigration scenario. The Dampal were the original settlers in the area between Ogoamas (northern tip of Sojol) and Bangkir (Dampal Selatan). Today, there are only very few, not more than 300, native Dampal left. Most of them are intermarried with Bugis and do not speak Dampal any more. Bugis and Mandar have been migrating to the area since about 1920 and dominate it today (95 per cent of the present population, i.e. ca. 20,000 people, are Bugis or Mandar). Reportedly, a disastrous smallpox epidemic occurred among the Dampal in 1919, when 800 families (ca. 3,500 people?) died within three months. That is, the area seems to have been largely depopulated in the very early stages of the migration of South Sulawesi farmers to the Tomini-Tolitoli region. Dampal probably was a dialect of Dampelas, a language spoken some 100 kilometres to the south of the present-day location of the Dampal. The two populations must have been separated for quite some time since they hardly know of each other. I stayed for about 3 weeks in the Dampal area and managed to unearth only tiny fragments of information about the Dampal and their language (in the more vital communities about ten times as much information was gathered in the same amount

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of time). Most of the few rememberers that I met—none of them younger than fifty— had problems in providing basic lexical information (the Swadesh 200 word list). Only two speakers seemed to have achieved some fluency in their childhood and were able to provide a short text and a few elicited clauses. Both of them have died since. The Taje are the original settlers of Petapa, a village located at the southernmost end of Tomini-Tolitoli area on the east coast, close to Parigi. The distance to the next location of a group of Tomini-Tolitoli speakers (i.e. Sidole) is ca. 50 km. Petapa’s population of 1568 (1992 census) consists of two Kaili groups, Tara and Rai, and Taje. Today, the Tara are the dominant group in terms of numbers of speakers (more than 50 per cent of the village population), economically and linguistically. Truly native Taje, i.e. both parents being Taje, are few. Estimates varied around 15 per cent of the village population (ca. 200 people). There are, however, considerably more people who know some Taje because one parent was Taje. That these people know some Taje at all is probably due to the fact that most of the Taje live in one dusun (Kamonji) which is separated by a few rice fields from the other parts of the village. Most Taje claimed that they didn’t know the language very well and pointed to one older man as the one person who really knew the language (and the one to ask questions about the language). In eliciting lexical items, the four contributors I worked with made an effort to find words that are different from Rai or Tara (which did not always produce satisfactory results). In eliciting and recording clauses, however, many Tara and Rai items surfaced, bearing witness to the fact that Taje in Petapa is heavily influenced by these languages. There are two more groups of Taje who live in resettlement projects further north. One project is located in Sidole (50 km north of Petapa) where about 150 Taje live together with as many Ampibabo-Lauje. The other project is located in Sienjo (another 30 km further up the coast) where about 30 Taje settle together with about twice as many Tajio. Both projects were established in 1982. Before that time the inhabitants of the two projects were middle or inner hill people. The interaction between the members of the two Tomini-Tolitoli groups in these projects remains to be investigated. At present, no informed prognosis as to the future pattern of language usage in these settlements are possible. 23 Note, however, that the vicinity of Sidole is dominated by Ampibabo-Lauje and Rai, and the vicinity of Sienjo by Tajio and Ledo/Rai. In concluding this section it may be well to remember two points: first, language death in the kinds of setting just mentioned is a very slow and gradual process. Second, the assessment proposed here is not based on a detailed long-term study of the communities. Hence, in particular in the case of Taje, it is very well possible that important domains of language usage involving Taje have been missed. Both points 23 This presupposes that the projects develop into permanent settlements. About one third of the resettlement projects in the Tomini-Tolitoli area resolved after the government sponsorship came to an end. Note that I visited the Sienjo settlement only very briefly (one day) and stayed close to the Sidole settlement for about one week.


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are nicely illustrated by the fact that Taje was already declared to be nearly extinct by Adriani, who made a voyage along the Tomini coast in 1902 (cf. Noorduyn 1991:71)! 3.4.2.2 ENDANGERED LANGUAGES As noted in the introduction to this section, endangered languages are here defined as languages whose usage domains are presently undergoing a rapid reduction. This reduction manifests itself, inter alia, in the fact that the linguistic competence of speakers under twenty is extremely varied, ranging from highly fluent speakers who use the language every day to speakers with a primarily passive competence. For the latter ones, linguistic interactions involving the native language are restricted to conversations with their grandparents. In such interactions, the grandparents would often use the Tomini-Tolitoli language while the grandchildren would respond in Indonesian. For all Tomini-Tolitoli languages there are some speech communities where the Tomini-Tolitoli language may be considered endangered in this sense. This holds in particular for most major administrative and commercial centres, such as Sabang (Dampelas), Tolitoli (Totoli), Ampibabo (Ampibabo-Lauje), Kasimbar (Tajio), and Moutong (Tialo). 24 In these centres, language usage is influenced by both the emigration scenario and the immigration scenario. In Tolitoli, for example, a town of more than 30,000 inhabitants, less than half of the population belong to the original settlers of the area, i.e. the Totoli. The remainder of the population consists mostly of people from outside the Tomini-Tolitoli area, including Buol, Bajau, Bugis, Mandar, Gorontalo, Javanese, Balinese, Chinese and Arabs, who have come to this town because of its extensive administrative body (Tolitoli city is the capital of the district (Kabupaten) Tolitoli), its educational facilities or for trading purposes. Of the four (administrative) villages which together form the town of Tolitoli, there is only one, Nalu, where the Totoli are in the majority. And it is this village where Totoli is still used as an everyday language in some quarters. However, even in Nalu Totoli is on the wane, not so much because of the substantial number of migrants that live there, but because it is a very prosperous area. Many of Nalu’s inhabitants made a (small) fortune during the clove boom in the 1970s. This enabled them to send (some of ) their children to university in Palu or Makassar. Many of these children were able to secure government jobs. The consequences have been described above in the emigration scenario: the young government employees live for extended times outside Nalu, speak only Indonesian with their family, but return regularly to Nalu and have a non-negligible influence on linguistic usage there. The same holds to an even larger degree for the other villages which form a part of Tolitoli city. In these villages it is rare to find a fluent speaker below the age of fifty. This scenario, however, is not confined to administrative centres. There are, for example, six other villages in the Tolitoli plain where Totoli used to be the everyday language. Here, as in the town of Tolitoli, the immigration scenario and the emigration scenario mutually reinforce each other: the Totoli permanently living in the 24

The exception is the subdistrict capital Tinombo which will be discussed in the next section.

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village are now a minority because of out-of-area migrants and because a substantial minority of the younger generation studies or works outside the native village. Under the influence of the ‘outsiders’, the permanent residents shift towards Indonesian as their everyday language. Another example are the five villages on the west coast (in Kecamatan Sojol) where Lauje used to be the everyday language (many more Lauje live on the east coast and in the inner hills between the two coastal locations; cf. Section 3.4.2.3). Buginese and Kaili migrants have come to these five villages (Siboang, Siwalempu, Balukang, Bou, and Pesik) in substantial numbers, and they continue to increase rapidly to this day. A particularly drastic example is the village of Bou. When I stayed there in 1988, the Kaili and a few Bugis settled on the fringes of the village centre, separated from the Lauje dusun by a coconut grove. In 1993, the area occupied by Bugis was about ten times the size it had in 1988, extending right into the Lauje dusun and reversing centre and periphery: the Lauje are now on the fringes of a Bugis/Kaili village. The languages mentioned so far in this section are also spoken in other communities where their status does not seem to be in imminent danger (see the following section). There are, however, two languages, Dampelas and Balaesang, which seem to be endangered in all the communities in which they are still part of the linguistic ecology. In both cases the emigration scenario plays an important role. Dampelas speakers are found in eight villages in Kecamatan Dampelas. In seven of these villages, there are strong migrant communities and the everyday language in the public domain is exclusively Indonesian (the immigration scenario). The population of the remaining village, Talaga, is 99 per cent Dampelas. Talaga is considered to be the original settlement place of the Dampelas and the place where the ’best’ Dampelas is spoken. It is located on the shores of a beautiful small lake. Lake and village are encircled by a small hill chain which sets them off both from the sea (to the west) and a very large plain which extends south, east, and north of Talaga. This natural geographic boundary is probably the reason why Talaga has not become a place to settle for the many migrants who have been attracted to the large plain. The hill slopes surrounding Talaga are relatively fertile, in particular for cash crops (other than coconuts). Since the 1960s the village has witnessed a continuous economic growth which has provided at least one third of the families with the means to have some of their children go to Palu for better schooling and university. Note that sending their children off to school in Palu means considerable hardship for the members of the family staying in the village. That is, although these families are relatively well off in the sense that they do not have to worry about their daily subsistence, the higher education for their children comes at considerable personal expense. Among other things, it involves tight restrictions on the expenditures for food items not produced by themselves (buying fish, for example) or other items that could alleviate the hardships of farming (such as buying a motorbike for commuting the 3–15 km between garden and village home). In families with 4–6 children (which


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is still the rule in the older generation), it is rare that more than one or two of the children get a chance to go on studying beyond primary school. Nevertheless, there has been a substantial increase of extramural educational careers since the mid 1980s. On the weekends and during school holidays these students return to the village to help their families with the gardens and rice fields which provide the major source of the family income. When conversing among themselves, they tend to use Indonesian (as they are used to when in Palu). The children of the politically leading families have only a very poor command of Dampelas, bearing witness to the fact that they grew up in an environment where Indonesian was the most commonly used language. In those families who aspire to higher education for their children it is common to use Indonesian when conversing with them. Of those students who had finished their university education by 1993, only very few had returned to the village for good, the others working in Palu or in subdistrict capitals. In short, we find all the characteristics of the emigration scenario in progress. If the present trends are not reversed, it is highly probable that the state of Dampelas will resemble that of its close kin Dampal (Section 3.4.2.1) before too long. The situation for the three villages where Balaesang is spoken seems to be similar to the one just described for Talaga. All of these villages are almost exclusively populated by Balaesang. In Rano, the only village I actually visited, I observed the following: almost everybody in this small village (827 inhabitants according to the 1991 census) was speaking Balaesang. This was fairly easy to observe since a large part of the population crowded at night around the village’s two television sets. On first sight, Rano gives the impression of a very vital Balaesang speech community (much more so than Talaga). However, there was a conspicuous hole in the population present at the television meetings, pertaining to the 15–30 years age bracket. Upon inquiry, it turned out that almost every family was said to have some children studying in Palu (or Makassar). Thus, although the symptoms of the emigration scenario are not yet as noticeable in Rano as they are in the town of Tolitoli or in Talaga, it seems likely that the further development proceeds along the lines characteristic of the emigration scenario. It was claimed that the situation in the other two Balaesang villages is similar to the one in Rano but that would have to be checked further before making an informed prognosis for the future of the Balaesang language. 25 3.4.2.3 VITAL, BUT LONG-TERM ENDANGERED LANGUAGES In 1993, eight of the eleven Tomini-Tolitoli languages/major dialects were spoken in apparently vital speech communities. Five of these languages, i.e. Totoli, 26 Ampibabo-Lauje, Tajio, 25

Rano differs from the other two villages, Kamonji and Ketong, in that it is not located on the coast but right in the middle of the Balaesang peninsula, on the shores of a small beautiful lake (similar to Talaga). Since ca. 1990 (when the roads became better), the lake provides a new source of income because its fresh water fish can be sold for a good price in Palu markets. 26 These Totoli live in four somewhat isolated villages ca. 80 km further east of the Totoli discussed above in the section on endangered languages.

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Boano and Tialo, are spoken by exclusively coastal populations (Boano in only one village). Most of their villages are ‘full’ in the sense that there is no space for new migrants to settle in the immediate neighbourhood of the Tomini-Tolitoli. Hence, it is unlikely that these communities will be affected by the immigration scenario as outlined above. However, in the case of the Ampibabo-Lauje and the Tajio, the larger area where these speech communities are found is heavily populated by Rai and Ledo, with the Tomini-Tolitoli villages being surrounded by Ledo/Rai villages. In the case of the Tialo, there are very large transmigration projects right ‘at the back’ of many Tialo villages, the transmigrants clearly outnumbering the Tialo. In the past, such settlement patterns did not affect language usage very much since the different communities did not interact very closely. It is not clear whether this will continue to be the case in the future when improved transportation and the introduction of telecommunication (begun in the early 1990s) will provide for new interactional patterns on the subdistrict level, a possibility eagerly awaited by the subdistrict administrations. A first example of such new patterns are the regular subdistrict-wide soccer tournaments that have been organized in those subdistricts where the roads are good enough for regular and cheap transportation. The economic development in all of these villages is in the direction of the emigration scenario. This development will, however, be somewhat slower than in the economically stronger villages due to less fertile grounds and overproduction crises (the latter have started to occur since a few years caused by the fact that everyone plants the same cash crop(s), i.e. the ones currently sponsored by a government programme). There is also a limit to careers in administration and education. That is, if no new opportunities for wage work emerge—an item that tops the agenda of the provincial government—the possibilities for temporarily residing outside the village, which forms the core of the emigration scenario, will be rather limited. Still, the aspirations of the population in these villages seem to be very similar to those in the economically more advanced villages in which the symptoms of the emigration scenario are easily detectable. It is thus very likely that a large scale language shift will occur in those villages with vital Tomini-Tolitoli speech communities as well, if opportunities for (temporary) wage work outside the community arise. 27 The assessment of the viability of the remaining three languages is complicated by the fact that they are not spoken exclusively by coastal populations but by middle and inner hill people as well. In fact, one language, i.e. Pendau, is spoken only by middle hill people. Today, most of these people live in resettlement projects or small hamlets close to coastal villages (the Pendau language area spreads very far along the west coast (more than 150 km) which is quite surprising given the fairly small 27 One possibility I have heard being pondered in various of these villages is the possibility to seek wage work abroad, in particular in Malaysia. At least one person of the Tolitoli area is known to work as a teacher in Malaysia.


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number of speakers (ca. 3.200)). Although the Pendau seem to have been in contact with the coastal population for a very long time, they have entered into closer social relationships with speakers of another group only in a few instances. 28 Otherwise they seem to keep pretty much to themselves even if their settlements are located only a few hundred meters away from a coastal village centre. In their settlements, Pendau is very much the everyday language. I witnessed only three kinds of occasions in which Pendau use Indonesian. One concerns occasional visits paid to the nearby village (for example, on market days) and the (very infrequent) visits by other people from the village (mostly in official missions). Another situation concerns religious services administered by Menadonese Protestant missionaries who have been active among the Pendau in Dampelas. And, thirdly, most of the Pendau children today attend primary school where Indonesian is the language of instruction. In the future, the pressure on the Pendau to integrate more fully into the coastal village life will increase. Since the coastal population is socially dominant (and looks down on the Pendau as supposedly ‘uncivilized mountain people’), it is unlikely that the Pendau language will play a role in the linguistic ecology of the integrated communities. Note also that the traditional contact pattern between Tomini-Tolitoli groups has been for the later arrivals to learn the language of the established community. It is unclear, however, to what extent the Pendau will give way to the pressure towards further integration. Turning now to the remaining two languages, Dondo and Lauje, the comments on Dondo can be very brief. Dondo is spoken by both a coastal and a middle hill population. The situation of the coastal population is similar to the one sketched above for the Ampibabo-Lauje and Tajio coastal populations. The situation of the middle hill people—all of whom live in resettlement projects and small hamlets—is similar to the one just described for the Pendau. For both populations, there is, however, one perhaps crucial difference: most of the middle hill Dondo interact with a coastal population which is also Dondo. This set-up may lead to a reinforcement of their use of the Dondo language in a broad variety of domains. Such a reinforcement is presently observable in the Lauje area around Tinombo, an area almost exclusively populated by some 30,000 Lauje who live in all three agroecological zones (coastal, middle and inner hills). Most of the coastal villages are overcrowded and relatively poor due to the fact that in this area steep mountains project very close to the coast line, leaving only little land for rice fields and gardens. Hence, major components of both the emigration scenario and the immigration scenario 28

One example is the island of Simatang which reportedly is populated mostly by Bajau, some of whom are intermarried with Pendau. I did not visit the island myself but obtained these reports from various government officials in Kecamatan Dampal Utara and from the people I interviewed in Bambapula, the mainland village close to Simatang. Furthermore, some Pendau seem to have intermarried with Sangirese on the Balaesang peninsula (Phil Quick, pc). See Quick (2008) for more in-depth information on the Pendau and their language.

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do not apply. Even in Tinombo, the subdistrict capital, where only about 60 per cent of the population are Lauje and strong Kaili and Gorontalo communities exist, the tendency towards language shift is not as pronounced as in other subdistrict capitals. One of the reasons for this seems to be the fact that many coastal Lauje have relatives among the middle hill Lauje and interact fairly regularly with them for personal and economic reasons. On these occasions, only Lauje is spoken since the command of Indonesian among the middle hill people is generally poor. As for the inner hill Lauje, there is simply no space for resettlement projects close to the coastal locations in the area. Attempts by the government to resettle them further south have not been successful so far. In short, the prospects for Lauje are probably the best among the Tomini-Tolitoli languages because of the demographic, geographic, and economic factors just mentioned. This, however, does not mean that they are immune to language shift. It is almost certain that all Lauje will become bilingual in Lauje and Indonesian in the near future (this is already the case for coastal Lauje). What is not so clear is whether this bilingual setting will be stable or just represents an intermediate stage in a complete shift towards Indonesian.

3.5 Conclusion The preceding sections develop and illustrate an approach to the problem of language endangerment in terms of endangerment scenarios. This approach presupposes a rather strict distinction between the symptoms of language endangerment and its causes. The notion endangerment scenario, as understood here, only applies to the potential causes of language endangerment. It is based on the assumption that there is no single factor which could be claimed to cause language endangerment. Instead, language endangerment is seen as the outcome of a complex constellation of factors which have to co-occur in order to have an impact on patterns of language use. Approaching language endangerment in terms of scenarios does not mean that no generalizations are possible with regard to its causes. However, this approach rests on the assumption that useful generalizations would not simply consist of a list of possible causes. Instead, what is required is a typology of endangerment scenarios which provides a systematization of typical constellations leading to large scale language shift in a given community. The scenario approach is also supported in Chapter 4 by Charles E. Grimes in this volume, which discusses endangerment scenarios on Buru, an island east of Sulawesi. Here as well, (forced) migrations of local populations play a major role in the loss of two languages. However, as in the case of the Tomini-Tolitoli languages, it would be misleading to claim that migration necessarily leads to language shift, as shown by the fact the some other varieties on Buru survived the forced migrations under Dutch colonial rule.


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Comparison with the Buru cases nicely illustrates the need for detailed and fined-grained descriptions of endangerment scenarios in order to arrive at a useful and comprehensive typology of such scenarios. While many details in the overall scenarios in northern Central Sulawesi and on Buru are strikingly similar, others diverge quite clearly. To mention just two examples of divergence, some of the Buru cases involve the migrations of whole speech communities rather than subgroups or individuals, and the migrations in Buru were forcibly brought about by a colonial power rather than by individual economic aspirations and motivations. From the point of view of a typology of endangerment scenarios, the question involved in such comparisons is which differences actually matter and which don’t. Thus, one may well question whether the distinction between forced and so-called voluntary migrations is relevant in this regard. Migrations which are organized and enforced by government agencies are often put in opposition to ‘voluntary’ migrations which seem to be initiated by the migrants themselves and do not involve the visible application of force. However, more often than not such ‘voluntary’ migrations are caused by difficult living conditions and they are in some sense also ‘forced’ by these conditions. Although there may be different kinds of forces at work here, I do not think that a distinction between forced and ‘voluntary’ migrations along these lines is an important or useful one in researching language endangerment. 29 Instead, comparison of the Sulawesi and Buru scenarios clearly shows the crucial importance of other factors interacting with the migratory movements in bringing about language shift in a specific situation. Thus, for example, in the Buru cases one important factor contributing to language death is the fact that the original homeland of a given group is no longer populated by a segment of the displaced speech community. And, as detailed in section 3.4.1 above, in the Tomini-Tolitoli migration scenarios, settlement patterns on the dusun level are important in providing a ‘fertile’ environment for changing traditional usage patterns. This brings us back to the issue of ‘deeper’ causes of language endangerment already raised at the end of section 3.4.1.3. Continuing the argument from the preceding paragraph, one could easily argue that so-called ‘forced’ migrations are of course also based on economic motives and power constellations (the forced displacement of speech communities on Buru was part of the Dutch strategy to win full control of the area in order to be able to exploit its natural resources, in particular its famous spices). Hence, one could claim that at the root of all migrations and any other similarly ‘superficial’ factors influencing language use in a given community are economic interests and power constellations. While the basic role of economic forces clearly is of central importance, they are not sufficient to account for the manifold and highly varied configurations of language 29 A different kind of migration may be involved in imperialist expansions, a topic beyond the scope of the present contribution.

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shift occurring throughout the world’s speech communities. In order to understand how economic forces influence and shape linguistic usage patterns, one has to look at a largish collection of factors, including demography, settlement patterns, marriage preferences, etc, and their interaction. Only some constellations of these factors lead to community-wide language shift, others not. And it is this aspect of language endangerment that the notion of an endangerment scenario is intended to capture and represent.

4 Digging for the Roots of Language Death in Eastern Indonesia: The Cases of Kayeli and Hukumina Charles E. Grimes

4.1 Introduction In the Indonesian province of Maluku where the population is roughly 50 per cent Muslim and 50 per cent Christian, people often make distinctions along religious lines in explaining their view of language ecology. In Christian communities, they assert, people no longer speak their vernacular languages and have shifted to Ambonese Malay. 1 In Muslim communities, on the other hand, they assert that people have retained their vernacular languages and speak Ambonese Malay as a second language. While this largely characterizes villages around the provincial capital on the small island of Ambon, religious affiliation per se has not been the determining factor in language maintenance or shift in central Maluku. One has only to look at the nearby island of Buru to find the opposite dynamics—there some Muslim communities have shifted to Malay, while traditional and Christian communities continue to use the vernacular language vigorously (See also Florey 2005c, Florey and Ewing in press: 5–6, Musgrave and Ewing 2006). In this chapter I focus on two relatively recent cases of language shift and death among Muslim communities on the island of Buru, looking at a variety of relevant historical, cultural and social factors. On the basis of the understanding gained from these Buru cases, I then discuss several other endangered languages and cases of

1 Ambonese Malay is a regional variety distinct from the standard Malay known as Indonesian (see Collins 1980, C. Grimes 1985, 1996, B. D. C. Grimes 1991, van Minde 1997). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Organized session: Field reports/Endangered languages, organized by Ken Hale and Tony Woodbury, New Orleans, 5–8 January 1995, and then archived as C. Grimes (1995b). I am indebted to Barbara Dix Grimes for her comments.

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language shift in both Muslim and Christian communities on other islands in the region. My research on the functionally extinct languages of Kayeli and Hukumina has been part of my involvement in the Buru Language Project, a project focusing primarily on the vernacular language of 45,000 native inhabitants on the island (called the Buru language), but also including other languages found on the island such as Kayeli, Hukumina, and languages with which these are in contact, such as Ambelau, Ambonese Malay, Buton, Indonesian, Sula, and Tukang Besi. 2 During fieldwork in 1989 I visited the Kayeli area hoping to put the Buru language and culture in its larger context with solid linguistic and cultural data from Kayeli. An earlier attempt at taking a Kayeli wordlist in 1983 in Namlea (across the bay from Kayeli) had proved frustrating, and that data was unreliable. Although recent literature (Wurm and Hattori 1983) had indicated there were 1,000 speakers of Kayeli, in 1989 it took half a day to find four speakers in three villages with the help of the raja of Kayeli. No one in Kayeli could think of anyone else still alive who spoke the Kayeli language. Over a three day period of meeting with these four people (two men and two women—all of whom were over sixty years old), they themselves came to several realizations. First, they realized that none of them had used the language actively for over thirty years. Second, as I tried to elicit basic vocabulary there was a growing horror as they came to realize what one of them finally verbalized on the second day: ‘If the four of us cannot remember these words, then they are lost forever.’ Third, they also began to realize that the discourse of past glory which had brought identity and cohesion to them as an ethnic group was built on a now crumbled foundation—while the number of people who could trace their ethnic origins to Kayeli kin groups was about 800, they had not maintained their language which symbolized and preserved their unique ethnic identity. It had been lost, not by conscious choice, but by simple neglect. As I was getting on a boat to leave, the raja of Kayeli (who had been present at all sessions), asked me, ‘With the words that you gathered, could you please put together a book that we can use in school to teach our children how to speak our language again?’ Not only were these realizations traumatic for them, but also for me as I struggled with having been the instrument that triggered them, albeit unintentionally. On the earlier survey trip to the north coast of Buru in 1983, I had gathered data from the last speaker of Leliali in the village of Jiku Merasa (Plate 1). That data and the data from Kayeli were sufficient to establish Leliali as a divergent dialect of Kayeli. 2 The Buru Language Project was initiated by the raja of south Buru, Bapa Raja Anton Lesnussa (now deceased), in March 1982 when he travelled to the distant city of Ujung Pandang on the island of Sulawesi and made contact with the SIL administration there, specifically requesting assistance with Bible translation and vernacular literacy materials, particularly for the mountain peoples of Buru. At the time he was not particularly interested in documenting the Buru language and culture, nor those of other communities on the island, but he did recognize that outside investigators would need to study them in order to help with what he wanted.

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Upon visiting Jiku Merasa again in late 1989, I learned that the gentleman had died the previous March. No other speakers were known by the community. During my three days in Kayeli in 1989 I was also introduced to a toothless old woman around 80 years old who claimed to speak Hukumina, also known locally as ‘Bambaa’. She had married a Hukumina speaker, but to her knowledge neither she nor anyone else had used the language since the Second World War. Her mind wandered regularly, and the little data I was able to collect from her are a mixture of Kayeli, Buru, and some other language that I assume is Hukumina. There are no other known speakers.

4.2 Buru Language Geography Overview Figure 4.1 summarizes what is currently known about languages on Buru. It is based on direct linguistic evidence as well as on indirect evidence such as written historical records, local oral history, and place names (adapted from C. Grimes 1995b, 2000). Upper case represents language names, lower case letters represent dialect names, and italics represent subdialects. Alternate names and alternate spellings are in parentheses. Li Garan is a special taboo register spoken by speakers of the Rana subdialect (see Grimes and Maryott 1994). The maps show the current dialect picture of the Buru language and patterns of immigrant settlements on Buru. Of the five major dialects, Masarete, Rana, and Wae Sama continue to be used as the primary means of daily communication, while speakers of Fogi and Lisela are well along the shift to Malay. The shift in Fogi may be complete. The remaining speakers of Lisela use the language sporadically in very limited domains (e.g. in traditional marriage negotiations, or as a patchy insider language around outsiders). Neither Fogi nor Lisela are used for regular verbal interactions with the younger generation. So these two dialects should be considered moribund (see Himmelmann, this volume, for a fuller description of the term). Approximately 12,500 Sula speakers inhabit the north coast of Buru and according to their own oral history have done so for ten to fourteen generations. They maintain their language and maintain ties with their homeland on islands to the north. On the west and south coasts there are also 13,000 people who claim to be from ‘Buton’ a cover term for a group of islands off of Southeast Sulawesi. They claim to have been there for approximately twelve generations. They maintain their various languages and are in continual contact with their homelands. With so many immigrants on the north coast, speakers of the Lisela dialect of Buru are a minority on their own traditional land. This fits Himmelmann’s description of an immigration scenario (this volume).

76 BURU

Charles E. Grimes (45,000 speakers) Masarete Wae Sama Rana

–strong –strong –strong Rana [Li Garan] Wae Geren (upper) Wae Kabo Wae Tina

Lisela (Li Enyorot)

moribund– shifting to Malay Lisela (Licella) Tagalisa Wae Geren (lower) Leliali (Liliali) Kayeli (Wae Apo, Unit-unit, Mako)

Fogi (Li Emteban)

moribund– mostly shifted to Malay Fogi (Vogi, Bobo) Tomahu

–extinct

HUKUMINA (Bambaa) Bara Hukumina Palumata (Palamata, Balamata, Pala Mada)

–extinct –1 speaker in 1989 –extinct

KAYELI (Cajeli, Gaeli) Leliali (Liliali, Marulat) Kayeli Moksela (Maksela, Opselan) Ilat Lumaete (Lumaiti, Lumaite, Lumara) Figure 4.1 Speech communities on Buru Island

–extinct (as of March 1989) –4 speakers in 1989 –extinct (1974) –extinct –extinct


Map 4.1 Major dialects of the Buru language (1989)

Map 4.2 Immigrant settlements on Buru (1989)

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4.3 Linguistic Diversity Buru, Kayeli and Hukumina are sufficiently diverse to be considered separate languages rather than dialects of a single language. This is evidenced in their distinct historical sound correspondences, in their grammatical constructions, and in their vocabularies. Linguistic details are presented in C. Grimes (1995b). The claims are preliminary since the data and reliability vary greatly for each of the three languages. The Buru data are based on 24 months of residence in the language area which have resulted, among other things, in a growing dictionary (over 5,400 headwords), a corpus of over 200 texts (114 fully interlinearized), a reference grammar (C. Grimes 1991a), an ethnography (B. D. Grimes 1990, 1993), a paper on contact issues (B. D. Grimes 1994b), and a paper on comparative morphology (C. Grimes 1991c). From the Kayeli data, I am compiling a dictionary that at the time of writing has just over 428 processed headwords (C. Grimes 1994–ms), and additional field notes based on the three days of fieldwork. For Hukumina I was able to obtain very little reliable data from the one old woman during the span of the fieldwork focusing on Kayeli. Consequently, data for the three languages cannot be evaluated on an equal footing. All three languages are typologically SVO, prepositional, adjectivals follow the head noun, genitive comes before the head noun. They are predominantly head-marking languages (see Nichols 1986). From the limited data available there are also some notable differences, such as in the genitive enclitics, the possessive constructions, inflection of vowel-initial verbs, and the use of an applicative. Table 4.1 gives an indication of some of the lexical differences between the three languages.

Table 4.1 Examples of lexical differences between Buru, Kayeli, and Hukumina Gloss

Buru

Kayeli

Hukumina

hand, arm mouth foot, leg head betelpepper jungle sleep sleepy sick, painful return (home) no, not hungry sit

fahan fifin kadan olon dalu mua bage duba empei oli moo eglada defo

limani nuan bitiñ oloni gamal boot ine

rima mpidu– eñaik fatun elut gulalin etnono lastoton boto bihin mbaa spala egnabon

berere wae nanibar stea


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4.4 Historical Events Relevant to Language Ecology on Buru While located in the region called the Spice Islands, Buru was historically on the periphery of the spice trade and its associated power struggles. Cloves (Eugenia caryophyllata) are native to Ternate and the islands off the west coast of Halmahera. Nutmeg and mace (Myristica fragrans) are native to the Banda Islands 300 km eastsoutheast of Buru. Two main trade routes developed from peninsular Southeast Asia to the source of the spices both before and after European contact (which began in 1511). 3 One route went along the north coasts of Borneo and Sulawesi to Ternate. The second went along Sumatra, Java, Flores, Timor, and cut up to Ambon (see Villiers 1981, van Fraassen 1983, 1987). Both of these routes missed Buru. The link between Ternate and Ambon likewise bypassed Buru (see Map 4.3). Although leaders at Ternate initially welcomed the Portuguese as trading partners in 1512, numerous tensions soon developed in the region. The exclusive trading rights of the Portuguese were contested by traders from Southeast Asia who had prior trading arrangements in the region. In addition, religious conflicts arose between Islam and the newly arrived Christianity brought by the Portuguese. With the wealth derived from the spice trade and the influence of Islam, Ternatan society developed into a sultanate, with power and authority allocated to a single individual (the Sultan) rather than with the traditional group of elders who made decisions by consensus. Buru came to be considered a dependency of Ternate, with the Sultan’s ‘governors’ on Buru eventually appointing four local men as Matgugul 4 with the responsibility of extracting tribute (enati lit. ‘that which is set down’) from the populace on behalf of the Sultan. When the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie [VOC, The Dutch East India Trading Company] succeeded in taking over the Portuguese fort on Ambon in 1605, their primary goal was to establish a monopoly in the spice trade. They soon engaged in a series of military actions to bring various areas under their control. The demise of the Ternatan power structure through the ‘Hoamoal wars’ on Seram and the escalation of Dutch power, which also set in motion massive social and linguistic upheaval on Buru, is described by van Fraassen (1983:17): The war ignited by the 1651 rebellion [against the Dutch] continued until 1656. The rebels received Macassarese support, and the war was in no way restricted to Hoamoal [west Seram]. Arnold de Vlamingh van Oudtshoorn, the Dutch commander-in-chief in this war, was also launching attacks on the VOC’s opponents elsewhere, among other places in Buru and east Seram. . . . The Ambonese region was formally removed from Ternatan control and the institution of the Ternatan governorship was abolished. Hoamoal . . . was completely depopulated. . . . The chiefs of Hoamoal had a place of residence assigned to 3 At the height of the early spice trade, one of the main centres was Malaka (known in the earlier literature as ‘Malacca’, founded in 1401), in the straits between Sumatra and peninsular Malaysia. 4 Gugul is a Ternate loan associated with the position of a ruler (Andaya 1990).

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Map 4.3 Indonesia showing Maluku and central Maluku (reproduced with permission from Florey and Ewing forthcoming)

them in Batu Merah, in the vicinity of the VOC’s chief fortress in Ambon. The population of the islands of Boano, Kelang and Ambelau was transferred to the island of Manipa, where the Company had a small fort. All the Muslim chiefs of the coastal areas of Buru were obliged to settle in the neighbourhood of the Company’s fort at Kayeli. . . . The evacuated areas were systematically destroyed and rendered unfit for reoccupation. Contracts were concluded with the chiefs of Buru and north and east Seram in which the latter conceded themselves to be subordinate to the VOC; promised to entertain no relations with other nations or rulers, to keep out all Macassarese, Malays, and Javanese. [Emphasis mine]

While those living in the interior were not as affected by Ternate’s struggle with Europeans over the spice trade as those on the coast, the situation did have a significant


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Map 4.4 Villages from which the Dutch relocated populations

effect on language use on the island. Twelve coastal communities were forced to live around the Dutch fort at Kayeli on the southern shore of Namlea Bay. The Dutch gathered twelve hostage-puppets around them at the fort at Kayeli. The leaders of these communities are still referred to in Kayeli as the ‘twelve Raja Patti’ or the ‘twelve Latu Patti’ (‘twelve king-leaders’). Each raja or latu set up his own village, his own mosque, his own wells, etc., for a community of people from his own area speaking whatever variety of speech was distinct to their area. 5 Six of these mosquevillages were clustered west of the Kayeli river, including Kayeli, Lisela, Tagalisa, Marulat, Leliali, Ilat, and Bara (Fogi). Five others were clustered on the east side of the Lumaiti river two kilometres away, including Masarete, Hukumina, Lumaiti, Tomahu, and Palamata, with Waisama to the south. The Dutch fort was in the middle, between the two rivers along with a Kampung Cina (Chinese Village) and a village called Kayeli Kristen (Christian Kayeli). In 1847 the population of the communities around the Kayeli fort was around 2,000. At that time a government official (Willer 1858:138) listed these same villages, showing that the situation had changed little for 200 years. During these 200 years Kayeli remained the focal point of Dutch involvement on Buru. However, as the Dutch administrators recorded, there was very little profit to 5 Willer (1858:138) lists Ternate and Malay titles for the ‘chiefs’ clustered around the fort at Kayeli, including a sengaji (probably a Ternatan term) for Lumaete; raja (Sanskrit ‘king’ used for local rulers in central Maluku) for Kayeli, Lisela, Tagalisa, and Leliali; patti (central and eastern central Maluku term for ‘local ruler’) for Marulat, Hukumina, and Fogi; orang kaya (Malay ‘rich man’) for Wae Sama, Palamata, and Masarete; and an orang tua (Malay ‘parent, elder’) for Tomahu.

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be made from Buru. Following their practices established elsewhere, the Dutch saw each raja at Kayeli as king (Dutch regent) over a large territory surrounding his home village. Thus, the Dutch saw their own control as extending to all of Buru through the rajas at Kayeli. B. D. Grimes (1994a) describes a significantly different view of the role of the rajas from within Buru culture itself. In accord with the precedence established by the Sultan of Ternate, the Muslim rajas continued to extract tribute and services from the people living in their territory—a practice they legitimated from the perceived superiority of Islam over the heathen (referred to by the Dutch as Alfuru or Alifuru) people in the interior of Buru. The tribute and services were important for the rajas as they profited from servicing ships stopping at Kayeli as a port of call to replenish water, firewood and other supplies. In 1845–6 one Spanish, three American, one Balinese, and eight English ships are recorded as stopping in Kayeli (Willer 1858:209). During the second half of the 1800s the greater fort community at Kayeli began to decline for a variety of reasons. The Dutch officials became concerned by what they perceived as an abuse of power by the rajas over the interior people of Buru. B. D. Grimes (1993:37) describes the ensuing decay: As the colonial government weakened the authority of the raja, Kayeli began to decline. Perhaps not unrelated was the fact that Kayeli was one of the few places the Dutch allowed the sale of opium. The unproductiveness of several opium-smoking rajas was noted by Forbes (1885:392). Furthermore, in the 1880s the rajas of Leliali, Wae Sama, and Fogi, along with most of their people, returned to their original homeland after more than 200 years at the fort. Around the turn of the century the rajas of Lisela and Tagalisa did the same. Also by the turn of the century the villages of Maroelat and Bara were extinct, and the ruling families of Hukumina, Tomahu and Lumaiti had died out. In 1907 there were only 231 Moslems at Kayeli, compared to 1400 fifty years earlier. (van der Miesen 1908:836, 837)

In addition, a smallpox epidemic swept the area during the latter part of the 1800s, severely reducing the population around the fort. And in the early twentieth century the Dutch colonial government, the Chinese, and the Christian village moved out of the malarial swamp at Kayeli to a dry area across the bay which became the presentday government centre of Namlea. By the time of a detailed Dutch map in 1915, the two groupings of six villages had consolidated into just two villages—Masarete and Kayeli. 6 Thus, from the mid 1600s until early in the 1900s, the focus of Dutch contact on Buru was concentrated around the fort at Kayeli. The community surrounding 6

In 1989 the village of Kayeli was using the Lisela mosque (the Kayeli mosque being in ruins) and the locations of the former villages of Tagalisa and Fogi were still known. The village of Masarete stands seaward from the site of the former village of Hukumina whose foundations are still to be found hidden underwater in a nearby sago swamp. Some remnants of the inhabitants of the extinct villages are still identifiable by their kin group affiliations. And some of the older people still remember bits and pieces of the different speech varieties as either first language or second language speakers.


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the fort was a complex microcosm of the twelve Muslim communities with their associated speech varieties, plus mercenaries and government officials from Ambon, Seram, and other parts of the archipelago. 7 While the Kayeli people continued to use the Kayeli language for things associated with their own cultural and political domains, the language of this multiethnic multilingual community around the fort eventually became Malay. 8 It was from this community around the Dutch fort at Kayeli that most of the wordlists labeled ‘Buru’ were collected during this period. This serves as a partial explanation for the utter confusion and language mixing found in most of those wordlists.

4.5 Cultural Notions of Power and Place In returning to their homelands after more than 200 years at the Dutch fort, the five rajas and their communities exemplified important cultural notions about power and place. Societies of eastern Indonesia are organized around kin groups which can also be aptly described as ‘origin groups’. Fox (1990:3) has characterized such groups in eastern Indonesia as follows: What they claim to share and to celebrate is some form of common derivation. This derivation is socially constructed and may be variously based on the acknowledgment of a common ancestor, a common cult, a common name or set of names, a common place of derivation, and/or a share in a common collection of sacred artifacts.

On Buru there are around forty such kin groups referred to locally as noro. The noro to which an individual belongs establishes his or her ancestors and place of ancestral origins. This territory may be around the headwaters of the stream at which their mythical founding ancestor first appeared, or the place where an immigrating founding ancestor first disembarked from the boat that brought them to the island. Noro members are inalienably tied to this place as traditional custodians, even though they may not live there. It is thus important not only on Buru, but also in many societies in eastern Indonesia, to distinguish between place of residence and place of origin. Schut (1921) and B. D. Grimes (1996, 1997, 2006) discuss in greater depth the social constructions of origin, identity, place, and power tied to place on Buru. In times of difficulty Buru people who reside outside their place of origin return there to restore or ensure a proper state of affairs in their relationship with the founding ancestor as well as with other relatives, living and dead. This includes people who have lived their entire lives on the coast or even on another island several thousand kilometres away. This dynamic is also true across generations with younger people 7

Such origins are evident in the names listed in Willer (1858) and Wilken (1875). By this period the Malay spoken in the region had already acquired a distinct regional flavour and was significantly different from the classical Malay associated with the Sultanates of Riau and Johore on peninsular Malaysia (see B. D. Grimes, 1991, van Minde, 1997). It was this regional variety of Malay, not classical Malay that was the source of lexical borrowings from Malay. 8

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returning to the place of origin that their parents or grandparents left that the younger generation may never have visited in order to resolve difficulties they cannot otherwise overcome. In 1991 to resolve difficult relations they were experiencing with another kin group, one entire kin group who had lived in the centre of the island for several generations abandoned their village and fields there and migrated four days’ walk to the coast to return to the place at which their founding ancestor had first set foot on Buru. Buru people acknowledge ties to their ancestors regardless of where they are, but the relationship is most efficacious in the place of origin of their kin group (see B. D. Grimes 1993). The phenomenon of returning to one’s place of origin to resolve difficulties has also been observed for other societies in the region and is not limited to isolated societies. For example, Cooley (1961) observed that Ambonese Christians will travel several thousand kilometres home to participate in Good Friday communion when trying to overcome a particularly slippery and far-reaching problem. 9 The importance of place and origin groups in social life can also be a factor in language ecology. Valeri (1994) has noted how the small (around 150 people) Huaulu society of north central Seram is a multilingual society with people using the lingua franca and other languages to interact with surrounding groups. Knowledge expressed in these languages is important, but the most important and powerful knowledge defining Huaulu society and ancestral origins is always expressed in the Huaulu language.

4.6 Language Obsolescence on Buru Island 4.6.1 The demise of the Kayeli language The demise of the Kayeli language has involved people of Kayeli kin groups living in their place of origin who have gradually stopped using the Kayeli language. Yet after the events of 1656 the Kayeli people no longer formed an autonomous society, but were merely one of the twelve Muslim villages in the multiethnic multilingual community surrounding the Dutch fort. Many activities at Kayeli were externally oriented and necessitated the growing use of Malay, the local lingua franca. To deal with the inhabitants of the interior the raja of Kayeli had an interpreter who could use the Buru language. To deal with the Ternatans, Javanese, Makassarese, Ambonese, and Dutch, they used Malay. And to interact with those populations that were resettled around their village they also had to resort to Malay. It was apparently only for internal functions (e.g. home, some marriage negotiations, disputes with other Kayeli litigants) that the Kayeli language was used. They were not even remotely an internally cohesive community, but were to a great degree integrated into a larger pluralistic community. 9

My own years of residence on Ambon confirm that this practice still exists.


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When the Kayeli fort community began to decline, the semi-independent communities that remained were forced to consolidate to some degree. There was no longer sufficient personnel to maintain the twelve mosques independently and some of these were abandoned to consolidate and maintain a few at acceptable standards. At the turn of the century when the Dutch colonial government moved their offices across the bay to Namlea, the twelve Muslim villages had consolidated into just two. Furthermore the smallpox, subsequent deaths, and eventual move by the Dutch conspired to communicate to the other populations that the Kayeli raja and leaders no longer had access to the power of the place that brings success. The Second World War brought renewed activity to the area, but the Japanese established themselves in Namlea, not in Kayeli. After independence the Indonesian government did the same. The discourse of past glory and positions such as the raja’s official translators were maintained, but the substance behind them no longer existed. Most commoners survived by becoming fisherman or as swidden agriculturalists and intermarried from the pool of those left in the two villages of Kayeli and Masarete, rather than maintaining their distinct ethnic identities. So while at the local level, use of the Kayeli language in a few domains and contrast with the other ethnolinguistic groups was sufficient to maintain the language to some degree from 1656 until the Second World War, the events set in motion in 1656 and the lack of an autonomous community conspired to allow a shift to Malay in the twentieth century that went virtually unnoticed by the community themselves. 4.6.2 The death of the Hukumina people and language Willer (1858) notes that homeland areas of Hukumina, Palamata, Tomahu, and Bara had no interior people from which to extract tribute, and thus the leaders around the fort at Kayeli were not able to be economically independent. And van der Miesen (1908) observed that the ruling family of Hukumina had died out by the turn of the century. They were a numerically and economically impoverished people severed from their place of origin, and thus having no access to power. After these events the use of Hukumina rapidly declined—survival for those left was to be found in using Malay. It appears there were three significant languages on Buru Island prior to 1650. Each language had multiple dialects as reconstructed from the written historical record, from available data, from historical sounds correspondences, from place names, and from local oral history (summarized in Figure 4.1). Currently only the Buru language survives. 4.6.3 Similar situations elsewhere in central Maluku A number of situations elsewhere in central Maluku parallel the dynamics of displacement and amalgamation found in the Kayeli and Hukumina cases. As a result of the Hoamoal Wars (1651–6) the ‘chiefs’ from several communities on the Hoamoal peninsula of western Seram were resettled around the Dutch fort at Batu

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Map 4.5 Probable linguistic picture prior to 1650

Merah in Ambon Bay. The area around the fort became, like Kayeli, a multiethnic, multilingual community. Unlike the Kayeli situation there does not appear to have been a local ‘master’ of the land to establish asymmetric relationships among the relocated populations. Malay was also the language of intergroup communication. Like Hukumina, these groups were removed from their places of origin, were not able to maintain a cohesive or reasonably autonomous community, and eventually (some in the twentieth century) completed the shift to Malay. Along the west coast of Ambon Island a vernacular language is spoken in the villages of Larike, Wakasihu, and Allang. The Muslim inhabitants of Larike speak this vernacular language with relative vigor, while the Christian population functions more comfortably in Malay (Wyn Laidig, personal communication). The historical record shows that the Christian population was transported from the Hoamoal peninsula on Seram after the Hoamoal Wars to the small Dutch outpost at Larike. Like Hukumina, they were removed from their place of origin. Here the resettled population had the additional dynamic of being relocated within a community of a different dominant religion. Apparently unable to maintain their own identity they assimilated into the greater coastal Malay community of the region. See also Florey (2005c), Florey and Ewing (in press), and Musgrave and Ewing (2006) regarding Ewing’s more recent research in this area. On Buru Island itself, the interior population was essentially untouched by the effects of the Hoamoal Wars and the community at Kayeli. But two situations warrant comment. First, speakers of the Lisela dialect inhabit the northern coastal plain in an area completely dominated by outsiders. Numerically they are an ethnic minority on their own traditional land. While they have not been removed from their


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places of origin, they have been marginalized by outsiders and have assimilated with other minorities to the greater Malay coastal culture with fewer and fewer of them proficient in speaking Lisela in many speech domains. Unlike Larike, however, both the Lisela people and their Sula and Buton neighbours, who are outsiders, adhere to Islam. In the Masarete dialect of Buru it is helpful to distinguish between the mountain and coastal communities. The mountain communities continue to use their language as the primarily means of daily communication. The coastal communities, however, have the added domains of education, government, religion, Chinese and Butonese merchants, as well as neighbouring communities of non-Buru people with whom they interact. The languages appropriate to these situations are Indonesian and Ambonese Malay and the coastal communities are relatively bilingual. Some coastal speakers of the Masarete dialect have speech domains in which they are more comfortable in Malay than in Buru. However, immigrants from other islands who are in a minority in a given community also learn the Buru language to survive on the coast. These coastal speakers of the Masarete dialect are on the periphery of Buru society, being removed from the interior places of origin seen as the inside (see B. D. Grimes 1994a). The use of the Alune language spoken in west Seram reflects similarities to the Masarete case above. Alune is spoken in approximately 25 villages scattered through the mountains and surrounding coast. To simplify a complex situation, recent research (Florey 1990, 1991, 1993, 2001a; Yushin and Takako Taguchi, personal communication) indicates that language use in the mountain communities continues to be vigorous. However, in communities on the coastal periphery, some of which have migrated from the mountains within the last 150 years (most within the last forty-five), there are many of mixed ethnic composition and uncertain relationships to the land around them. In these peripheral communities there is also a much more varied range and context of usage of Alune and Ambonese Malay, with some segments of society more comfortable in Malay. Prior to the Hoamoal Wars, in 1621 the infamous Jan Pieterszoon Coen decimated thousands of inhabitants of the Banda Islands to gain control of the monopoly in nutmeg and mace. Survivors fled to the southeast and established the communities of Banda-Eli and Banda-Elat in the Kei Islands. While Malay is used heavily in these villages, the Banda language continues to be used by some (see also Loth, 1995; Collins and Kaartinen 1998; Collins 2003b). The two villages have been able to maintain a cohesive and autonomous enough ethnolinguistic identity to have not lost their language over more than 300 years.

4.7 Conclusions and Implications Recent research (B. F. Grimes, 2000) lists 726 living languages spoken in the Republic of Indonesia. Language groups located in western Indonesia (e.g. Java, Sumatra, Bali)

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number in millions of speakers, while in eastern Indonesia a greater linguistic diversity is also associated with fewer numbers of speakers for each language (see also Florey 2005a; J. Grimes 1986 and 1995 discuss the implications of size for language endangerment). People from these smaller language groups, by themselves, often do not have the economic and political resources to maintain and legitimate their own language as part of modern Indonesian social life. The examples in this paper from central Maluku show that when cases of language obsolescence and language shift occur in the region, there is not a simple or all-encompassing cause. Factors such as religious affiliation, language contact, migration or population size are not in themselves sufficient to account for all of the cases in the region. Each case must be studied on its own to unravel the complex of interrelated factors involved in the history of each society. No single factor is diagnostic of language death. There are, however, certain factors that provide useful starting points when looking at endangered language situations in eastern Indonesia. Small language groups are not necessarily endangered, but when communities have been uprooted from their place of origin (voluntarily or by force), it becomes important to investigate whether the entire population was uprooted (e.g. Hukumina, Larike Christians, the Batu Merah community), or if part of the group was able to remain in its homeland (e.g. Lisela, Masarete, Alune). Smaller language groups in which the entire population has been severed from their places of origin appear more likely to be endangered. If there is a large language group in which some people remain in the places of origin and some migrate out or are on the periphery in prolonged interethnic contact (e.g. Masarete, Alune), those on the outside or the periphery are more likely to be involved in language shift. From another perspective, initial contact with a larger language on its periphery may bear little resemblance to the profile of language use for the society as a whole. While some speakers living out of the traditional areas may shift to another language (Himmelmann’s emmigration scenario, this volume), if people continue to use the language in their place of origins the language may not be endangered. If a small language group is inundated by outsiders at its place of origins and unable to maintain its autonomy as a language and society, there is also a likelihood of language shift (e.g. Kayeli). The Funai dialect of Helong on southwest Timor Island would be another case in point (C. Grimes et al. 1997:42; Grimes and Cameron 2002). This is Himmelmann’s immigration scenario (this volume). When an entire language group is removed from its places of origin or when the language group is relatively small and involved in intense outside contact, a key question can be asked: ‘Are members of the language group able to maintain a cohesive identity as a relatively autonomous ethnolinguistic society (e.g. Banda), or must they assimilate to a larger community for survival (e.g. Hukumina, Kayeli)?’


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In the cases of both Kayeli and Hukumina the factors that set the stage for eventual language shift or obsolescence were several centuries removed from the actual period of recognizable shift. Each language has a history that may be complex and require detailed study. Reversing language shift or fostering language maintenance requires a long view of the past and perhaps a long view of the future to address the dynamics that have been set in place over centuries.

5 Maintaining Vera in Rongga: Struggles over Culture, Tradition, and Language in Modern Manggarai, Flores, Indonesia I Wayan Arka

5.1 Introduction Rongga is one of the Austronesian languages clustered along the border between Manggarai and Ngadha in Flores, Indonesia (Map 5.1). It is spoken by around 5,000 speakers in three villages in the southern part of the East Manggarai Regency. Rongga is not included in Wurm and Hattori (1981), or in Blust’s (1993) Central-Malayo Polynesian (CMP) sub-grouping, or in Fernandes’ (1996) Flores language sub-grouping. Prior to work done by Antonius et al. (1997) and publications resulting from the Rongga Documentation Project (Arka 2005; Arka 2006; Arka 2007a; Arka, Kosmas, and Suparsa 2007; Arka, Seda, Gelang, Nani, and Ture 2007; Arka and Ture 2007), Rongga was largely unknown (even by some Manggaraians) because it was considered to be part of the Manggarai language. Recent research suggests that Rongga is a language that is more affiliated with Ngadha than Manggarai (Antonius, Semiun, Robot, and Margarita 1997; Arka 2005), and is genetically within the CMP (Grimes, Therik, Grimes, and Jacob 1997; SIL International 2001). Like other Flores languages, Rongga is typologically isolating (Arka et al. 2007a). The (socio)linguistic situation in Flores reflects a complex network of dialect chains with boundaries between languages that are often difficult to draw. (Map 5.1 reflects Research findings reported in this chapter are part of the Rongga documentation project funded by the Hans Rausing ELDP grant, SOAS, London, granted to the author (IPF0011), 2004–2006. I thank Rongga people, in particular Juventus Rau, Fransiscus Seda, Bapak Anton Gelang, and Yohanes Nani, for their generosity and hospitality during my fieldwork in Flores. Special thanks must also go to Margaret Florey for who has read the earlier version of this chapter thoroughly and given me detailed and useful comments.

Maintaining Vera in Rongga

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Map 5.1 The Languages of Flores Island

our current understanding of the linguistic situation on the island, and more research is certainly needed.) The dialectal differentiation is associated with the relatively complex nature of the state structures and ritual polities with a variety of status systems that have existed in the region over a considerable period of time (Fox 1998:2). These have all influenced the development of the local languages. As a result, one particular dialect has been elevated to become a dialect of higher status, which therefore tends to be used over a wider area than where it was originally or regularly spoken. In western Flores, the central Manggarai dialect of Ruteng, the capital town of the regency, has gained wider intelligibility and elevated status as a regional lingua franca in west Flores, due to the influence of the Catholic mission and the advanced training schools centred in Ruteng. This dialect of Manggarai is the one taught at primary schools in Manggarai, including in the East Manggarai Regency where the Rongga people live. Indonesian is, however, certainly the most prestigious and the most commonly used language of wider communication, both regionally and nationally. For many people of Flores in general, acquiring Indonesian is a real need as they have to communicate with outsiders for their daily needs: many of the government officials, doctors, lawyers, solicitors, teachers, and merchants or traders are non-Florenese people. The majority of the Florenese are Catholics, and Indonesian is also the language used in church as the priest is generally a non-local person. Most Florenese are now bilinguals speaking their own indigenous language and Indonesian. Most of the Rongga people are multilinguals, speaking at least four languages (Indonesian, Manggarai, one or more neighbouring language(s) of Manus or Waerana, and Rongga).

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There has been much cultural change, especially for the Rongga people, in the last three decades. However, it might have started much earlier with the spread of Catholicism to Flores in the early twentieth century. The first recorded baptism was that of five Manggaraians in Reo (northern Manggarai) in 1912. Catholicism then spread southward and reached southern areas of Manggarai in 1950s with the establishment of the Paroki (Parish) Waerana and the Catholic Seminary in the Rongga area of Kisol in 1955 (Daem Pr. 1992). The introduction of modern religion has had a devaluing effect on the local indigenous belief and knowledge (further discussed in relation to Vera below). However, recent rapid development and modernization, especially during Soeharto’s era (starting in late 1960s), has also imposed heavy pressure on Rongga language and culture, resulting in accelerated unprecedented marginalization and imminent loss of certain traditional genres. In this chapter I report the shrinking of linguistic and cultural resources in Rongga based on field experiences in Flores (2004–6). I examine the transmission of Vera, a ritual dance with singing, which is often regarded by the Rongga people as their unique identity. The aim of the chapters is, first, to provide a description of Vera, outlining its socio-cultural and historical significance for the Rongga people in the context of modern Manggarai Indonesia. It will be shown that Vera is losing its appeal with the younger generation and is a threatened ritual. The second aim, related to the first, is to show that Vera needs proper documentation, and that this must be done in the context of modern language and cultural documentation. Finally, the chapters also aims at discussing the complexity, challenges and prospect of maintaining Vera within broader language maintenance and revitalization projects. The chapter is organized as follows. A description of Vera is given in Section 5.2. This section is a brief introduction to what Vera is (Section 5.2.1), followed by an outline of the social, historical and cultural significance of Vera (Sections 5.2.2–5.2.3) and its linguistic resources. Discussions of its current state as a threatened song/dance style and the importance of safeguarding it in line with the UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) are also given in this section (Sections 5.2.4– 5.2.6). Section 5.3 reports and discusses prospects and challenges of documenting and revitalising Vera. Scenarios of endangerment of song/dance styles are given in Section 5.3.1, followed by an outline of what has been done and what still needs to be done for the documentation of Rongga (Section 5.3.2). Discussion of the viability of maintaining/revitalizing Vera (its positive and negative variables) is given in Section 5.3.3. A conclusion is given in Section 5.4.

5.2 Vera: More than a Dance 5.2.1 What is Vera? Vera is a ritual dance accompanied by singing, the song being of a special kind, expressed in poetic language, containing historical and philosophical messages. The


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word Vera in Rongga is believed to have come from pera, meaning ‘the ancestor’s testament’ (Indonesian: wasiat leluhur). The ancestors’ messages and teachings contained in Vera have been practiced and passed from one generation to the next. Vera is traditionally performed by adult (male and female) dancers, who form two lines, and a leading dancer. The female dancers, called daghe, stand in front. The male dancers, called woghu, stand behind the daghe. The single male leading dancer, called the noa lako, stands in front of the daghe. He starts the dance and leads the two groups of dancers. The song initiated by the noa lako or woghu is followed by all daghes. Not all songs are accompanied by musical instruments. While dancing and singing, the dancers hold hands (cross-armed) in a row. They dance moving forward and backward, sometimes going around, doing certain synchronized leg and body movements. A Vera performance lasts for hours, starting at midnight and finishing the following morning when the sun rises. The performance is closed with a song, called tangi jo. Vera is not merely a means of entertainment but is a highly valued cultural practice for the Rongga people. Its songs contain verbal expressions and, as such, it serves not only as an artistic and crucial form of cultural expression but also as an essential source of history, knowledge, identity, and philosophical guidance. 5.2.2 Identity and history in Vera Vera serves as a cultural identity for the Rongga people. The Rongga people are generally quite aware that Vera is unique to their ethnic group in Flores. It is perhaps the only cultural practice that the Rongga people are very proud of. However, as I argue below, while a sense of cultural pride is a positive variable, cultural pride appears not to be enough to resist the heavy pressure caused by other socio-political and linguistic factors that have resulted in the current marginalization of the Rongga culture and language. Internally within the ethnic group of Rongga, Vera also serves as a clan identity because certain Vera songs may be uniquely associated with certain clans or sub-clans. 1 For example, a fragment of a Vera song from the Motu clan, below, tells the origin of the clan. The histories of other clans are also generally recorded in Vera. (1)

Following is a fragment of Vera text from the Motu clan: Motu Weka ndili mai, Weka ndili mai Jawa Name down come Name down come Java ‘The Motu Weka who came here (were) the (Motu) Weka from Java’ Rajo ngazha Milo Motu, Tu ndele Sarikondo boat name Name Land north name ‘(Their) boat called Milo Motu landed in Sarikondo’ Sarikondo mosa me’a, tei Motu stana mezhe name male alone see Name as.big.as big ‘Sarikondo itself was well-known, and the Motu grew big (there)’

1 Clan identity is also attributed to the rumah adat (clan house) and the pusaka (heirlooms) owned by the adat (house).

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I Wayan Arka Motu woe Limazhua, Embu me’a Sunggisina name friend seven grandmother alone name ‘The Motu were seven brothers, descendents of Sunggisina’ Motu woe limazhua, Beka sogho wae kodhe name friend seven Break because water monkey ‘The Motu were seven brothers, but they were split because of fighting for monkey soup’

5.2.3 Cultural values of Vera Vera encapsulates cultural traditions and values. It is an integral part of Rongga culture that highlights the significance of ancestral ties and ancestral blessings in daily activities. It is performed as part of almost all important traditional ritual ceremonies; the garden and the house are important categories of such ceremonies. Performing a Vera is part of the rituals conducted during the planting season. These rituals begin with the ritual of preparing the seed to be planted, in which the seed is sprayed with chicken blood (mbasa wini). An eating ritual takes place immediately after the harvesting season, langga inga/peti for corn and ka pare muzhi/peti pare for rice. This ritual must be performed in the adat (clan) house, which owns a drum (gendang). Special kinds of Vera are performed for different purposes on particular occasions. For example, Vera sara jawa is performed as part of the funeral ritual for a clan elder (kepala suku). Vera is also performed during the feast (kenduri) following the funeral. Vera saju must be performed when twin babies of different sexes are born. Ata saju is for the ritual when the child’s first tooth falls out, and dheke ra’a is for the rehabilitation of one’s reputation, e.g. after s/he is wrongly accused of doing something terrible. A Vera is also performed at the funeral of an ordinary person who had a long life, dying at the age of 100 years or more (sedhu mbizha ndoa ngembo). For an indigenous community such as Rongga, performing a ritual with its dance/songs is a matter of cultural obligation, continuing the tradition and fulfilling the wishes of God and the ancestors. Practicing a ritual with its dance/song has a special purpose, deeply embedded in local indigenous belief/cosmology. Therefore, ritual dance reinforces and transmits traditional values. Certain kinds of Vera in Rongga cannot be performed as an exhibition, or entertainment, for outsiders/tourists. 2 It is often believed that failing to perform a ritual (appropriately) may lead to undesirable consequences and punishment from God and the ancestors. On the other hand, continuing the ritual practice in the proper way is believed to bring peace and prosperity. Traditional values transmitted through Vera are in fact quite rich. They include indigenous knowledge (such as clan history, described earlier), social norms, philosophy and wisdom in life, regarded as ancestral inheritance (nasehat warisan leluhur). 2 I found this to be a problem in documenting Vera. However, members of the clan, or different clans, are often divided on the matter of whether certain rituals could be documented by an outsider. As a matter of principle, I keep the rule that for anything (to be) documented I must have permission from the clan or members of the clan involved.


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5.2.4 Linguistic resources of Vera: parallelism and poetic language Ritual language in the eastern islands of Indonesia is highly elaborate and structured in formulaic phrases and parallel verses (Fox 1974:73; Fox 1982; Engelenhoven 1997; Grimes et al. 1997; Florey 1998; Lutz 1998). The formulaic form typically consists of a set of paired expressions, containing certain patterns of words/rhymes. The first and second units of the paired expressions generally have the same or very similar (grammatical) structures, with the difference that certain words or phrases are repeated or changed. The second unit is intended to reinforce the first unit. The overall meaning of the pair is similar, and the different words/phrases used in the pair constitute conventional doublets. The semantic relation of the doublets can be of different kinds (synonymy, antonymy and part whole), e.g. tetu // ’oli ‘fall from a height // fall over on the ground’ in Alune (Florey 1998), ina // ama ‘mother // father’ and riwta // pepna ‘fence // garden’ in Leti (Engelenhoven 1997). The following example is from Buru (Grimes et al. 1997). In this examples, keha ‘climb’ and lepa ‘ascend’ are synonymous doublets, and fuka and Fakal refer to the same idea, i.e. Fakal is a name of a mountain. (2)

Buru (Grimes et al. 1997) Sira keha gam Sak fuka// 3p climb ALL up mountain sira lepa gam Sak Fakal 3p ascend ALL up name ‘They climbed up the mountains, they went up to Fakal (name of mountain village.’

The ritual language of Vera in Rongga is exemplified by the fragment in (3). It also shares the same characteristics of parallelism. 3 As in the example from Buru, the parallel structure in Vera is represented by two lines and given one free translation. The free translation reflects the intended/metaphorical, not the literal/denotational, meaning. The formulaic nature of the expression often makes it difficult to understand the literal meaning of the expression or the meaning of the component words in isolation. Therefore, no literal translation is given for this example. 4 Note how parallelism is achieved by means of lexical cohesion (repetition and synonymy). An exact repetition is observed in the second parts of the lines, i.e. mudha ngata lima lua. The first parts show cohesion by means of synonymy, e.g. lo and weki ‘body’ and mbojo and semi ‘tired’. 3 These characteristics are also encountered outside (eastern) Indonesia, and perhaps not restricted to ritual language. For example, parallelism is featured in chanted stories in the Papua New Guinea Highlands Rumsey (2006). 4 In fact, my Rongga consultants often do not feel comfortable with the ‘literal’ translation. This suggests that the pairing of form and meaning has been acquired at the phrasal formulaic level.

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resi mbojo, mudha ngata lima lua (3) Lo body drizzle tired luck person hand hair weki resi semi mudha ngata lima lua body drizzle tired luck person hand hair ‘Something hard should be done without thinking of something in return’ The ritual language of Vera is often regarded as poetic, high register, and difficult. It has high register status because it is associated with rituals performed for certain occasions and sometimes only by certain people. Vera is poetic, as it expresses deep feelings with aesthetic rhymes of words. It contains formulaic expressions and selective words with subtle meanings using poetic techniques of parallelism, repetition, analogy, and symbolism, typical of verbal art in eastern Indonesia (Florey 1998). In addition, the linguistic resources of Vera often make use of archaic words, e.g. ndeta ‘up (there)’ is often found instead of the everyday zheta ‘up’. Thus, the ritual language is often not easily understood by ordinary Rongga people, especially the young. Not surprisingly, this genre is often regarded as difficult, as it requires a specialized skill and good knowledge of the language. 5.2.5 Marginalization and endangerment: Vera under threat The Rongga people are a minority ethnic group, who are disadvantaged even at the regional level in Manggarai (Arka 2005). The change is unprecedented, and generally beyond the control of the Rongga people. It has, among other things, weakened and threatened the transmission of Vera in Rongga. Evidence for this comes from the fact that the skills of performing Vera are not well acquired by the younger generation, and as the elders admitted, the quality of Vera nowadays has eroded quickly. There are at least four related factors that have brought the practice of Vera under threat. The first factor appears to be rooted in the spread of Catholicism and modern education. 5 Both have eroded the foundation of the traditional belief necessary for the transmission of the ritual. The younger generation educated in modern Indonesia no longer shares the traditional obligation of practicing the ritual. When the young people were asked about the significance of maintaining and learning Vera as part of their cultural inheritance, their answers were mixed. While admitting that Vera could signify their ethnic identity, many are now ignorant about Vera and often assume no sense of responsibility for maintaining it. The second factor is the shift of interests in modern life. In earlier days, when the old people were young, they were very enthusiastic about learning and dancing Vera. There was no other entertainment at that time. Now, entertainment of different kinds is easily available: from radio to television (with or without satellite dishes) to (rental) 5 The negative impact of Christianity on the local indigenous culture/language is also reported elsewhere, e.g. in Kilivila, a language on the Trobriand Islands Senft (1997).


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CDs containing Indonesian and foreign movies (in the local kiosks or the closest town of Borong). The young people are more interested in watching World Cup soccer, listening to modern Western-style music, singing Indonesian pop songs, and dancing nationally popular dances such as poco-poco 6 than learning and practising their own traditional songs and dances. The third reason has something to do with the nature of the ritual dance itself. Vera is often said to have little or no entertainment value. My interviews with the young people confirm that they are not interested in learning Vera. The dance is considered boring, as it is repetitious and too long (from midnight until sunrise), making it unattractive to the young. A young married man commented (in Indonesian): Pak saya hanya nonton saja, tidak pernah ikut main. Hanya pembukaan dan penutup saja yang beda, yang ditengah-tengahnya itu, sepanjang malam sampai pagi sama. Oo. . .uu. . . nah itu sudah masuk ke Vera, lalu diulang-ulang. Di belakang mesti siap air panas untuk kopi agar orang tidak mengantuk. Kalau ada Vera tujuh malam berturut-turut, hanya pemainnya yang beda, Vera yang dipertontonkan sama terus. Membosankan pak! I do not participate, just watch it. Only its opening and closing parts are different. In between, all is the same from midnight till early in the morning. Oo..uu.. means that the Vera part starts, then everything is just repeated. Hot water must be ready in the kitchen because coffee must be served anytime to keep the people awake. When there are Veras for seven nights long, then only the dancers are different, all other things are the same. Really boring indeed!

In addition, the ritual language in the song is fixed, providing no room for personal creativity. While a kind of Vera, namely the haimelo type, could be freely performed, and in theory may serve as a means of entertainment, there has not been any attempt to develop it and adapt it creatively within the local/Indonesian pop culture. This is quite different from the situation in Bali, where a variety of traditional ritual dances, some originating from the pre-Hindu period (before the eighth century), have survived (further discussed in Section 5.3.3.1), and inspired creation of new dances. Influences from Javanese-Hindu and others such as Chinese dance (Bandem 1996) have also shaped contemporary Balinese dances. New creations of Balinese dance were introduced in the early twentieth century when Bali was invaded, officially annexed as part of the Dutch colony, and promoted as a paradise for tourists. Furthermore, another positive factor that makes Balinese art flourish is the establishment of the STSI (Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia) of Bali (or Bali’s National Institute of Art) in 1969, which has produced many creative, talented Balinese artists. The fourth (more serious) reason for the threat to Vera is language-related. The younger generation now does not generally possess the language skills needed to perform Vera. In addition to the dancing skills, performing Vera requires a mastery of 6 Poco-poco is a line dance with dynamic steps, which originally came from Minahasa Sulawesi but has spread throughout Indonesia. Poco-poco is a very popular dance, often incorporated into aerobic classes and often performed for special occasions, e.g. commemorations of Independence Day and dance festivals.

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the ritual form of the Rongga language. Vera songs often also contain certain unknown and archaic expressions, which make it difficult for the young Rongga generation. In the old days, the young (boys and girls, men and women) regularly watched and then joined Vera performances. This was a natural way of learning Veras. There was plenty of exposure to different kinds of Vera, providing learning opportunities for the newcomers. However, such exposure has been significantly reduced nowadays, and the young are increasingly deprived of the skills needed for Vera. 5.2.6 Safeguarding Vera Vera can be classified as Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), defined by UNESCO as ‘the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills . . . that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage’. 7 It is ‘transmitted from generation to generation, constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity’. ICH is manifested in the domains of oral tradition and expressions (including language), performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and traditional craftsmanship. Vera in Rongga manifests and intimately links at least four of these domains: its song is part of oral expressions; its dance is part of performing arts; its practice is part of traditional rituals; and its message (contained in the verses of the song) is part of traditional knowledge and social values. It has been increasingly recognized both by academics and by public and international organizations that ICH needs safeguarding. A Convention for Safeguarding of ICH has been ratified by UNESCO and entered into force on 20 April 2006. By ‘safeguarding’ is meant ‘measures aimed at ensuring the viability of the ICH, including the identification, documentation, research, preservation, protection, promotion, enhancement, transmission, particularly through formal and non-formal education, as well as the revitalization of the various aspects of such heritage’. 8 There are good ecological, social, and cultural reasons for the safeguarding of the ICH as outlined in the preamble of the Convention. For song with dance like Vera, it is socio-culturally part of a highly valued tradition, often considered by the indigenous community as the ‘crown jewels’ of their cultural heritage (cf. Marett and Barwick 2003). The significance for Vera for the Rongga people has been outlined in Sections 5.2.2–5.2.3. When asked, all Rongga elders were aware of the importance of maintaining and transmitting Vera. They agreed that the loss of Vera would mean a loss of identity, traditional values, and indigenous knowledge. From a broader ecological perspective, saving dance/song, especially that of a minority indigenous group, is important to maintain cultural diversity. Our modern world is increasingly homogeneous culturally and linguistically. The expansion of 7 8

For complete information about ICH; see http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00006.


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dominant cultures/languages has marginalized and, in many cases, often endangered minority cultures/languages. This is indeed the case in the Indonesian context, illustrated by the precarious nature of Vera in Rongga as outlined in Section 5.2.5. While safeguarding indigenous dance/song is worth doing, the difficult task is how to do that. It involves documentation and research as well as practical aspects of maintenance and revitalization. The whole process is a long one and it is not a simple undertaking. In what follows, I discuss the issues with reference to Vera based on my own experience in the Rongga documentation project.

5.3 Documenting and Revitalizing Vera: Prospect and Challenges 5.3.1 Language documentation and scenarios of endangerment of song styles Language documentation is “concerned with the methods, tools, and the theoretical underpinnings for compiling a representative and lasting multipurpose record of a natural language or one of its varieties” (Gippert, Himmelmann, and Mosel 2006:v). The key word ‘multipurpose’ highlights the point that the documentation must be as rich as possible, covering all registers, varieties and different kinds of inter-related language phenomena relevant for as diverse group of users as possible—linguists, anthropologists, musicologists, teachers and other interested parties, including the local indigenous community. Songs in ritual dance like Vera constitute a special register of high cultural and historical significance (5.2) and must therefore form part of the record in a language documentation project. Urgency of documentation is determined by the level of language/song endangerment. However, there is no one-to-one relationship between the endangerment of dance/song style and that of language. There are four possible scenarios, given in (4). (For simplicity, a broad category of ‘healthy’ vs. ‘threatened’ is used in the grid.) As may be seen, the endangerment of dance/song may not always mean the endangerment of language, and vice versa. In some Aboriginal communities in Australia, we find situation (2) where the languages are moribund but their song and dance styles persist. In contrast, we may find situation (3) where the languages are healthy but certain song/dance styles are threatened or extinct, e.g. the adar and gandrung dances in Bali (Bandem and deBoer 1995). In the case of Vera in Rongga, we are dealing with situation (4), in which an erosion of transmission of dancing and chanting is also accompanying language marginalization. The situation reflects a common symptom of language endangerment in progress: the shrinking of linguistic and cultural resources of the language. Given this situation, complete documentation of Vera is undoubtedly needed. (4) healthy song style threatened song style

Healthy language Threatened language 1 2 3 4

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5.3.2 Documenting Vera: what has been done and what remains to be done? Before outlining what has been done and what remains to be done for the documentation of Vera, a description of the ideal practice of documenting songs/dances is given. A documentation project of dance/song must yield materials that thoroughly depict the dance/song, including fairly complete descriptions and analyses that could be used for practical purposes, e.g. further community-based maintenance or revitalization programmes. Ideally, the documentation project must include detailed information about the dance/song in relation to the requirement of primary data (audiovisual recordings/records) and related apparatus (metadata and descriptive analysis). These points are summarized in (5) and (6) (cf., SPAFA 1983). (For further discussion on the format for language documentation, see Himmelmann (2006)). For primary data, documentation of song/dance styles needs audio/visual recordings which produce still pictures, graphic materials, and sound and video records. This audiovisual documentation provides a wealth of information that cannot be easily recorded in words, e.g. the beauty of the melody of songs and dances, how they are performed and the cultural background context of the performance. Thus, audiovisual records of songs allow us not only to listen to the melody of the song (and also the accompanying music, if any) but also to see the body movement, costume, make-up and accessories of the singer(s), the background of the performance, etc. (5) Visual and audio recordings of the dance/song: a. body movement and form b. mood and temperament c. costume, make-up, and accessories d. the accompanying music (if any) e. the accompanying song and other verbal expressions/texts involved f. background/context of performance The primary data must be also accompanied by a range of additional information including a type of data called ‘metadata’. Metadata describes the primary data. For example, as seen in (6), it provides the information pertaining to the session of recording (name of the song/dance, when and where recorded), the media used in the recording, etc. Data for songs may also include metalinguistic glosses for the transcription. That is, the transcription may consist of interlinear texts showing morpheme glosses, part of speech tags, and free translation. It is also possible to have texts showing time alignment to the sound file, e.g. using a transcription tool such as ELAN (http://www.mpi.nl/tools/). In addition, the documentation may also include a descriptive analysis based on ethnographic research. This provides information as to the endangerment level and accounts of functions, cosmology, mythology and history of the song/dance.

Maintaining Vera in Rongga (6)

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Metadata, description, and analysis: a. name of the dance (local/other names) b. location/place of origin (village, district, regency, . . .) c. detailed transcriptions and descriptions of the recorded materials in (5)a-f, — the media used in recording and the technical specifications etc. — the content: account of the dance, music, song, and language involved d. current state: highly endangered, threatened, developing, . . . e. function: ritual, performing, social, . . . f. performers: number, type (general or special group), eligibility (any person, certain persons) . . . g. acquisition and preparation: — training/teaching: regular, incidental, . . . — method: informal, individual, in group, . . . — preparation of the performance h. place of performance: indoor, outdoor, special stage, a certain (restricted) place, . . . i. time/occasion of performance: night, daytime, anytime, a special occasion, . . . j. payment and type of payment involved, if any k. message, ideology and aesthetics l. cosmology, mythology, or history

Finally, the documentation must also meet certain technical aspects of media and format for long-term accessibility. This is important in light of the rapid uptake in digital and computer technologies. The technologies allow digital recordings and fast data processing. They have also transformed the way the different kinds of data (primary and related apparatus) are created, annotated, linked, stored, and disseminated. It is therefore necessary to ensure that the data is stored in media and formats for long term management and preservation. 9 For example, an annotation text stored in a proprietary format such as ‘(Microsoft).doc’ will cause portability problems because it can only be read by the application used to create it. In contrast, storing data in plain text format (e.g. following an open-source standard such as XML) is considered best practice for long-term archival purposes because its readability does not depend on any particular software. 9 See Thieberger (this volume), Bird and Simons (2003), and http://emeld.org/school/ for recommended best practices in digital language documentation.

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Having outlined the ideal practice of documentation of songs/dances, I now report what has been done in the Rongga Documentation Project (2004–6). The focus of the Rongga Documentation Project was on the language, with priority given to text collection and production of a dictionary and grammar sketch. This goal was achieved at the conclusion of the project. A complete list of publications and documentation activities of the project can be viewed at the project homepage. 10 The three-year project is now over but there is still a lot of work to be done to document cultural practices in Rongga. While some documentation of cultural practices such as dancing and singing (Vera) has been done in the project, the nature of the documentation is not thorough, i.e. not covering all key points listed in (5)–(6) in relation to the description and analysis. The documentation of Vera reported earlier in this chapter is an initial step toward a more comprehensive documentation of dance/song in Rongga. Such comprehensive documentation clearly involves not only making visual and audio recordings with basic (or ‘thin’) metadata, but also collecting and producing ‘thick’ (metadata) information (Nathan and Austin 2004), i.e. giving full description (and possibly analysis) of the data and the content of the data. While some significant information has been gathered (e.g. the structure of expressions in Vera, its social and cultural significance), more information is needed to fill in the gaps and to further refine and deepen our understanding of the Vera dance/song. The description and analysis shown in (6) requires long, intensive research, with required knowledge and skills beyond linguistics. The extended fieldwork may involve an ethnographic approach, living and mingling in the community, experiencing the local culture. As for Vera, further crucial information about the dance/song such as cosmology, mythology, history, body movement, and floor patterns is still needed. This may have to be collected by means of interviews with the performers, local elders, and other community members. The collection of this kind of data may take place before or after the actual recording itself. Indeed, certain information is necessarily collected prior to recording so that we know what to record, from what angle and when. 11 Based on the experience in the field and given the disciplinary nature of documentation research on dance/song, it is necessary to have an anthropologist and/or an ethnomusicologist as part of the research team. The Rongga Documentation Project did not involve anthropologists and ethnomusicologists, as it was a relatively small documentation project (with a sole linguist investigator) focusing on text collection, dictionary and grammar writing of the language. A follow-up documentation project for Rongga with a multidisciplinary research team is therefore certainly needed. 10

http://rspas.anu.edu.au/linguistics/projects/iwa/Web-Pages/RonggaPRoject%20-%20Home.htm. The challenge in the field, as my experience suggests, is how to have the best recording from the right distance/angle while at the same time not being too intrusive in the proceedings of dance/song. 11


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5.3.3 Viability To assess the viability of maintaining and revitalizing Vera, we have to look at the positive and negative variables within the regional context of Manggarai, and the national context of Indonesia. While the prospect is not promising, given the past/current socio-political climate, there still seems to be some prospect for revitalization. 5.3.3.1 POSITIVE VARIABLES The variables shown in (7) appear to be positive for the maintenance and survival of Vera; each has its own challenges. (7)

a. symbol of ethnic identity b. pride/respect for the dance/song c. part of traditional rituals d. sufficient dancing/singing skills still available from the elders

The first two related variables, briefly discussed in Section 5.2.2, are critical. It has been shown in the literature how group identity and a high level of prestige are two important factors that may sustain, or even develop, certain cultural practices. As for Vera, it is rather ‘abstract’ or intangible. It is an identity that is not easily acquired, exposed, or disseminated in the same way as more visible markers of ethnic/religious identity such as a necklace with a cross for Christians and the headscarf/hijab for Moslem women. While Rongga adults might be aware of Vera as part of their ethnic identity, children are certainly not. An important question to be investigated further is to what extent pride is indeed attributed to Vera as an ethnic identity across younger generations. Several young Rongga men whom I interviewed on this matter showed a rather ambivalent attitude with respect to maintaining the tradition of Vera (see Section 5.2.5, and Arka (2005)). The challenge is how to boost a sense of pride with these generations, because the survival of Vera rests on their shoulders. Dance/song as a part of traditional ritual in practice is also a positive variable for cultural maintenance. Evidence for this comes from the Balinese case. Traditional dances/songs have been generally well maintained in Bali because they are practiced by Balinese Hindus mainly as part of everyday rituals. Certain Hinduism-based arts, including dances and songs such as gambuh, lontar (palm-leaf ) reading and chanting in old Javanese language, already extinct in Java, now survive only in Bali. Recently, the policy of the local government in Bali and the booming tourism industry have made Balinese culture (arts including dances/songs) flourish even more, e.g. with the development and creation of new dances/songs, using multimedia in teaching traditional songs, etc. If it were not for the continued practice of Hinduism in Bali, Balinese dances/songs would have a different story. It should be noted that the spread of Islam in Java has resulted in the disappearance of Hinduism and its related traditional practices on the island. The spread of Islam to the Indonesian archipelago was driven by trade,

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believed to be as early as in the eleventh century, though Muslims traders may have visited Indonesia much earlier than this. The last great Hindu kingdom in Java, the Majapahit Empire, which once ruled the archipelago from the southern Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, Bali, to the Philippines for around two centuries (1293–1500), fell under the rising power of Islamized kingdom of Demak in 1520 (see (Ricklefs 1991) for further history of modern Indonesia). The Hindu noble families, together with a large number of courtiers, artisans and priests, fled to Bali, and continued to practise Hinduism on the island. (Hinduism had reached Bali before the Majapahit era and Bali has largely remained a Hindu island up to now.) While Javanese culture is nowadays still rich with dances/songs, certain Javanese arts/dances/songs have certainly ceased to be practiced and performed on the island, and now survive in their current versions only in Bali. Thus, Bali is in fact a living museum of Hindu-Javanese culture (Soedarsono 1974:136). Likewise, the spread of Catholicism in Rongga (and also in other parts of Flores) appears to have the same negative impact: Catholicism has threatened the existence of long-practiced ritual traditions in Rongga, including the dances and songs. Vera is still currently practiced along with Catholicism, even though Vera is not part of the Catholic ritual. When the underlying traditional/indigenous belief system supporting the ritual is eroded over time, the demise of the ritual practice is imminent. In Rongga, traditional (ritual) practices incompatible with Catholic teaching are generally discouraged or forbidden, but other practices, while not forbidden, are often not encouraged. Again, such practices could be gradually abandoned, and have the same fate as the Hindu-Javanese arts in Java. Evidence for change in Rongga comes from the fact that the elders still have a sense of obligation to practice certain Veras correctly for fear of misfortune happening to them, but younger generations do not share such a sense. The challenge would be how to maintain a sense of duty to carry out the traditional practice while at the same time being a good Catholic. This is not easy. However, given the fact that a Catholic priest is highly respected and influential, a maintenance and revitalization project would usefully include the support and/or participation of the local Catholic church/priest. Finally, a positive variable comes from the fact that there is still sufficient skill in the community to build upon for the maintenance/revitalization project. Though declining in quality and frequency of performance, Vera is not extinct (yet). There are still elders, generally older than sixty, with good knowledge and skills in dancing and singing Vera. The task is to undertake a thorough documentation covering the points shown in (5)–(6), followed by a formulation of a specific revitalization program. There are at least two challenges. The first is how to get sufficient support, financially and non-financially (e.g. competent human resources), from the local community, and/or perhaps local government. The second related challenge is the longterm maintenance/revitalization itself. While a short-term project including training the local people could perhaps realistically be designed and implemented, it is still a big question whether the community would be interested or able to take full


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responsibility of the maintenance and revitalization later, long after the short-term project is over. 5.3.3.2 NEGATIVE VARIABLES Cultural loyalty and unfavorable socio-political contexts are two variables that have disadvantaged Rongga. I believe they will still constitute negative variables in the future. Each is now discussed in turn. Weak loyalty There is evidence of a weak loyalty of the Rongga people toward their language and culture. For example, as reported in Arka (2005), there are cases of Rongga people switching language/identity due to contact and/or intermarriage with the neighboring ethnic Waerana in the northern part of the Rongga territory along the Trans-Flores Road. Given that Vera is now still regarded a symbol of pride by the Rongga people, it is interesting to see if and how such a symbol could survive the pressure of the marginalization of Rongga culture due to the increasing contact and rapid socio-economic and ecological change both at local-regional and national levels. Cultural loyalty is a complex issue, and there appears to be no short-term effective program to boost it. When I was asked by a young Rongga man in a meeting with the local Catholic Youth Association to tell him the economic benefit, in real terms, for keeping their language and culture, I found it a difficult question to answer. The politics of national culture vs. reviving indigenous cultures and traditions The government of Indonesia in fact has an obligation to maintain indigenous cultures, made explicit in the 1945 constitution. However, the politics of building a national (Indonesian) culture has in effect disadvantaged local cultures. This is due to a forceful imposition of a vision of standard ‘Indonesian culture’, especially in the style of Soeharto’s New Order government (Kuipers 1998; Erb 2005, and references therein). Soeharto was in power from 1966–1998, and called his government ‘New Order’, to contrast it with that of his predecessor, Soekarno’s, which he called ‘Old Order’. He constructed a strong central authoritarian government backed up by the military. This enabled him to maintain political stability, won him the economic and diplomatic support of several Western governments, notably the US, in the Cold War era, and therefore created significant economic growth and industrialisation. His nationalist approach in the name of national unity, security/stability and economic development was often harshly implemented at the expense of human rights and the rights of local indigenous people. Soeharto was forced to resign from the presidency in May 1998 following a mass demonstration triggered by the Asian economic crisis that swept the region, including Indonesia. His fall marks an end of his New Order era and the beginning of the ‘Reformation’ era in Indonesia. However, while the centralistic approach is diminishing now, the politics of culture, heritage, and tradition brought about by the Reformation era has not been helpful either, since the understanding of ‘local cultures’ that has been shaped and has to be promoted basically remains the same. That is, the vision of ‘culture’ as an entertaining cultural display (Kipp 1993), or ‘culture as art’ (Acciaioli 1985). (This is often exemplified by the successful promotion of Balinese culture for tourism.) Unfortunately, as

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many observers have noted, such a vision does not include language, other important cultural practices, and social organizations that could sustain the cultural identity and empower the locals to face challenges in modern Indonesia. The post-Soeharto era has been filled with radical rethinking. Relevant here are two related aspects, namely greater autonomy granted to the local government and rethinking of the cultural conception of place and identity in relation to the local culture. In theory, under greater autonomy granted to the local government, revivals of local cultures are supposed to flourish. In reality, this has not happened, and perhaps will not happen to minority groups such as Rongga, for the following reasons. First, the shift for more autonomy in Indonesia is still in transition. With regulations still being negotiated and finalized by central and local governments on a range of issues, we do not expect that the regulations will be resolved easily or that there will be an instant impact of change in the near future. Secondly, the actual damage that the New Order policy has caused to the cultural systems of minority indigenous groups may have been quite significant. For example, an urban village administration system of kelurahan ( Javanese-based village system) was introduced in the territory of Rongga in late 1980s. In this system, the village head (lurah) was a civil servant appointed by the government, not democratically elected by the local community. Kelurahan Tanarata (which is a Rongga village) has been headed by a lurah who is not a Rongga. There is in principle nothing wrong with a non-Rongga person acting as the village head of a Rongga village if he can provide support needed for the local community. The fact is that, based on my observation in the field and discussions with the locals, the non-Rongga lurah does not live in the village, has no good knowledge of the local customary practices, and often cannot mediate or solve local problems. The introduction of the Javanese-style village of kelurahan and splitting the territories into new administrative village units crippled the traditional adat system that had been functional for centuries. If a serious cultural revitalization project is ever undertaken, restoring and reviving the system would take a long time. The indigenous genealogical clan systems and adat laws will perhaps never be restored as they were before. Thirdly, given the regional/local politics in which ethnic loyalty is prominent, the greater autonomy given to the local government of Manggarai is not helpful. Traditionally, for historical reasons, the local politics and power have been in the hands of the majority Manggaraian. Election and democracy (based on number of votes) in modern Indonesia has benefited, and will always benefit, the dominant group, not a minority group such as the Rongga. The Manggaraian have the human resources (sumber daya manusia) to control strategic positions. Unfortunately, not many Rongga people are well educated; thus, they cannot take strategic positions and power, even at the local government level of kecamatan (a district unit). Hence, priority has not been given, and is not likely to be given, to meet the interests of the Rongga people by nonRongga decision-makers in Manggarai. In the past, there was some funding provided


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by the Department of Tourism for cultural promotion of indigenous cultural practices to promote Vera. However, this is far too little and very sporadic. In addition, this was again promoted for the sake of cultural display (i.e. Vera as an entertaining dance presented to tourists who visited Manggarai), or performed as part of the cultural festival in Ruteng, the capital of Manggarai. The local identity is tied to the Manggaraian culture. Vera and the Rongga language as well as other small languages in the surrounding areas such as Manus, Waerana, and Kepo’ (see Map 5.1) are considered ‘part’ of Manggarai culture. The Manggarai language is taught at primary schools across Manggarai, including in the Rongga villages for the Rongga children. I worked with a Rongga teacher to develop teaching materials in Rongga for the Rongga children, but the teacher was not so keen to do that, and finally (politely) told me that he had stopped working on the Rongga teaching materials, giving the reason that there was no need and it was of no use. He explained something that I had already been aware of before when I talked with other local teachers. That is, Rongga is not part of the local curriculum because it is not chosen as the mulok (muatan lokal ‘local content’). 12 Thus, teaching Rongga would cause problems: first, the problem of finding the time slot in an already crowded schedule; secondly, the problem of preparing the material from scratch, which is an extra burden for the teacher; thirdly, the ‘no benefit’ problem with respect to student performance in the test of the mulok. Since the mulok test is in Manggarai, it makes sense to give Manggarai priority, not Rongga; otherwise the students would fail or perform poorly on the test. Given the conditions just outlined, it seems too much to expect a sustainable schoolbased or community-based maintenance/revitalization project, even one enthusiastically run by the Rongga people themselves. The task is even harder for an outsider: it is quite difficult to help boost the motivation of the local people when poverty is widespread. Poverty eclipses the need for cultural maintenance/revitalization because the immediate priorities and struggles of the locals are generally surviving daily life. 5.3.4 Teaching Vera to primary school children: A case study The Rongga Language Documentation Project generally received positive response from the Rongga elders and intellectuals, especially after I explained to them the purpose of the project. The project appears to have had some impact in persuading some people of Rongga to take action to maintain their language and culture. With the help of some enthusiastic elders and Rongga teachers, we organized a group 12

Mulok (muatan local) in Indonesian school curriculum is part of the primary school curriculum designed to develop competence and skills which are relevant to the local need. The content of mulok cannot be included as part of the existing national curriculum. It is up to the school to determine the content of mulok, and it therefore varies from school to school. Teaching a local language is a popular content of mulok. The local language chosen for this is generally the dominant one, and is therefore taught across schools in the region.

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of Vera dancers consisting of the students from the local primary school (SD) at Kisol, Tanarata. It took a couple of months to train the children in the Vera dance, prepared for the commemoration of the hardiknas (education day) on the 2 May, 2004 at the subdistrict Kota-Komba. The performance was a great success, applauded and highly praised by the local authorities and non-Rongga on-lookers. All of the training, rehearsal processes, and the actual show were recorded using a digital video camera. The recording was then replayed on the TV set to the people at Tanarata soon after the performance. Then, the recording was later edited and burnt to a VCD with copies distributed to the relevant participants. The elders, parents, and teachers were extremely enthusiastic and pleased with the show—it was their first experience of seeing their children performing Vera, particularly when they appeared on the TV screen for all to enjoy. I could see a sense of pride in the Rongga faces. This might seem to be a small thing that could boost their pride and loyalty to their culture and language, but it is something that we need for the success of a program of language and culture maintenance. However, there seems to be a need of constant leadership and support to keep the pride and motivation alive. There was a plan to organize more Veras to be performed by the schoolchildren possibly with additional danding and tandak dances. Some of the young people in the local Catholic youth organization were sceptical initially, but after seeing the success of the Vera show by the schoolchildren, wanted to organize a similar show involving their members in the following year. Unfortunately, no similar dance was organized in 2005 or 2006. There appear to be problems with financial support, creativity, leadership, and willingness on the part of the local people. The challenge is indeed how to have these come from within the local community itself.

5.4 Conclusion Based on what has been described in this chapter, and my experience in the field, it appears that the struggle by the Rongga people to maintain and revitalize their Vera, in particular, and their language and other traditions, in general, will always, unfortunately, need outside help. While I have presented a slightly grim picture in this chapter, there is still hope that the introduction of new laws of local autonomy at the district level would bring a change for the benefit of minority groups like the Rongga in the long term. What we need are capacity building programmes, aiming at not only developing human resources but also strengthening and reforming organizations at local district, subdistrict, and village levels. I would suggest that reviving the customary (adat) structure at the village level also be included as part of the programmes. The significance of adat has been reported in the case of language activism in Maluku (Florey and Ewing in press). Issues of capacity building in an Indonesian context are discussed by Florey and Himmelmann (this volume), and in the Flores context in relation to local autonomy by Arka (2007b).


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If properly implemented, capacity building framed within local autonomy would benefit indigenous cultures/languages. It is worth noting that there has been a recent development that could have significant implications for the Rongga people. The regency of Manggarai has twice undergone administrative and territorial splitting (pemekaran) to become smaller districts. The first split took place in 2003 when it was split to become Kabupaten Manggarai Barat (West Manggarai District) and Kabupaten Manggarai. A further split of Manggarai into Kabupaten Manggarai Tengah (Central Manggarai District) and Kabupaten Manggari Timur (East Manggarai District) was just officially approved by the central government in early 2007. Rongga villages are now part of Kabupaten Manggarai Timur. This new district formation could change the balance of power in local politics. The Manggaraian would be less dominant than when Manggarai was not split, but they certainly would not be a minority in Manggarai Timur. However, small ethnic groups such as Rajong, Manus, Rongga, and Waerana collectively could in theory make a difference in local politics. It remains to be seen whether this new development could indeed benefit minority communities like Rongga.

6 Why the Philippine Negrito Languages are Endangered Thomas N. Headland

6.1 Introduction There are between 100 and 150 languages spoken in the Philippines today. A fourth of these languages—thirty-two—are spoken by different Negrito ethnolinguistic populations scattered throughout the archipelago (Gordon 2005) 1 . They are considered to be the aborigines of the Philippines whose ancestors migrated into these islands over 20,000 years ago. In the sixteenth century in early days of Spanish colonization, the population of the Philippines was some 500,000 (see Doeppers and Xenos 1998: 3, 192). The Spanish archival records of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries refer often to Negritos on all of the larger islands in significant numbers, and a conservative estimate suggests that the Negrito peoples numbered 10 per cent of the Philippine population then—that is, at least 50,000. The Negritos lived by hunting, gathering and trading forest products with non-Negrito coastal peoples. The other 90 per cent of the people were descendants of the early Austronesians who began migrating into the Islands much later, only about 5,000 years ago. Today, the thirty-two known Philippine Negrito language groups total some 33,000 people, comprising only 0.05 per cent of the present national population (Headland 1989). Clearly something has gone wrong with these tiny aboriginal foraging populations in the last 300 years as the larger Filipino population exploded and took Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Ninth International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Edinburgh, Scotland, September 9–13, 2002, and at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, November 20–24, 2002. I am indebted to the following for written critical comments on those earlier drafts: William Bright, Margaret Florey, Janet Headland, Peter Ladefoged, Stephen Marlett, Mary Beck Moser, Lawrence Reid, Peter Unseth, Mary Ruth Wise, and two anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press. 1 The ethnonym ‘Negrito’, a term the Spaniards introduced into the Tagalog language in the 1500s, is still used in Southeast Asia to refer to several small populations found in West Malaysia, the Andaman Islands, and the Philippines, because of their phenotypically different features: darker skin pigmentation, fuzzy or woolly hair, and smaller body size. The term is not held to be pejorative to the Agta or to Filipinos in general.

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over and cleared the forests of the Negritos (Bennagen 1977; Griffin and Headland 1994; Eder 1987; Headland and Blood 2002). Sixteen of the Negrito groups live in the Sierra Madre mountain range that extends north and south down the entire eastern side of Luzon Island. Each group speaks its own Austronesian language, which thirteen of the groups call Agta. 2 Each Agta language (or dialect) is mutually intelligible with one or two of its closest neighbouring Agta languages (Table 6.1). All of the thirty-two Negrito groups speak endangered languages. The present chapter explains why. The situation of two Agta languages exemplifies language loss which has accompanied population decimation. During the 1960s and 1970s I made several trips up and down the eastern coast of Luzon and into the Sierra Madre where I collected linguistic data from several Agta camp groups. In April 1965, I located one Agta language group previously unknown to researchers, the Dupaningan Agta in eastern Cagayan (Table 6.1, reported in Headland 1975), and in September 1977 I came across another Agta language group also unknown to researchers on the west side of the Sierra Madre in Aglipay, Quirino Province. This second group, who called themselves Arta (see Table 6.1) numbered only thirty remaining speakers when I recorded a word list with them in 1977. Linguist Lawrence Reid recontacted them in 1987, 1990, and 1992. He reported that the remaining speakers in 1990 numbered only twelve (Reid 1994: 40), ‘reduced to eleven with the death of another individual in late 1992’ (1994: 70; see also Reid 1989). Another Agta language group, the Dicamay Agta (Table 6.1), became completely extinct in the 1960s—both the people and their language (Gordon 2005: 490). SIL linguist Richard Roe contacted this group in 1957 and recorded a word list of 291 words. They lived on the Dicamay River on the western side of the Sierra Madre near the town of Jones, Isabela. Roe reported that there was only one family there then. In November 1974, after talking with Roe and with a copy of his wordlist in hand, I went to Jones to see if I could find the Agta who spoke this language. I was unable to find them. Filipinos in the area said they had not seen any Negritos for several years. I did find three Agta people living in town, but none of them spoke or understood any Agta language. Local farmers said that all three were orphans adopted by Ilokanos in early childhood. This chapter focuses on the Casiguran Agta, whose language is not threatened through population loss, but rather through overwhelming demographic, economic and cultural changes. The chapter first examines the lifestyle of the Agta prior to the influx of large numbers of outsiders, and describes some aspects of ethnobiological knowledge. We then move on to explore the enormous changes which are impacting on Agta language and life.

2 Three of these 16 groups refer to themselves and their language by the terms Alta or Arta, which are cognates of the ethnonym Agta.

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Table 6.1 Negrito languages spoken in the Philippines (Compiled by Thomas N. Headland) Language name Batak, Palawan Island Mamanwa, Mindanao Island Ati, northern Panay Island Ati, southern Panay Island Ata, Negros Island Ata, Mabinay, Negros Oriental Atta, Pamplona, western Cagayan Atta, Faire-Rizal, western Cagayan Atta, Pudtol, Kalinga-Apayao Ayta, Sorsogon Agta, Villa Viciosa, Abra, NW Luzon (extinct?) Ayta groups of western Luzon: Abenlen, Tarlac Mag-anchi, Zambales, Tarlac, Pampanga Mag-indi, Zambales, Pampanga Ambala, Zambales, Pampanga, Bataan Magbeken, Bataan Agta groups of Sierra Madre, eastern Luzon Agta, Isarog, Camarines Sur (language nearly extinct) Agta, Mt. Iraya & Lake Buhi east, Camarines Sur (4 close dialects) Agta, Mt. Iriga & Lake Buhi west, Camarines Sur Agta, Camarines Norte Agta, Alabat Island, southern Quezon Agta, Umirey, Quezon (3 close dialects) Agta, Casiguran, northern Aurora Agta, Maddela, Quirino Agta, Palanan & Divilacan, Isabela Agta, San Mariano-Disabungan, Isabela Agta, Dicamay, Jones, Isabela (recently extinct), Arta, Aglipay, Quirino (30 remaining speakers in 1977) Alta, Northern, Aurora Alta, Southern, Quezon Agta, eastern Cagayan, Dupaningan (several close dialects) Agta, central Cagayan 32 known Negrito languages in Philippines

Population size in 1990s

Bibliographic source

386 1000 30 900 450 25 1000 400 100 40 0

Eder 1987 Gordon 2005 Pennoyer 1987: 4 Pennoyer 1987: 4 Cadelina 1980: 96 Gordon 2005 Gordon 2005 Gordon 2005 Gordon 2005 Gordon 2005 Gordon 2005; Reid, per. com. 2001

6000 4166 3450 1654 381

K. Storck SIL files K. Storck SIL files K. Storck SIL files K. Storck SIL files K. Storck SIL files

1000

Gordon 2005

200

Gordon 2005

1500

Gordon 2005

200 50 3000 609 300 856 377 0

Gordon 2005 Gordon 2005 T. MacLeod SIL files Headland 1989 Headland field notes Rai 1990: 176 Rai 1990: 176 Headland field notes, and Gordon 2005 Headland field notes, and Reid 1994: 40. Reid, per. comm. Reid, per. comm. T. Nickell 1985: 119

11 250 400 1200 800 total estimated number of Negritos in Philippines = 32,725

Mayfield 1987: vii–viii; Gordon 2005


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6.2 The Case of the Casiguran Agta The Casiguran Agta people live in a 600 square kilometre area in the foothills and seacoast of the Sierra Madre near the town of Casiguran, Aurora Province. They speak an Austronesian language of the subfamily called Northern Cordilleran. They numbered 1,000 people in 1936, and 800 when Tom and Janet Headland began living with them in 1962. In 1977 they numbered 617 people, and in 1984, 609 (Headland 1989). Their population has remained stationary since the 1980s at around 600 (Early and Headland 1998; Headland and Headland 2007), so the Casiguran Agta language is not endangered through population decline. The Agta were still hunters and gatherers when the Headlands met them in 1962, living in the largest rainforest in the Philippines (Plate 2). Using a monolingual language-learning approach in the early 1960s, the Headlands eventually became fluent speakers of the Agta language, developed an alphabet for it that the Agta use today, published a grammar and dictionary, and translated the New Testament into Agta (Plate 3). The Headlands’ three children, all born in the Philippines, grew up bilingual in Agta and English. Casad’s (1974) method was used to formally test many Agta adults for their comprehension of several Philippine languages in the 1970s (the results were published in Headland 1975). According to the Casad method, testees in a language community should score an average of at least 82 per cent intelligibility to be considered ‘bilingual’ in the trade language—in this case, Tagalog. Casiguran Agta testees scored 73 per cent comprehension in Tagalog (a failing score) and zero in Ilokano. This means they could answer correctly on average 73 per cent of the questions they were asked about simple Tagalog stories played for each testee on audiotape. As late as 1974, they still scored such low levels on tests of comprehension in the main trade languages of the area, Tagalog and Ilokano, that it was evident they were not able to understand them.

6.3 The Agta’s Ethnobiological Knowledge Agta is a highly agglutinative language, where the typical Agta verb can be stated a few hundred ways by adding to the verb root various combinations of inflectional or derivational prefixes, suffixes and infixes, along with several types of reduplication. Each of the many resulting forms gives different shades of meaning to the verb. For example, take the Agta noun pana ‘arrow’. A few of the hundreds of ways this root can appear are as follows: nagpana ‘shot [an arrow]’; pinumana ‘shot at nothing in particular’; negpepanaen ‘kept shooting strenuously’; pinana ‘shot him’; nagpanapana ‘shot casually several times’; kinepanaan ‘accidentally shot [him]’; nagpapana ‘shot a toy bow and arrow’; kapanaan ‘the place where archery practice is done’; nagpanaan ‘shot back and forth at each other’, etc. The Headlands were amazed as they slowly collected the people’s terms for varieties of topics important to them, as they watched their word lists grow eventually to include hundreds of plant names, 127 names for types of fish, 44 for seashells, 14 types

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of snails, 21 names for types of hunting arrows, 21 names for types of rattan, 46 terms for types or stages of growth of rice, 45 different verbs that mean ‘to fish’, and 14 verbs for ‘to go hunting’, etc. 3 Some of these lexical sets have a generic cover term. For example, pana is the generic term for all types of hunting arrows. But other terms, specifically the verbs for ‘to fish’ and ‘to hunt’ have no generic. Thus, one cannot simply say, ‘I’m going hunting’. Rather, you must state one of the fourteen specific verbs for the action, depending on whether you are going alone or with another person, using dogs or not, lying in ambush for game or walking as you hunt, whether you are going at daytime or night, whether you lie in wait for game up in a tree or on the ground, etc. Today, since almost no Agta hunt anymore (in the Casiguran area), the younger people don’t know these verbs. In the 1960s, the Agta were exceptionally skilled ethnobotanists with a vocabulary of many hundreds of terms to express that knowledge. Before deforestation especially, the plant world is or was a central theme of their culture. Every Agta adult used several species of plants every day of his life for food, medicines, ritual, art, social activities (such as social exchange of betel quid ingredients), and for practically every part of their material culture (Headland 1981, 1983). Agta knowledge of their biological world (including plant medicines) arguably constituted a greater chunk than all other types of knowledge combined. Headland estimated in 1985 that the Casiguran Agta probably had between 700 and 800 names for plants in their language. He actually recorded, however, only 603 plant terms (see the discussion on this in Headland 1985). For older Agta, this is still the case in 2008. But younger adults, and especially teenagers, have lost most of this knowledge today. The Agta have a rich folklore embedded in their traditional myths, ethnic music, and folktales, but these are fast falling out of use today as they instead sit around listening to radios, playing guitars, and hiking down to the logging camps on Saturday to watch B-grade movies. They are now well-versed in national politics, vote in elections, and make trips by bus to Manila. An example of one of their most popular folktales, a breathtaking story of a sky maiden who married a man on earth, was recorded, analysed, and published in Aduanan and Headland (1991). But no one tells that story anymore, and most of their unique ethnic music, sung on a three-tone scale, will never be recorded for posterity, or even remembered by the next generation of Agta people. 4 Most of the words in many traditional semantic domains are no longer known by younger Agta. There were hundreds of Agta terms used when the Headlands were first living with them in the 1960s, when they were still forest-oriented hunter-gatherers, terms that have died out today except in the memories of the oldest people. These are words in the following ethnosemantic domains that are all but obsolete today: names 3 Most of these lexemes appear in Headland and Headland 1974, many of the biological lexemes listed with their Latin scientific names. 4 In 1965, T. Headland and the late ethnomusicologist Jose Maceda (then professor at University of the Philippines) audio-recorded several pieces of Agta music. These are today archived at the university and at the American Museum of Natural History in NY. For details, see Headland and Blood 2002: 90–1.


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of types of monkeys and deer, names of many forest plants, terms to do with hunting, with the bow and arrow complex, the rattan complex, types of supernatural spirit beings, types and parts of animal traps and of fire-making kits, types of baskets, names of traditional varieties of rice seed, etc. These lexical domain concepts are no longer important in the Agta culture because they are not needed. For example, matches have replaced fire-making kits; cardboard boxes and plastic bags have replaced traditional baskets, and bows and arrows are no longer used since the wild game is almost extinct. Plate 4 shows a man making fire by friction, and Plate 5 shows the several parts to the fire-making kit. The verb for making a fire this way was umulas, and the generic name for the kit was ulas. Specific names for the parts of the kit were (a) benben (Donax cannaeformis) a wild woody herb; (b) sageng-sageng, shaving used for kindling scraped from the outer skin of the benben herb; (c) agage, a scrap of cotton or bark cloth, placed on the ground on which is placed the sageng-sageng shavings; and (d) ulas, ‘sawing thong’, a one-metre piece of split rattan which is pulled quickly back and forth under the split stick until the friction creates enough heat to create a spark of fire (ulas is also the name for the entire kit). Only two of the 21 species of rattans recognized by Agta are strong enough for this procedure, either tumadém, or the lower stalk of talitul (both are species of the genus Calamus); (e) séla, wooden wedge stuck into the split stick; the spark of fire catches onto the inside of the stick; and (f ) bengan, the cleft stick, almost always this is a dry branch cut from a soft wood tree with a very soft inner pulp, usually the scrub tree binonga (Macaranga tanarius). Five of these lexemes (agage, bengan, sageng-sageng, séla, and ulas and umulas) are used only for the fire-making kit and nothing else, and since Agta never make fire this way today (indeed, young people would not know how), and the kit fell into disuse in the 1970s, probably no children know any of these five terms today. All of these terms will be completely gone from the language within a few decades. The plant M. tanarius is still used by Agta today for other purposes, but as with many other words in their language, they no longer call it binonga, but abigan, a term borrowed from one of the lowland languages. 5 Until the 1970s, all Agta boys knew how to shoot small bows and arrows by the time they were four, and by age ten they often came home from the forest with small birds they had shot (Plate 6). Today bows and arrows are no longer seen, and young men neither know how to make nor shoot them, though they are skilled at playing basketball on cement courts in nearby Tagalog lowlander settlements (Plate 7). Commercial Western medicines in town have replaced traditional plant medicines, and Christianity has replaced indigenous spiritual practices. Until the 1970s, the Agta practised their traditional animistic religion, with 13 per cent of the adults being spirit mediums (shamans) who conducted frequent séances with plant medicines for certain 5 Abigan is not unique to Agta, it should be noted, nor is binonga; cognates of both are found in a few other Philippine languages, but the point here is how Agta people are subconsciously dropping many of their traditional lexemes in favour of the lexemes of their non-Agta neighbours.

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illnesses. Today these practices are not seen, as Agta have turned to Christianity and, for serious illnesses, the town hospital and modern doctors. Sicknesses which used to be diagnosed with traditional names like kulikog (‘the shakes’), yinawyaw, teplak, and hinayup (types of spirit attack) are now called malaria, hart-atak, hay-blad (malaria, heart attack, high blood pressure), and common medicines now are called pinisilin, tayonal, ayanes (penicillin, tylenol, and INH, the common English name for isoniazid, a Western medicine for tuberculosis). Further, wild forest plants have disappeared because of the destruction of the primary forest, and traditional rice grains have been discontinued in favour of the newer hybrid miracle-rice seeds of the Green Revolution. The outside world has introduced new concepts and ideas that have changed the way the Negritos think in Agta. As their worldview has changed, so has their language. The many hundreds of words in those ethnosemantic domains are no longer important to the Agta and are no longer talked about, nor even known by the young people.

6.4 The Casiguran Agta Today Life is different for the Agta today. Although the population decline has stopped, much of their traditional ways of life are gone. Only 3 per cent of their old-growth tropical forest remains (Headland and Blood 2002), and the game and fish are almost extinct, as are most of the plants and trees important to the Agta. Logging and mining companies, and some 50,000 Tagalog-speaking lowlander immigrant farmer-settlers have taken over Agta lands, where in northern Aurora they now outnumber the Agta people by 85 to 1. Instead of living in the rainforest distant from lowland Filipino farming communities, almost all Agta families since the end of the 1980s live on or near farming settlements where they work as casual labourers for Tagalog lowlanders in exchange for rice, liquor, used clothing, and cash. If they didn’t know Tagalog or that they lived in the Philippines in 1962, the multilingual Agta today can often discuss in Tagalog the latest international news stories, and find their way to Manila on the new government road that reached Casiguran in 1977. The traditional Agta culture is not only endangered, but moribund. The Agta have changed today to a post-foraging landless peasant society. 6 The Casiguran Agta language today is an endangered language despite the fact that the children still learn it as their mother tongue. It is not endangered for fear that its speakers may be exterminated by outsiders, or even that they will die out naturally—the direction they were moving in the early and middle 1900s (Headland 1989). This point is emphasized because only a minority of the world’s small languages today are at risk from factors such as genocide or natural disasters, while the majority of endangered languages are suffering from conditions that are similar to the forces 6 Key references describing the present deculturation of the Agta people are found in Griffin 1994, Early and Headland 1998, Headland and Headland 1997, Rai 1990, and Headland and Blood 2002. A complete bibliography of all scholarly references on the Agta peoples may be found at Headland and Griffin 1997.


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threatening the Agta languages. The Agta languages today are endangered not because the people are disappearing or because the children are not speaking Agta, but because their lifestyles, and hence their languages, are changing, and changing fast, as a result of intense new daily contact with other cultures and languages. Of course, as one linguist reminded this author, all languages are continually changing, but it is the way that Agta is changing that is relevant (L. Reid, pers. comm., October 2003). Agta is not just slowly changing from internal processes and the gradual adaptation of borrowings, but from rapid external pressures causing massive lexical and structural changes. Most Agta families now live next door to these Tagalog homesteaders instead of with each other. Agta children all seem fluent in Tagalog by the age of twelve or so. When lowlanders are present the language of conversation usually switches to Tagalog. Agta speech is threatened because Tagalog, not Agta, is the language used in educational, political, and other public situations. No Agta children attended public schools in the 1960s. Today there are elementary schools throughout northern Aurora, and almost all Agta children attend for at least a year or two. Government teachers teach in Tagalog, and almost all of the pupils are Tagalog, with 2 to 4 per cent being Agta. Agta is still spoken in the home and it is still the mother tongue of Agta children. But more often than not, as soon as Agta leave their houses they are engaged in interethnic relations with lowlanders, in the Tagalog language. Even when Agta talk with each other today, they are using many hundreds of new words they have subconsciously borrowed from Tagalog, terms needed for today’s serious discussions: work, science, technology, Philippine money, affairs in town, etc. The Agta who have been forest-oriented for millennia are today living in deforested brushlands (Headland 1988; Top 1998) and they are now town- and lowlander-oriented. Their changing language reflects that. Grenoble and Whaley (1998: 29–30) skilfully explain why hunter-gatherer languages are the most in danger of extinction: not only because they are small populations, but more because of the extreme pressure put on them to shift to an agriculturally based economy. The Agta case fits their model well. One way of gauging the endangerment of a small minority language is to look at the marriage patterns of its speakers. Endogamous ethnolinguistic groups have a better chance of retaining their language than do groups with young people who marry outsiders. Until the 1980s, almost all Agta marriages were to other Agta. Since the mid 1980s, exogamous marriages (mostly Agta women marrying non-Agta lowlander men) have become common, to the point where 40 per cent of the new marriages of Agta women in the last twenty years have been with non-Agta men, with these women out-migrating when they marry (Headland and Headland 1998). None of the mixed-blood children of these exogamous unions speak Agta as their mother tongue. Even during this author’s last fieldtrip to the area in 2008 Agta adults seemed unaware that their language is dying, or even changing. If the language is at risk, the Agta don’t seem to know or care. They are not ashamed of their language, but they show no apparent concern for language loyalty. The question is a non-issue for

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them. Further, they seem completely unaware of how much their speech has changed since the 1960s. 7 One may anticipate that sixty years from now the descendants of today’s Agta will probably not be able to pass an intelligibility test of Agta stories that were audio-recorded in the 1960s (Plate 8). This is not necessarily because they won’t be speaking Agta anymore, but because their speech will be so heavily mixed with Tagalog, Ilokano, Bikol, Casiguranin, Spanish, and English that it will be a mixed language, a ‘creolized’ daughter dialect of the Agta language that their great-greatgreat grandparents were speaking a hundred years earlier in the mid twentieth century.

6.5 Conclusion Data from small languages like Agta can be used to test scientific hypotheses if linguists can record and archive such data before it is lost forever. Perhaps the best example of how the Agta language contributed to science is in the way Agta linguistic data can be used to construct a model of Philippine prehistory. Because the people in the 32 known Negrito populations in the Philippines look phenotypically so different from other Filipino peoples, and since they live so differently, the accepted model of their history until the 1980s was that the Negritos were the aboriginal people of the Philippines for at least the last 20,000 years, until the Austronesian peoples began migrating into the islands some 5,000 years ago. It was also held that the Negritos lived in isolation, separate from the Austronesian-speaking peoples until the last hundred years or so (Schebesta 1947; Stewart 1954: 23, 24; Eder 1978: 55, 58; 1987: ix, 12; Reynolds 1983: 166; Rai 1982). Headland and Reid (1989) assert, however, that Philippine Negritos, including the Agta, had been living in close symbiotic relationships with Austronesian farmers for at least 3,000 years. This is supported by linguistic data from the Agta languages (Headland and Reid 1989). 8 The worldview of the Agta emerges through their kinship system, folk astronomy, ethnomedicine, and their folk explanations for many other aspects of Agta natural and spiritual life. Michael Krauss is right when he says that each language represents a unique way of looking at the world, and that ‘every time we lose a language we lose a whole way of thinking’ (quoted in Gugliotta 1999). Humankind is losing scientific information, as well as artistic beauty, when indigenous knowledge is lost. 7 With a life expectancy at birth in the Agta population of only 22.5 years, most Agta don’t live long enough to notice the changes that Headland detected in their language 40 years ago. 8 Although there was almost nothing available on Philippine archaeology at the time to support the Headland and Reid argument, an archaeological study by Laura Junker (1999) has recently confirmed their 1989 model.

PART III Capacity Building and Revitalization Initiatives


7 New Directions in Field Linguistics: Training Strategies for Language Documentation in Indonesia Margaret Florey and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann

7.1 Introduction Language documentation has only been conceptualized as a sub-field of linguistics following the publication of Himmelmann’s (1998) foundational paper, and in the ensuing ten years has become an area of intensive development in linguistics. A stimulating discussion is being generated in various forums about what it means to undertake language documentation and how this can be achieved, focusing on methods, technologies, and tools (e.g. Austin 2003; Bird and Simons 2003; Barwick and Thieberger 2006; Gippert, Himmelmann, and Mosel 2006). In part, the genesis of this new field has been triggered by the issue of language endangerment, and the growing awareness that rich documentation is the means of ensuring that a lasting multipurpose record of a language will be accessible to community members, researchers from a range of disciplines, policymakers, educators, and other stakeholders. Crucially for endangered languages, such a record also becomes a vital resource for language revitalization and maintenance activities. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance received from the Volkswagen Endangered Languages Program for the two training workshops which were run under the auspices of the project ‘Capacity building on a local and national level: Documenting Totoli, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia’. We also thank all of the linguists who volunteered their time to come and teach in Bali, and Dr Wayan Pastika, Udayana University, Bali, for his generous support with local organization of the workshops. We are grateful to Heidi Johnson and Nick Thieberger for information about current archiving activities. Florey’s research and training workshops have been supported by a Major Documentation Project grant (MDP0009) from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Programme, SOAS, UK (‘Documentation of four moribund Moluccan languages: Eastern Indonesia and the Dutch diaspora’) and by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant (DP0343379) (‘Cross-linguistic study of endangered Maluku languages: Eastern Indonesia and the Dutch diaspora’).

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Concurrent with the development of this new field, a shift in the ethics and politics of linguistic fieldwork has been taking place, which Florey (2008) calls the ‘new linguistics’. Linguistic fieldworkers and language activists are unifying in promoting a research paradigm that prioritizes the leadership and involvement of community members in linguistic research, and sees linguists and community members working more and more in partnership. This stance has been articulated, for example, by Cameron et al. (1993); Craig (1992); Grinevald (2003); and Smith (1991, 1999), who argue the need for academic linguists to reassess their working relationships with speakers and their communities, particularly in regard to community participation in decision-making vis-à-vis the research process. It is apparent that the greatest progress towards documenting a substantial number of the world’s languages will be made through the activities of well-trained linguists working in their own region. There is also growing recognition that language renewal and long-term language maintenance are not sustainable if they are dependent on external actors, and fundamentally require the frontline involvement of Indigenous language activists. Language documentation, revitalization, and maintenance all require a complex set of skills, and, in order for community members and local linguists to participate more fully in such endeavours, the need for training is evident (e.g. the papers in Austin 2004). The authors of a report commissioned by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research remarked on the lack of fieldwork courses at universities in countries where endangered languages are spoken, and called for the creation of training programmes both for young researchers and for more established researchers who to date have not been involved in language documentation (NWO 2000: 1). This perspective has wider currency and a range of training and capacity building programs have been founded internationally both within and external to academe. The best-known and longest-standing training models are those established in the Americas, such as the Guatemalan Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM) and Oxlajuuj Keej Maya’ Ajtz’iib’ (OKMA) (England 2003; 2007), and, in North America, Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (Hinton 1994; 2002; Hinton and Hale 2001) and the Indigenous Language Institute (New Mexico). The American Indian Language Development Institute (Arizona) is a highly successful model (Mccarty et al. 1997; 2001; McCarty and Watahomigie 1999; McCarty and Zepeda 1998) which has led to the birth of offspring institutes in various locations in North America, including Oregon (Northwest Indian Language Institute), Oklahoma (Oklahoma Native American Language Institute) and Alberta, Canada (Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute). In Australia, relevant courses include those at the Institute for Aboriginal Development, Alice Springs, and the Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics (CALL) at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education. Pilbara TAFE College in Western Australia offers an Indigenous Language Worker Program via the Certificate in Aboriginal Language Work.

Training Strategies in Indonesia

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Educational programmes dedicated to the training of Indigenous linguists have more recently been launched within a number of universities in Australia, North America, and the Pacific. These programmes are broadening the scope of tertiary education in linguistics and endeavouring to better meet the educational needs of Indigenous peoples. Examples include the First Nations Languages Program (University of British Columbia, Canada), Certificate in Aboriginal Language Revitalization (the University of Victoria, Canada), the Endangered Languages Academic Program, (SOAS London), the MA in Language Documentation and Conservation (the University of Hawai’i), The Center for Indigenous Languages of Latin America (the University of Texas, USA) (Woodbury and England 2004), the Pacific Languages Unit (the University of the South Pacific), and the Alaska Native Language Program (the University of Alaska Fairbanks). These are exciting developments which are significantly strengthening the participation of Indigenous peoples in language documentation and maintenance. However, in other parts of the world, particularly in resource-poor developing countries in Africa and Asia, there have been few responses from universities, governments or language planning agencies, and similar capacity building ventures have been slow to emerge. The need for training in modern linguistic techniques to facilitate documentation is nowhere more apparent than in Indonesia, where some 737 Austronesian and Papuan languages are spoken (Gordon 2005). Ethnolinguistic groups vary widely in their size across this island nation, and, whilst the western Indonesian languages number hundreds of thousands or even millions of speakers, those in the east are typically much smaller, ranging from several hundred to tens of thousands (Tryon 1995). The eastern Indonesian languages are also amongst the most endangered languages of the Austronesian region (NWO 2000: 28; Florey 2005a). With an estimated 6912 languages in the world (Gordon 2005), Indonesia contains approximately 10.7 per cent of the world’s linguistic resources, yet we estimate that fewer than 10 per cent (and possibly as few as 5 per cent) of the languages of Indonesia have been the subject of modern linguistic documentation. Himmelmann et al. (2005) noted that ‘Documentation work proper—i.e. the recording, transcription and annotation of communicative events— has no tradition in Indonesian linguistics and to date has not been practised by Indonesian linguists’. The research which has been undertaken in Indonesia since the development of new documentation methods and technologies has overwhelmingly been led by foreign researchers funded by international grants. For example, a review of the projects funded by three of the major international agencies between 2002 and 2007 indicates that grants were awarded to seven projects documenting Indonesian languages (ELDP 5; Volkswagen 1; NWO 1) and an Indonesian linguist led just one of those projects (I Wayan Arka, whose training was undertaken in Australia). Faced with large numbers of un(der)-documented languages, high levels of endangerment, and a severe shortage of Indonesian linguists with the requisite training, linguists have begun to ask how linguistic fieldwork practice could contribute to

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capacity building for language documentation and maintenance in Indonesia. The NWO Advisory Committee advocated a strategy of cooperation, suggesting that ‘Among the countries of the so-called Third World, the amount of local expertise, and hence of potential for local collaboration, varies widely. . . Where feasible, western researchers should cooperate with linguists in the country where the research is carried out. Researchers should be encouraged to train local linguists where such a need exists, and to establish or join a local network in which the research can be continued, and language revival activities initiated’ (NWO 2000: 25). The philosophy of empowerment and the desire to expedite linguistic research and maintenance activities within Indonesia has seen the expansion of grassroots training of community members alongside linguists undertaking fieldwork in Indonesia. However, the scope of the problem requires larger-scale action and this persuaded Himmelmann et al. (2005) to seek funding from the Volkswagen Endangered Languages Program to train a new generation of Indonesian linguists and language activists, and to build documentation expertise at both the local and national level. This chapter discusses the training programme which resulted from that proposal. It explores the goals and methods of the program, analyses the outcomes to date, and considers the sustainability of this training model.

7.2 Developing a Training Model The goals of the proposed training program were (1) to build the capacity for Indonesian linguists and language activists to initiate locally developed and implemented language documentation and maintenance projects, and (2) to facilitate a flow-on effect from this training to other people and institutions in the country. The Volkswagen Foundation funded Himmelmann’s team to run two Training Workshops on Language Documentation. An intensive, residential model was planned for the workshops, which would be held over ten days in 2006 and six days in 2007. In accord with the training goals, the principal objectives of the two workshops were that, upon completion, participants would have (1) a basic understanding of the theory and principles of language documentation and language maintenance, (2) developed the ability to begin applying language documentation and maintenance methods and technologies in the field, (3) acquired knowledge of funding agencies and skills in the preparation of grant proposals, and (4) gained familiarity with pedagogical methods to support the transfer of skills more widely in universities and communities in Indonesia. The structure and content of the workshops drew on various training experiences which provided a more realistic perspective of what might be achieved within the


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available time frame, including Himmelmann’s involvement in organizing three summer schools on field methods and language documentation in Germany in 1993, 1999, and 2004, and Florey’s training work with Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre in Western Australia in the early 90s. The model also built extensively on the more localized training experiences of Himmelmann for Waima’a in East Timor, and Florey and colleagues in eastern Indonesia and in the Moluccan diaspora in the Netherlands (Florey 2001c; 2004; 2009; Florey and Ewing in Press; Florey and van Engelenhoven 2001). We acknowledged in the original funding application that the short duration of the workshops would constrain the number of topics and the depth of the instruction which we would be able to provide. However, this model was necessary from a practical perspective because the organizers, tutors and most of the participants have full-time jobs, which precluded longer workshops. Further, as this particular kind of workshop had not been undertaken in Indonesia before, we considered it important to test and evaluate the training model before seeking support for a further set of workshops. Pedagogically, the intensive model provided the opportunity for immersion in the workshop topics. The experience which Florey and colleagues had gained in a sixday intensive workshop held in Maluku in 2004 (Mari belajar bahasa tanah ‘Let’s study indigenous languages’), also demonstrated the benefits of a residential mode which distanced participants from the business of their daily lives. 7.2.1 Logistics In the Indonesian context, we needed to take into account several organizational issues which might not play such an important planning role in other parts of the world. Some students lived in quite remote locations and had little or no previous experience of air travel. About one third of the participants had no email or telephone access, and bringing together such a diverse group required logistical support from the tutors with regard to the participants they proposed inviting. Recent religious conflicts in Maluku and Sulawesi meant that extra care had to be taken in organizing the accommodation and meals, and in ensuring free time on Fridays and Sundays for Islamic and Christian religious services. After some discussion, Bali was selected as the site for the workshops as it best filled the criteria of access (good flight schedules and reasonably central for all participants) and infrastructure (hotels and local transport). The students and tutors lived and worked together in a hotel for the duration of the workshops. This arrangement also supported the informal exchange of experiences and aspirations, and helped to build a network among the participants, which we hoped might continue into the future to support their ongoing linguistic research. 7.2.2 Tutors Our earlier training experiences highlighted the importance of a low student-teacher ratio to facilitate the achievement of our objectives, and to cope with the challenge

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of the topics we would present and the different educational backgrounds the participants would bring to the workshops. Nine linguists with research based in Indonesia volunteered to assist Himmelmann and Florey as lecturers and tutors for the first workshop, and six of the nine were able to return for the second workshop. We thus had a total teaching staff of eleven people in 2006 and eight in 2007, who contributed an impressive range of backgrounds and expertise. The Volkswagen grant supported the participation of Himmelmann and Florey, as well as Claudia Leto (Bochum University, Germany) and Jani Kuhnt-Saptodewo (Museum of Ethnology, Vienna) from Himmelmann’s research team, and I Wayan Arka (Australian National University) (see Plate 10) and Betty Litamahuputty (Max Planck Institute Jakarta Field Station). A further five tutors were supported from their own or other sources - Anthony Jukes (SOAS, London), Michael Ewing (University of Melbourne), Simon Musgrave (Monash University, Melbourne), Antonia Soriente (Max Planck Institute Jakarta Field Station), and Jan Wohlgemut (Max Planck Institute Leipzig). The contributions of these linguists were a major factor in the overall success of the two workshops.

7.2.3 Students The financial and teaching constraints necessitated limiting the number of participants in Workshop 1 to twenty-five (see Plate 9) . The tutors were asked to suggest potential participants, looking in particular for people with a background of interest in indigenous languages. We sought participants across several categories: those who were relatively early in their careers and would have the greatest opportunity to utilize the training they would receive, those who were further into their careers and in leadership roles in teaching and thus would have the opportunity to introduce documentation-related topics into their curricula, and community language workers. The student body was heterogeneous in region, culture, education, gender and religious affiliation. Amongst the nine women and sixteen men in Workshop 1, about half were MA or PhD students in linguistics in various Indonesian universities. The other half were university lecturers with overseas PhDs, people working in relevant allied disciplines or organizations (e.g. in a regional archive or museum), or language activists who have been involved in internationally funded research projects. All major regions of Indonesia were represented, from Sumatra to Papua, with a deliberate slight overrepresentation of eastern Indonesia due to the higher levels of diversity and endangerment in Sulawesi and further east. In a predominantly Muslim country, this overrepresentation also meant that about 50 per cent of the participants came from the more Christian areas in the east (Nusa Tenggara, Maluku and Papua). The indigenous languages represented amongst the participants of Workshop 1 as first or second languages included Adang (Alor), Alune, Balinese, Dani, Gorontalo, Haruku, Maybrat, Javanese, Malay, Minang, Mentawai, Punan, Rotinese, Selayar, Sundanese, Taa, Tombulu, and Totoli. All of the participants were speakers of Indonesian and/or


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a Malay variety (Ambonese Malay, Brunei Malay, Melayu-Papua) and for some (a minority) of the participants that is their only language. Approximately 45 per cent of this first group returned to participate in Workshop 2 in 2007. In order to qualify for the second workshop, the 2006 students were required to fulfil three criteria by February 2007:

r preparation of a five-page research proposal outlining a documentation or language maintenance project for an indigenous language of Indonesia, and following the grant preparation guidelines taught in Workshop 1;

r a one page summary of the proposal; r a recording and transcription of at least 15 minutes of linguistic data.

A total of sixteen of the 25 participants (64 per cent) fulfilled the criteria, which exceeded our expectations and further underlined the success of Workshop 1. Eleven participants (four women and seven men) eventually took part in Workshop 2 as several participants encountered various obstacles (primarily health problems, but also workplace exigencies making it impossible to attend). 1

7.3 Workshop Structure and Content Careful planning of the workshop structure and content was essential to optimize this training opportunity. With tutors spread around the world or in the field in Indonesia, most of the workshop organization took place by email and phone calls. In both years, the tutors first met together the day before the workshop was to begin. It was only at this point that we could finalize the program and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the participants vis-à-vis education, language background, research experience, and familiarity with technologies. The schedule for each workshop was structured in four daily sessions, which began at 8.30 am and concluded around 5.45 pm. In Workshop 1, Sessions 1 and 3 were 45-minute lectures, while sessions 2 and 4 were one and a half or two hour tutorials. In Workshop 2, much more time was provided for tutorial work and there was an average of one lecture per day. In both workshops, a tutors’ meeting was held at the end of each teaching day to give the staff an opportunity to report on the challenges and successes of the day, and to review the activities for the following day. This thirty to sixty-minute session was essential, in part because of the tutors’ varied backgrounds, interests and expertise, and also because of our shared desire to remain flexible and able to respond to any issues and concerns which might have arisen. 1 In this regard we thankfully note the good fortune that in Workshop 1 all participants arrived on time, no-one became sick, and everyone returned home safely.

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7.3.1 Lectures The lectures drew on the expertise of all of the tutors. All lectures were given in Indonesian, which was the lingua franca of the workshop. Most lectures included PowerPoint presentations, and students were given handouts with the PowerPoint slides and other lecture notes in Indonesian. At the conclusion of each workshop, a CD with the presentations, notes and photos was given to all students and tutors. The primary goal of Workshop 1 was to build technical skills in language documentation methods, and fourteen lectures topics (listed below) were developed to work towards Objectives 1–3. As these topics indicate, the students were introduced to a number of computer programs used in language documentation, including Audacity (for the capture of audio data from analogue or DAT recorders), ELAN (used to segment, time-align, and transcribe audio and video files), and Toolbox (used to interlinearize, gloss, and analyse data, and to build a lexicon) (see Plate 11).

r Introduction to language documentation (Himmelmann) r Recording technologies and techniques ( Jukes) r Speakers and speech communities (Florey) r Organizing metadata (Musgrave) r Capture of audio and video (Leto and Himmelmann) r Basic orthography issues (Wohlgemut and Soriente) r Using software for transcription (Arka) r Some principles for segmenting discourse (Himmelmann) r Notes on dealing with conversation (Ewing) r Notes on dealing with ritual language (Kuhnt-Saptodewo) r Preparing grant applications (Florey) r Toolbox (Arka, Jukes, Musgrave) r Commenting on meaning (Arka, Jukes, Musgrave) r Commenting on grammar (Arka, Jukes, Musgrave) In addition, two summarizing lectures were given, one on day 7 and one on the last day, which highlighted major features of the previous lectures and related them to recurring problems encountered in the practical tutorials (e.g. the issue of metadata and the need to employ a proper folder structure for the data stored on a computer). The content for Workshop 2 was driven by a number of factors. The curriculum built and expanded on the skills taught in 2006. It focused heavily on Objective 3 (skills in proposal writing) and introduced Objective 4 (gain familiarity with pedagogical methods to support the transfer of skills more widely in universities and communities in Indonesia) which was not taught in Workshop 1. The curriculum also responded to feedback from the students and incorporated a number of topics which they requested, including dictionary making and an overview of current documentation projects in Indonesia. The eight lecture topics covered:


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r Summary comments on proposals (Himmelmann) r Documentation projects in Indonesia (Leto) r Using Edirol digital recorder (Litamahuputty) r A note on digital archives (Himmelmann) r Transferring skills in language documentation (Florey) r Developing local language and culture centres (Florey and Kuhnt-Saptodewo) r Toolbox: summary so far (Arka) r Dictionary-making (Arka) 7.3.2 Tutorials In tutorials, the students carried out practical exercises which formed the core of the workshops. The Workshop 1 students were placed in three tutorial groups with eight students in Group 1 (tutored by Arka, Himmelmann, Kuhnt-Saptodewo, and Leto) and Group 2 (tutored by Florey, Musgrave, and Soriente), and nine students in Group 3 (tutored by Ewing, Jukes, Litamahuputty and Wohlgemut). Group 1 included most of the younger students, and Group 2 included the community language activists who had the least familiarity with technologies. Within each group, participants usually formed subgroups of two each, often for the practical reason of sharing equipment (see Plate 12). In Workshop 2, all eleven students worked in one tutorial group which was taught in alternation by two teams of four people: Team A (Himmelmann, KuhntSaptodewo, Leto, and Soriente), Team B (Florey, Arka, Ewing, and Litamahuputty). In both cases, there was a ratio of one tutor to two or three students, which ensured that someone was always on hand to meet the specific needs of a particular participant or participant duo. Tutorial exercises in Workshop 1 encompassed all basic aspects of documentation. The students practised recording techniques, and the use of Audacity, ELAN, and Toolbox. They learned to prepare basic metadata using Excel or Word, and were given a demonstration of IMDI, a program which supports more detailed recording of metadata. Time constraints limited the opportunity to work with video data, but some time was given to this task in Workshop 1 and to learning to use Adobe Premiere Pro and iMovie. Prior to and during Workshop 1 there was extensive discussion amongst the tutors about whether all topics would be accessible to or useful for all participants, particularly those who did not have access to computer facilities in their home location and, at least in the immediate future, would not be able to use the computational tools they were learning. Some alternate tutorial exercises were offered, focusing on techniques for transcription and metadata using pencil and notebooks, and on simple methods for producing resource materials for language maintenance activities. We found, however, that all students were keen to gain an understanding through participation and practice of the technologies which are used in modern language documentation. Even the students who came to the workshop with minimal computing experience demonstrated

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high motivation to master these tools, and students often continued working late into the night. In Workshop 2, students worked individually to practise their technical skills on their own data, which they brought to the workshop. Through this process, by the end of the workshop most of the students had acquired the ability to capture and process their data in Audacity and ELAN, to export ELAN files into Toolbox, and to produce an MDF lexicon from Toolbox (see Plate 13). In each session they prepared appropriate metadata, and gained a better understanding of the requirements and practices of depositing data in an archive. 7.3.3 Preparation of grant proposals In both workshops, considerable time was devoted to skills in the preparation of grant proposals and acquiring knowledge of funding agencies (Objective 3), which we considered crucial in optimizing the possibilities for Indonesian linguists and language activists to work independently on their own documentation projects. We first needed to redress the inequity that the funding guidelines for most international agencies are available only in English and thus are not accessible to non-English speakers, which includes many Indonesians. The guidelines and application materials for the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, the Foundation for Endangered Languages and the Endangered Languages Fund were translated into Indonesian by Litamahuputty and distributed as handouts to the participants. 2 In Workshop 1, students were given an introductory lecture on proposal writing and they were then placed into six smaller groups of four to five members each and given several days in which to meet together, come up with a project idea and draft a proposal. Each group met at least once with their tutors to get some initial feedback on the basic idea and the draft outline. On the second last day of the workshop, the groups distributed a one-page summary handout and made a fifteen-minute presentation of their proposals, with ensuing critical discussion and feedback from the tutors and participants. In Workshop 2, each participant was allocated two tutors (one from each tutoring team) who worked closely with the student to bring their proposal to a standard acceptable for submission to a national or international funding agency. The participants redeveloped and improved their proposals both in tutorials and during breaks. Revised drafts were given to the tutors every second day, and the tutors then provided individual feedback to the two or three students they were mentoring. Students responded very positively to this strategy both throughout the workshop and in the evaluation process (see Section 7.4 below). Many commented on the benefits of working one-to-one with skilled researchers and learning from their experiences. One participant noted that although she had worked for sixteen years in a major regional institution and had previously been involved in research with a large international organisation, this was the first time that she had been trusted to prepare her 2

The translated materials were also provided to these three funding bodies for wider distribution.


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own research proposal. The mentoring process continues beyond the duration of the workshop, and tutors will assist students in finding an appropriate funding body and submitting their application. We hope that this method will result in the funding and execution of a number of documentation projects.

7.4 Evaluation An anonymous evaluation procedure was used on the final day of each workshop to elicit feedback and to assess the outcomes (see Appendix). The evaluation procedure consisted first of rating aspects of the workshop on a five-point scale from ‘very satisfactory’ to ‘not at all satisfactory’. Some of the questions in Part I differed in each evaluation. Part II consisted of short written comments on a number of topics such as ‘What did you hope for from the workshop before it began? Were your hopes fulfilled?”. 7.4.1 Participants The responses to the questions in Part I were tabulated for each of the 25 participants in Workshop 1 and 10 participants in Workshop 2. 3 The average per Workshop 1 participant was 4.3/5 with scores ranging from 3.6 to 4.9, and per Workshop 2 participant was 4.4/5 with scores ranging from 3.6 to 5. In both workshops, the results for the three questions which addressed the value of lectures, tutorials, and materials yielded an average of 4.4/5. The overall impression of Workshop 1 (Question 8) rated 4.7/5. Students in Workshop 2 expressed a very high level of satisfaction with the two tutorial teams (Question 5) with an average response of 4.6, and with the individual guidance on proposal writing (Question 6), averaging 4.8. These high scoring results are more meaningful in an Indonesian context than they might be in some other settings as cultural requirements of politeness and fitting into one’s group and level increase the tendency to avoid the extremes and strongly favour choices in the middle regions of such scales. In Workshop 1, only Question 4, which pertained to the availability of equipment, attracted lower responses (with an average of 3.8/5), and this was also the point most repeatedly commented upon negatively in Part II. Participants had been asked, if at all possible, to bring their own recording equipment, headsets and laptops. While most were able to bring recording equipment and headsets, almost half did not have their own laptops, which meant that they had to share during tutorial exercises. Furthermore, those without their own laptops could not continue working by themselves during the afternoon break and in the evenings as many wished to do. In Workshop 2, we addressed this issue through asking tutors to bring extra laptops to ensure that each participant had full access to a computer for the duration of the workshop. The success of this strategy is reflected in the rise of the evaluation score on this question to 4.6/5. 3

One participant in Workshop 2 chose not to complete an evaluation.

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In Part I of the Workshop 2 evaluation, only one question had an average response lower than 4: Question 8, which asked about the opportunity to finish the assigned tasks. Eight of the participants felt that the six-day workshop was too short and that some topics were not allocated sufficient time. Students wrote in Part II that in particular they would have liked more time for dictionary-making. In the written section of the evaluation of Workshop 1, almost all participants commented favourably upon the practical tutorials, considering these the highlight of the workshop. In the Workshop 2 written evaluation, students reported that they had come to the workshop hoping to improve their skills in documentation, computational tools, dictionary preparation and proposal-writing, and indicated that their hopes were met in almost all areas. The participants consistently responded that the sessions which they most liked (Question 12) were those focused on preparation of their proposal and on dictionary-making. There were many favourable reports on the opportunity to work with experts and the friendliness and dedication of the tutors. When asked what they thought was the least satisfactory aspect of the workshops, nearly half of the participants in Workshop 1 and 80 per cent in Workshop 2 answered that there was none. One issue which we had anticipated was that seniority and status might impact on the working relationships within the group as academic events in Indonesia are heavily dominated by considerations of status and protocol. Overall, our concerns in this regard were not realized and the lecture sessions and tutorials took on an unusually egalitarian atmosphere. Issues of status appeared only in the context of the grant proposal groups in Workshop 1. Here, the more senior members tended to set the agenda and to distribute workloads among the more junior members. This concern may need to be addressed more directly in future workshops. 7.4.2 Tutors’ responses The tutors did not participate in a formal evaluation process. The daily tutors’ meetings gave us an opportunity to receive feedback and to learn how the tutors felt the workshop was progressing and where they saw challenges, both personally and for the participants. As with the students, the tutors’ response to both workshops was overwhelmingly positive. The excitement and enthusiasm of the students was contagious, and, for the tutors, it was an opportunity to meet the next generation of linguists, to learn about the language-related activities which are happening around Indonesia and those which are planned for the future, and to share their expertise and the training experience with colleagues. An unanticipated outcome of Workshop 1 for the tutors was the opportunity to learn alongside the participants. This is perhaps best exemplified with the case of ELAN. Quite a number of the tutors had never used ELAN and this meant that those tutors were challenged to keep at least one step ahead of the students in their tutorial group so that they could continue to support their learning. Similarly, not


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all tutors had used IMDI or the video processing programs, though these were only peripherally introduced in Workshop 1. Again, the large number of tutors proved useful because at least one tutor in each group was an experienced user of the various programs. Most tutors explicitly noted that they profited directly from this workshop for their own work as it gave them the opportunity to learn the preliminaries of ELAN and other programs and they took away new skills which they intend to continue using in their fieldwork and research. Indonesian language skills varied widely across the pool of tutors and the less fluent speakers found these opportunities to lecture, tutor and interact informally in Indonesian greatly benefited their language skills.

7.5 The Question of Sustainability At this point it is useful to return to the title of this chapter—‘New directions in field linguistics: Training strategies for language documentation in Indonesia’—which reflects the strategy that we have utilized thus far to strengthen the capacity for language documentation in Indonesia: that is, to embed training within the fieldwork for our own documentation projects, and those of our linguist colleagues. This strategy has been born not from imagining the most appropriate training model we might develop under ideal circumstances, but rather from necessity, taking into account the dual limitations of our funding resources and the time we have available to dedicate to training. Funding remains a major challenge faced by those seeking to provide training to local linguists and language activists. There has been a laudably significant increase in funding available for the documentation of endangered languages, and some funding agencies, such as the Volkswagen Foundation, the US National Science Foundation and Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, permit and indeed encourage training to be embedded within documentation projects. However, there are very few grant sources which specifically address the capacity building needs of developing countries vis-à-vis language documentation and language maintenance. The Indigenous Language Worker Program at Pilbara TAFE College in Western Australia states as two of its aims:

r To provide Indigenous people with the necessary skills to organize and run language programs in their own communities; and

r To assist Indigenous people to make informed decisions about their own language and take control of their own language programs (Pilbara TAFE 2007). These aims highlight empowerment, participation and autonomy. Realistically, it will be hard for Indonesians to achieve Indigenous control when local linguists and language activists largely remain reliant on foreign linguists to initiate and bring research projects to their country. At this stage in reviewing our capacity building activities, we identify the critical questions as:

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(1) How far does this model go towards meeting the capacity building needs of Indonesia vis-à-vis language documentation and maintenance? (2) Is the model we utilized sustainable? (3) Is there a more suitable model which might better support the building of both capacity and autonomy?

7.5.1 Meeting capacity building needs With regard to the first question, it is apparent that training only twenty-five people in a large and linguistically very diverse country will only meet a minuscule portion of the actual needs. However, there are very positive indications that even a short period of intensive training can trigger documentation and maintenance activities. The main goal of the two workshops we planned is to build the capacity for Indonesian linguists and language activists to initiate locally developed and carried out language documentation and maintenance projects. The outcomes suggest that the range of skills which were covered is already making a good start towards meeting needs, with reports of a number of encouraging developments immediately following Workshop 1 and more which developed later in the twelve months leading to Workshop 2. Several participants immediately began to share their documentation skills with their colleagues, students and fellow community members. A course in linguistic research methods focusing on the documentation of minority Indonesian languages was introduced at the private university Universitas Nasional in Jakarta. A new upper level subject on language documentation will be taught from 2008 in the Arts Faculty at the State University of Papua in Manokwari. Co-applicant and participant I Wayan Pastika has begun to teach Audacity, ELAN, and Toolbox and archiving practices at Udayana University in Bali. The National Language Centre in Jakarta (Pusat Bahasa) invited Himmelmann to give a short course on language documentation in August 2006, which he did with the assistance of the four Pusat Bahasa participants in Workshop 1 (Luh Anik Mayani, Citra Aniendita Sari, Dira Hildayani, and Yayat Hendayana). The director and staff of Pusat Bahasa were very enthusiastic about putting language documentation on their main agenda and participant Luh Anik Mayani intends to run further short courses on the subject for her colleagues at Pusat Bahasa. More informally, participants in West Papua, Maluku, and Nusa Tenggara reported raising awareness of language endangerment amongst community members and training fellow university students in recording techniques and in the use of relevant documentation software. Following Workshop 1, one participant, Jermy Balukh, remained in Bali for six weeks to work in apprenticeship with I Wayan Arka and native speakers of Rongga for Arka’s Rongga documentation project. In Maluku, participant Ana Lewier took a class of students from Pattimura University in Ambon to Lohiasapalewa village on Seram Island, the home of fellow participant Johanis Soriale. Lewier, Soriale and the


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Pattimura students spent a week doing a pilot survey of oral traditions and recording stories and songs in the local Alune language. These data will form the basis for an ongoing documentation collaboration between the two participants. We noted in Section 7.3.3 above that the grant-writing sessions at the two workshops were a critical strategy for meeting capacity building needs and also building towards autonomy. Participants in Workshop 1 commented on the importance of these sessions and asked for more time to be devoted to this topic in Workshop 2. In the second workshop, substantial progress was made in developing participants’ proposals to a stage at which they could actually be submitted to a funding body. One real test for the success of this workshop program will be the number of proposals which are actually submitted. At the time of writing, one participant, Jermy Balukh, had successfully applied to the Endangered Language Fund, and had received the Bill Bright Memorial award for his application. We are optimistic that a majority of the participants (perhaps eight of the eleven) will submit applications within the next twelve months (though of course the outcome of the applications remains uncertain). This number would represent approximately one-third of the original group, and this may seem to be a relatively small number. However, given that (a) most participants have never drafted a proposal before and that (b) prior to the workshops, there had only been a single successful application by an Indonesian scholar in the field of language documentation (Arka), it would still be considered a success. On a more general level, the workshop experience has made it clear to us that regional linguists and language activists will be much better placed to initiate and develop their own research projects when they are able to prepare competitive grant applications. The preparation of translated grant application materials also works towards those dual goals. The Hans Rausing Project has made a good start towards the provision of grant information and application materials in languages other than English with application packages available in Indonesian, French, Spanish, and Russian. This task could be further supported if more linguists were able to supply translated materials in other languages. It would also assist applicants from non-English speaking backgrounds if international agencies were willing to accept translations of applications and annual reports, etc. A small translation item may have to be built into budgets for this work. 7.5.2 Sustainability The unequivocal answer to the question of whether this model is sustainable is ‘no, not in the present format’. In Section 1 we suggested that (a) the greatest progress towards documenting a substantial number of the world’s languages will be made through the activities of well-trained linguists working in their own region, and that (b) language renewal and long-term language maintenance are not sustainable if they are dependent on external actors. If we are serious about these points, then

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sustainability means building towards autonomy. It also means separating out the roles of grassroots activism and volunteerism from the kinds of activities which work towards ‘indigenizing the academy’ (Mihesuah et al. 2004) and handing over training to regional institutions, linguists, and language activists. The current model relies on linguists (1) gaining funding for documentation activities from national and international funding agencies, (2) having both the motivation and the skills to undertake capacity building, (3) scheduling training activities alongside of fieldwork, and (4) volunteering as tutors. These factors delimit the sustainability of training. As noted above, we made some headway in the two workshops towards our goal of training Indonesian linguists and language activists in documentation methods. However the methods and tools in our field are complex, and need to be reinforced and increased through a cycle of training and practical fieldwork experience, as made very apparent by the experiences in the second workshop. It is quite clear that perhaps with the exception of the two most talented and eager participants, most other participants would need at least two further workshops of ten to fourteen days in order to achieve a skill level that would allow them to carry on independently and to transfer their skills to other interested members in their communities. Indeed, participants themselves called for further training in use of the software, in skills such as video recording and processing, and in pedagogical methods for sharing their training with others. Cycles of training workshops over an extended period of four to five years, however, are not possible under the present circumstances. Most documentation projects run for two to four years, and, if a research team does not apply for and receive further funding when its project concludes, the expertise of the team and the training momentum will be lost. Preparing and running training activities besides regular fieldwork also puts an extra burden on the tutors which will only be sustainable if this kind of activity receives adequate funding and is acknowledged as part of the ‘regular duty’ of a fieldworking linguist. In the current case, although all the tutors were very willing to give their time to trialling this kind of activity, participation posed some financial burden for several of the tutors. And despite the fact that both workshops did not last longer than ten days, it would be difficult to sustain such intensive training efforts over a longer period of time. It was particularly challenging given that the tutors were either heading home from fieldwork to teach in their regular jobs or were going to the field.

7.5.3 Alternative Models Third, we pose the question of whether there is a more suitable model which might support the building of both capacity and autonomy. Section 1 noted that there are sustainable capacity building models which have been developed in other parts of the world. The Oxlajuuj Keej Maya’ Ajtz’iib’ (OKMA), for example, has run since the


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1970s, and provides nine-month long courses in linguistics and documentary methods. The American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) has held six-week intensive summer institutes for thirty years, and offers a range of classes in linguistics and language maintenance methods. In Australia, Aboriginal Language Centres have provided training and support to local language communities since the mid- 1980s and are now being developed in parts of North America. 4 The language centre model has been adapted this decade in the development of Indigenous Knowledge Centres (Taylor 2003; Taylor 2004; Queensland Government 2007). Could these models be adopted in Indonesia? The language resource centre model appears well suited to large, diverse countries such as Australia and Indonesia. This idea is being explored in some parts of Indonesia. John Bowden has recently received funding from the ELDP to document Helong, spoken near Kupang in Timor. Bowden plans to incorporate training in his project and hopes to establish a language centre in the region in close cooperation with the workshop participants from Kupang (Haan, Balukh). Participant Yusuf Sawaki, a lecturer at the State University of Papua in Manokwari, plans to establish a language centre supporting local languages at that university. Margaret Florey and Michael Ewing have held preliminary discussions with the Siwalima Museum in Ambon about a Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures, and Musics at that institution. Language centres are established and managed regionally, and thus stand a better chance of understanding and meeting the needs of their local language communities. Some of the activities of a centre include coordinating local research projects, training staff in formal courses and through apprenticeship, hiring external linguists as necessary on short and longer-term contracts, acting as regional repositories and archives for data, and as literature production centres. The centres can start small and grow as the resources for both human and physical infrastructure become available. But the core issue of course is: Where would the financial, human, and technological resources come from for establishing such centres? Both OKMA and AILDI are affiliated with universities and are able to draw on their infrastructure. In Indonesia as well, we believe, language centres may most easily be established through piggybacking onto appropriate existing institutions such as universities, libraries, museums or the Pusat Bahasa. The Pusat Bahasa, in fact, has recently begun a process of decentralization and plans to establish regional language centres (Balai Bahasa) in most of Indonesia’s thirty-three provinces (usually in the capital of the province). It has also added language documentation to its brief. But it remains to be seen whether the Balai Bahasa or the other regional institutions just mentioned (universities, libraries, and museums) are willing to become cooperative partners and supporters for more local initiatives rather than just acting as regional representatives of their national headquarters.

4

A useful list of Australian language centres can be found at http://www.fatsil.org/links/nild.htm.

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Language centres might also go some way towards addressing the shortage of computing equipment which is a chronic problem in many parts of Indonesia. In his report to Volkswagen, Himmelmann noted that, despite the enthusiasm of the Pusat Bahasa to include language documentation on their main agenda, the staff at that institution generally lack technical facilities and staff training in IT to support state of the art documentation projects. A language centre could house computing equipment and a digitization station which would be made available for use by regional linguists and language activists. Language centres could thus provide local archiving facilities and also increase access to archival material by the communities from which the data originates. Such localized initiatives are being encouraged and developed by some major preservation archives. For example, PARADISEC (Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) is working with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in Port Vila, the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies in Port Moresby, and the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia to repatriate materials and providing data backup services. The Max Planck Institute is developing plans to establish local archive outlets in Latin America and elsewhere, linked to projects funded by the Volkwagen Foundation’s DoBeS (Documentation of Endangered Languages) program. DELAMAN (Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network) hosted its annual meeting in late 2007 in Mexico City on the theme of global–local archive relationships, and one sub-theme focused on training in digital techniques for researchers, archivists, and communities. Most importantly in the context of the current chapter perhaps, language resource centres could provide a focal point for training activities of linguists doing fieldwork in the area. Training would not depend exclusively on the initiative of a small dedicated group of fieldworkers but ideally could make use of all researchers working in the area, both foreign and local, thus distributing the training load across a broader range of individuals. It would also not be limited to the lifetime of a single project but could draw on the expertise and time of consecutive fieldwork projects, thus becoming more sustainable. One- or two-day workshops held outside a context which provides for regular training opportunities may be of little use, but a series of short workshops in such a centre may well achieve results which go beyond what can be achieved in longer one-off workshops. Last but not least, costs for training workshops could be drastically reduced as participants would not have to travel from all over Indonesia to a single location. Still, funding will continue to be an issue. But with support from funding bodies, linguists could build into grant applications an item to support their teaching as visiting lecturers. We can continue grassroots training through taking language centre staff to the field with us to strengthen their skills. Another possibility to make language centres more sustainable in the long-term is for them to partner with foreign universities. For example, the centres could serve as a host institution for in-country summer or semester-long documentation and field methods classes. This class could also involve a period spent volunteering as tutors at training workshops. Such arrangements will


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be of two-way benefit in which foreign students and regional linguists and language activists can learn from and support each other. In sum, we clearly see a role for training activities forming an integral and regular part of the new conceptualization of linguistic fieldwork which is emerging under the label of language documentation. And we strongly believe that given the right kind of contextualization or embedding (in the form of local or regional language centres), such training will contribute to the excitement of doing fieldwork and enrich our own experiences rather than becoming an additional burden. Ken Rehg (2007: 19) noted a ‘stirring sense of camaraderie’ born from the University of Hawai’i’s documentation centre. That spirit was apparent at both the Bali workshops and is felt more widely among linguists and language activists involved in fieldwork, documentation, training and language maintenance who are working towards the shared goal of strengthening and supporting indigenous languages.

Appendix: Workshop Evaluations In both workshops, a number of issues were evaluated using the following scale: Very satisfied (5), Satisfied (4), Reasonable (3), Dissatisfied (2), Very dissatisfied (1)

Table 7.1 Evaluation of Workshop 1 Q no. PART 1 (n = 25) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 PART 2 9 10 11 12 13 14

Question Organization of travel to Bali Hotel and facilities (room, food, service, etc.) Bali as workshop location Availability of electronic tools (recording equipment, computers, etc.) Lectures (content, delivery, etc.) Tutorials (practicum, usefulness, etc.) Handouts (clarity, helpfulness, etc) Overall impression of the workshop What did you hope for from the workshop before it began? Were your hopes fulfilled? Which part of the workshop did you like the most? Why? Which part of the workshop did you like the least? Why? Are you likely to use the knowledge or skills which you gained through this workshop? How? Give a short explanation. What other topics could or should be discussed in a workshop such as this? Please add any other suggestions or comments.

Average 4.5 4.5 4.8 3.8 4.5 4.5 4.3 4.7

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Table 7.2 Evaluation of Workshop 2 Q no. PART 1 (n = 10) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

PART 2 11 12 13 14 15

Question Lectures (content, delivery, etc.) Tutorials (practicum, usefulness, etc.) Schedule and structure of the workshop (division of time between lectures and tutorials) Study materials (handouts, PowerPoint presentations, etc) Number of tutors for each group (2 teams with 4 tutors each) Direction in developing a proposal (individual guidance from two tutors) Availability of electronic tools (recording equipment, computers, etc.) Opportunity to finish the assigned tasks Hotel and facilities (room, food, service, etc.) This workshop took place over 6 days. Should it have been longer, the same, or shorter? What did you hope for from the workshop before it began? Were your hopes fulfilled? Which part of the workshop did you like the most? Why? Which part of the workshop did you like the least? Why? What other topics could or should be discussed in a workshop such as this? Please add any other suggestions or comments.

Average 4.5 4.6 4.1 4.2 4.6 4.8 4.6 3.7 4.6 8 2 0

8 Anxious Respect for Linguistic Data: The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) and the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD) Nick Thieberger

8.1 Introduction It is clear that the wind of change blowing through the discipline of linguistics in the recent past is resulting in a heightened focus on fieldwork methodology. Leaving aside that part of our discipline that has never concerned itself with field recording, there is a change in the way that linguists can now conceive of linguistic data, in particular, but not solely, as it relates to endangered languages. Three main determinants of this change are: the realization of the urgency to record as much as possible before speakers stop speaking small languages; developments in technology 1 which allow us to work with data with an immediacy not previously possible; and a growing involvement in linguistic projects of speakers or their descendants who want access This chapter was written while I was supported by the following Australian Research Council grants: SR0566965—Sharing access and analytical tools for ethnographic digital media using high speed networks, DP0450342—New methodologies for representing and accessing resources on endangered languages: a case study from South Efate, LEO453247—Digital archiving equipment for PARADISEC research archive of Asia-Pacific region audio recordings, LEO560711—PARADISEC, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures: Accessibility and Decentralization. 1 ‘New technologies’ is used here to refer to digital recording, software, tools and methods that have become available in the past decade.

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to reusable linguistic data. These three factors point to the importance of making a high quality record of a language where quality refers both to the content and the form of the recorded data. This chapter arises from my current research on developing workflows for linguistic fieldwork, based in my own recording of South Efate (a southern Oceanic language of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian) in central Vanuatu, and also on the development and operation of the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). This is a linguistic archive primarily providing for researchers working in the Pacific, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and so contains a significant collection of Austronesian material. The associated training and advice network, the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD), was set up to ensure that good techniques for working with linguistic data were propagated both within and outside of academia, resulting in better documentation suited for long term archiving.

8.2 Grammars and Reusable Linguistic Records This chapter discusses the notion of preservation of linguistic records and asks to what extent that is achieved by writing a grammatical description of a language. I show that, like most grammars, Austronesian language grammars are not currently based on a corpus, do not cite primary recordings nor embed their analysis within the data and do not prepare recordings for future reference. I will discuss methods for citing data (including creation of a repository and permanent identification of files), and finally discuss the need for training and advice to propagate these methods among linguists and language workers. While in this chapter I focus on the form in which data is best created and stored, it should be noted that the content should be linguistically as comprehensive as practicable, including a range of communicative types (monologue, conversation, meeting, procedural text, etc) with a range of speakers of different ages (as argued, for example, by Himmelmann 1998). The data needs to be in accessible formats, which means that data files are not held in proprietary or compressed formats. Typically this means plain text which may be structured using some kind of markup (such as Toolbox’s ‘backslash’ codes or XML). Further, good file-naming conventions and data structures will enable us and others to locate files we refer to in our analysis. A major reason for considering these issues is that the data should be legible and reusable by others in future, that is, it should be portable (cf. Bird and Simons 2003), and not just by linguists, as it is ‘less and less viable for linguists to think of stakeholders in language documentation to be constituted only of vaguely-conceived scientific posterity’ (Woodbury 2003: 38–9). There has been a notion that grammars are themselves a sufficient record of the language, but they are only a partial record, especially if they are written in a narrow and currently fashionable theoretical framework. While it is not in dispute that a grammatical description is an essential part of the documentation, it is not the only part, and it can now, with the popularization of digital tools, be embedded within the data in a way that was not possible in the past. While it is now

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possible to adopt a means of writing a grammar that includes the development of broader documentary materials in its process, it is still not common practice and has not been rewarded sufficiently by the linguistic community. This is especially the case for PhD dissertations for which students are not currently given any recognition if they provide data in the form of texts, a dictionary or media. In an attempt to understand how grammar writers to date have conceived of the relationship between their grammar and the data on which it is based I searched through a range of grammars written over the past generation for references to the source data. I found that typically grammars do not provide data beyond example sentences. Occasionally there are a few texts, but they do not cite their source and are not given as recordings but only as transcriptions. Rather than listing all the grammars consulted, it is preferable (and quicker) to acknowledge those that do cite data so that their readers can confirm hypotheses and work with the data in ways not necessarily envisaged by the author. An early example is Jeffrey Heath’s Nunggubuyu grammar (Heath 1984), texts (Heath 1980) and dictionary (Heath 1982) in which each example in the grammar is sourced from the (paper) texts. More recently Morey’s (2004) Tai grammar and my grammar of South Efate (Thieberger 2006) have provided media with transcriptions, allowing the reader to hear audio or see video examples used by speakers and to verify that examples actually occurred and in what context. While it may be argued that a small corpus (mine contains around 125,000 tokens linked to media) is not a suitable or representative sample of a language, we are operating within constraints of time and budget that will not permit creation of large corpora as are constructed for metropolitan languages (which can be in the order of millions of words—the Reuters corpus is 80 million words). The converse, that is, the lack of any corpus or citable data accompanying grammars, should no longer be acceptable for linguistic research in that none of the observations made by the linguist can be confirmed by the reader and none of the data worked on intensively by the linguist can be made available for future access, especially by the people recorded. Two recent overviews of issues in grammar writing are instructive for the way in which they ignore the role of the data in the grammatical description. They are both fine collections of papers on the craft of writing a grammar, but, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, neither of them seriously engages with the use of new technology. In the first, Ameka, Dench, and Evans (2006) briefly discuss the issue of new technological means for developing a corpus, and note that, ‘[w]here the published text collection once served as the grounding evidence for a linguistic analysis, the digital archive will come increasingly to fill that role’ (Evans and Dench 2006: 25). However, they go on to caution that the increased speed of producing digitized recordings is unlikely to be accompanied by detailed analysis of the concomitantly larger collection (ibid). This emphasis on the problems involved in the use of new technologies is unfortunate and misses the basic issue that we can build new techniques into our work to create much better outcomes. Further, Evans and Dench (2006: 29) discuss ‘new forms of grammars’ as hyperlinked documents, again requiring more than the

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‘normal’ effort of writing a grammar. There is vast gap between a rich hypertextual encyclopedic grammar/dictionary/text collection and the current model in which data is not presented. Creating well-formed data ensures there can be a number of output formats, so we should be adopting standards where they exist (e.g. the Multi Dictionary Formatter standard for use with Toolbox) and, as a community with shared interests, developing standards where they do not yet exist. The second recent work on these issues is the special issue of Studies in language edited by Payne and Weber (2006), titled ‘Perspectives on grammar writing’. In the introduction to this collection, Payne notes that in recent years ‘the emphasis has shifted back to the centrality of data’ (Payne 2006: 237), but this observation does not resonate with the collection of papers in the volume which cover traditional grammar writing and barely mention the relationship of the grammar to the data, or how that relationship could be made explicit. The contributions that seems to deal with the possibilities offered to language documentation by new technologies are two by David Weber (2006a, 2006b). For example, he observes that, ‘[i]deally language data would be managed—and grammars written—in a computational framework that integrates grammar and corpus, with examples existing in the corpus but accessed from the grammar. Examples would not be ‘taken from’ a text but displayed therein’ (Weber 2006a: 449). Further, Weber (2006b:427) briefly discusses the organization of data into a corpus and the need for the grammar to be encoded in an archival interchange format, such as XML. But there is no discussion of citation of examples or texts to a source, even under the subheading ‘some future possibilities’, nor is there a discussion of data repositories for curation of the data recorded by field linguists. In concluding, Weber (2006a:459) acknowledges that, ‘Grammar writers need hospitable authoring environments, with tools that are powerful and flexible, yet reasonably easy to learn and use. Until these are available we labor under the limitations of ink-on-paper.’ This is an unfortunate conclusion that reflects the fact that we have not yet put enough effort into the creation and dissemination of tools that are relatively easy to use and that address the functions required by field linguists. It also reflects the lack of incentive for field linguists to be using existing methods and tools. It is significant that neither of these collections on grammatology conveys the central issue facing endangered language data, that is the longevity of the data on which the grammar is based, and the means for interacting with that data. Critics of the use of new technologies often fail to understand the basic notion that digital data will survive better than analog data and that we may as well be creating good data from the outset both for that reason and for the ease with which we can access the data in our analysis. Or, as Grenoble and Whaley (2002:2) put it: ‘The advent of digital technology and growing global access to the world wide web has the potential of radically changing the way that we store and access information on languages, and thus of how we linguists and anthropologists think about the data we collect.’ In 1992, some fourteen years prior to these volumes being published, J. Randolph Valentine published software called Rook which provided a grammar authoring

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environment, linking texts to the grammar via a lookup table. So, for example, by clicking on a word in a text, the lookup would determine what part of speech it was and present that section of the grammar which was hierarchically organized. The text was imported from an interlinearization program (IT), and was presented together with audio. This system was written in HyperCard, and has now been superseded, but it still stands a fine example of the kinds of links we want to be able to make in a grammar writing and presentation tool. The Rook template was used to prepare a brief grammatical sketch of the Australian language Warnman linked to the audio of a short story (Thieberger 1994). Rook is an important early model but work has been proceeding to determine ways of encoding data types found in grammatical descriptions— typically descriptive prose (Burnard and Sperberg McQueen 1995/2002), interlinear texts (Bow, Hughes, and Bird 2003), paradigms (Penton and Bird 2004) and lexicon and the structure of each of these data types. This makes sense both from the perspective of making new kinds of grammatical descriptions in which the naturally interlinked elements of the language can be explored and explained in context, and from the need to make explicitly structured digital documents that will endure into the future.

8.3 Preservation Linguists often claim that the grammatical descriptions they write will preserve endangered languages but unless they take steps to secure their field recordings then the only thing that will be preserved is the grammatical analysis. This is better than no record, but is not providing the data on which its claims are based. Further it is not providing narratives, songs, conversations, or examples of language in use that speakers of the language could reasonably expect to be results of fieldwork on their languages. Crowley expresses his dismay at ‘overinflated’ linguists who ‘claim to “save” some particular dying language, when in fact all that person is going to do is document the language. It is more than unhelpful when such linguists claim to be doing precisely what we are not in a position to do; it is, in fact, unethical’ (Crowley 2007: 187–8). We can provide good records as a result of our fieldwork but as outsiders we cannot preserve a language. To provide good records implies that we have strategies for data management together with the infrastructure to hold the data, and the means to locate it and cite it. It means creating well-formed data, that is, data that will itself not deteriorate over time and will be legible in future. Knowing what we now do about the transient nature of digital data, we need to build effective means for storing and reusing data, and ensuring it is interoperable as much as possible. Clearly, to do all of this we need to be training both new and old researchers in appropriate methods. I will elaborate on each of these themes below.

8.4 Data Management Keeping track of all the recordings, notes, photos and videos that we make in the field requires disciplined use of a good database which will allow the internal relationships

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within the data to be mapped. For example, it is most likely that you have recorded a small number of speakers on a number of different occasions. A table of the database will be the speaker names, another table will be the recordings, another will be the list of derived stories for production in Toolbox and then publication, another will be a list of pictures taken and so on. A field in the database can also be a checkbox for the stage of processing that a file is at, so that an untranscribed recording can be readily identified. A database will also help enforce standard ways of referring to the items, for example, allowing a controlled list of speaker names to be used to avoid variant spellings or versions of names. Naming conventions need to be thought out in advance so that you are able to name the files created in ways that allow them to be retrieved later, and so that they can be transferred directly into an archive without renaming. If you use these names from the moment of creation of the file then you will not have to keep track of renamed versions later on. At PARADISEC we encourage users to develop a persistent naming convention using fairly standard ASCII characters and to avoid unnecessarily long names. If we can then take the user’s names for their own files and incorporate them into our persistent identification it makes it much easier to keep track of the relationships between the notes and the media files. Our persistent file names follow the directory structure of the mass storage system on which the files will reside, and are composed of a collection identifier (e.g., NT1), followed by an item identifier (200601) and then a specific local identifier (like ‘A’ or ‘B’ for the side of a tape). These are then followed by a three-letter extension indicating the file type (so NT1-200601A.wav). You will also need to record good metadata about the file at the time it is created or as soon after as possible—who is on it, when and where it was recorded, what the language is and so on. Again, using standards (e.g., the ISO standards for language names (ISO 639–3, based on Ethnologue) or for dates (yyyy-mo-da)) can save a great deal of effort later on. The Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) metadata set is a simple standard that provides for the basics that linguists want to include in descriptions of field recordings—roles of participants; language names; dates; linguistic type of the data among others. The IMDI metadata set is far richer and offers the ability to operate at a more granular level with the data, but requires more work on the part of the creator than does the OLAC metadata set. Data needs to be backed up, preferably being sent to an archive which will take care of backing it up in perpetuity. In one case at PARADISEC we had a fieldworker in the Philippines sending DVD copies of data to us directly from the field (as seen in Plate 14). To do this, she developed a naming convention for the files that then carried through all of her work. We have been encouraging PhD students to deposit material in the archive as soon as they return from fieldwork as this not only secures their data, but gives them a citable form of their data for their analysis (as discussed below). It is important to understand that the data resulting from fieldwork has to flow through various tools and processes as the linguist proceeds with analysis. This

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analogue to digital capture N I recording

digital ?

add descriptive metadata

BWF

archival digital file

Y

N

corpus with links to media (e.g. Audiamus)

LIMSI

video ?

Transcriber, etc

Y

ELAN or CLAN

archived with PARADISEC

e.g. shoebox for interlinearising, concordance,

texts, dictionaries, etc

Figure 8.1 Workflow for file transformations (Nash 2005)

workflow is described in Thieberger (2004, 2005) and elaborated on by Nash (2005) as seen in Figure 8.1. It tracks typical operations carried out in the course of analysing linguistic data given the current available tools, beginning with a digital recording (either audio or video), adding metadata and archiving the file before commencing analysis, transcribing with time-alignment and various software for annotation and exploration of the data (including Audiamus, a tool I wrote to work with a corpus of media via a textual representation). Finally there are outputs resulting from this workflow which include a collection of annotated texts linked to media, a dictionary and so on. This is the workflow that suits me and it may not be for everyone. However, it makes clear to those who are starting out what the various tools do and how they fit together, and how the data should flow through them, with value being added at each step, but allowing the data to be kept separate from the applications that operate on it.

8.5 Infrastructure In order to preserve linguistic records in the long term and to undertake the various tasks listed in this chapter there is a need for shared infrastructure (to avoid duplication of effort) to create a data repository. PARADISEC is an example of this kind of infrastructure and includes digitization suites in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra which convert analog tapes recorded as early as the 1950s. An online catalog tracks these items and ensures they have basic metadata before they are sent to a server in Sydney for inspection, processing as appropriate to the type of data (e.g. sealing of audio files with an XML textual header and production of MP3 copies for delivery)

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and automatically backed up to tape. A further automatic process copies files to the mass data storage system 2 in Canberra. Weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports are generated from the Canberra storage system 3 that allow us to ensure the integrity of the data. We have assisted a number of linguists to enter their own metadata and then to deposit their recordings and we have been refining the software over time. The ease of use of this process is critical, as we know very well that linguists have enough to do and will not take on extra work unless it is fairly painless and they can see a benefit to themselves.

8.6 Field Helper While it is tedious to enter metadata, there are ways of automating metadata entry and extraction from files, as for example with the tool called Field Helper 4 in which files can be dragged onto icons associating them with certain metadata items. Thus the user may define a set of icons to represent linguistic types (lexicon, text, primary description and so on) and then be able to drag items (such as transcripts or texts) from folders onto those icons, thereby assigning those characteristics to the metadata for those items. The underlying XML file need never be seen by the researcher, but, due to its well-formed structure, can be copied to repositories which can then incorporate it into their catalogs.

8.7 Locatable and Citable Data Searching for linguistic data requires that it has been described adequately and in a form that is predictable so that search engines can retrieve it. The catalog or metadata information minimally has to provide for standard language names to be used, and for a means for expressing non-standard names for those languages that are currently outside of the ISO system. Geographic data can also be associated with the entry, in PARADISEC’s case using a geographic bounding box on a map (min/max latitude/longitude), but possibly also using the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN). Once an item has been accessioned into the archive it will be provided with persistent identification which means that its name and location will not change over time, allowing it to then be cited in other work. With new techniques for transcribing with time-alignment it is possible to cite to the level of a word or utterance within the collection, which is the practice I developed in my PhD thesis (published as 2 A hierarchical file system (HFS) with robotic tape server at the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC). 3 This system, called ‘Babble’ was written by Stuart Hungerford at APAC. 4 Field Helper (or FIDAS) (available at http://acl.arts.usyd.edu.au/FIDAS/and described at http://acl. arts.usyd.edu.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=178&Itemid=211) is being developed collaboratively between PARADISEC and the Archaeology Computing Lab at the University of Sydney. At the time of writing it is in alpha release.

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Thieberger 2006). Citation of archival data will become the norm as younger linguists adopt the kind of methodology advocated in this chapter and as more repositories are established.

8.8 Well-Formed Data Archival forms of data are those that we predict will be usable over time. We know that digital data can be locked up in proprietary formats, so to avoid losing data when companies change their software, PARADISEC archives open and uncompressed formats following standards established by far larger interest groups of librarians and archivists than our own. We will not accept multimedia presentations or files in proprietary formats as we do not have the staff to extract data from them, but we can provide advice on how to create good files in the first place, or how to convert files into a suitable format. The archival version of a file is the primary output of recording (as seen in the workflow in Figure 8.1) and derived forms of the data can be converted for delivery, as for example MP3 files are smaller and easier to move around than are their corresponding WAV files. Similarly, a lexical database may contain much more information than the derived dictionary, which may be in a number of formats (paper, computer-based CD, or web page), and a set of interlinear texts may have more information than their online representation does.

8.9 Reusable and Interoperable If you have ever had to rework a dictionary created by someone else you will appreciate the value of having such work in a digital text form rather than just on paper. As speaker communities become more literate and want, for example, to provide resources to support use of the language in schools, they will revisit the work done by a linguist in that community five, ten, twenty or more years ago. If the work is held in a suitable repository it can be reproduced in a new form. If, however, the linguist used proprietary software like Microsoft Word or lost the only copy of the file on their computer then the work of revising the dictionary is so much harder. Once reusable data is made locatable via general search engines it can be put to unexpected uses (as long as they conform to deposit conditions). For example, linguist Tom Dutton recorded a radio play by a Papua New Guinean author in 1979. This tape became part of his collection and, after accessioning at PARADISEC it became locatable via an internet search engine. It was found by a drama researcher in New York who knew the playwright’s work and could find no other copy of this play, either as a written script or as a performance. She signed our access agreement, downloaded the files and transcribed them, subsequently depositing her transcripts with us, resulting in the script becoming part of the material available in the collection.

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Interoperability of data is more difficult to achieve than simple reusability. For data to interoperate with other data (and this means automatic interoperation by computational processes) it has to be constructed in a strictly standardized format. Once we have standard formats then we can benefit from tools based on those formats, and further, we can visualize the data in new ways once it starts to work together with other data or we can locate new sources of data that we were previously unaware of. An example of interoperable data is the set of metadata created by an archive that is part of the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC). The PARADISEC catalog exports a selection of fields to an XML encoded document which conforms to the OLAC standard. The strength of XML is that the document declares in its header what kind of standard it adheres to (just as an HTML document begins by declaring itself to be HTML) but it also provides a means of validating the structure of the document against a published schema (which is a kind of phrase structure grammar). This allows it to then be harvested by a number of search engines which would not be able to access it as an unstructured document, except in the way that Google accesses data, that is, as a set of largely undifferentiated text. A further benefit of reusability is the return of material to the host or source community. It is particularly the case when a language is no longer widely spoken that future generations may want to relearn it, but it is also the case that these small communities have little in the way of written or recorded history and greatly value the recordings made by linguists. As Grenoble and Whaley (2002) point out, and my experience at PARADISEC confirms, dissemination of data in digital form and via the internet may be the best means of making research data available to the source communities. During a fieldtrip to Erakor village in Vanuatu in 2006 I was asked for copies of recordings I had made with an old man who had since died. Because I had prepared my data in the way advocated in this chapter I was able in a matter of hours to produce ten copies of an audio CD with a set of 15 ‘greatest hits’—stories and songs from the village, together with cover notes drawn from the existing metadata catalog. This would simply not have been feasible had the media been in analog form.

8.10 Online Presentation of Annotated Text and Media, the Ethnographic Online Presentation and Annotation System (EOPAS) In 2005 and 2006 I led a team developing a method for representing interlinear glossed text (IGT) linked to media. IGT is a convenient means for presenting bilingual annotations together with a free translation. The issue here was how to develop an archival form for interlinear text and then how to stream media (in open formats) and present interlinear text with the media it transcribes, locally and on the internet. Some linguists use Toolbox to produce interlinear annotations of texts; however, there is still

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no published standard for structuring these interlinear files despite a good typology of interlinear texts developed by Lehmann (1983), Bow, Hughes and Bird (2003), and Hughes, Bird and Bow (2003). Toolbox uses the ‘backslash’ markup in text files, so the files are quite reusable, but because there is no constraint on the fields that can be used, the order they occur in or on their names, the form of the data cannot be predicted for automatic processing. Exports from Toolbox in XML require a suitable internal structure within Toolbox to provide an XML document with a predictable structure. The multidisciplinary and multi-institutional project called Sharing access and analytical tools for ethnographic digital media using high speed networks, or simply EthnoER, worked on a model that would ultimately allow diverse data types to interoperate, with grammar, dictionaries, texts, and media all interlinked and navigable. In this first step we focused on a means for viewing, concordancing and searching simple transcriptions or interlinear text associated with media, combined with the ability to access the media itself. The types of linguistic outputs addressed by EthnoER are timealigned transcripts (from ELAN and Transcriber) and IGT (from Toolbox). Media is streamed using Annodex which can call time segments within the media which itself is automatically converted to an open format (Ogg). We provided a template for Toolbox users so that data exported from Toolbox is well-formed XML and we developed a schema (called EOPAS) against which the XML could be validated as it is uploaded. Validation means that the structure of the document is known and predictable and can then be used in the browser we created for IGT, in the same way that a web browser presents HTML documents. This project has made explicit the structure of simple interlinear text, a common data type in linguistic methodology, and also provides an archival form for interlinear text in which the internal relationship between a morpheme and its gloss, or an utterance and its translation, are made explicit by XML tags. The resulting form of the data is both reusable and interoperable.

8.11 Storing Data: PARADISEC Case Study PARADISEC is a collaborative research project established in 2003 between the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University (the University of New England joined in 2004). The main motivation was the need to digitize audio tapes recorded since the 1950s by researchers who had nowhere to deposit them and who were storing them in places neither designed nor appropriate for long-term housing of analog tapes. As noted above, PARADISEC stores data in several locations and hopes to extend the location of copies via an international collaboration known as DELAMAN, which includes a number of language archives (among them are the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) in Texas, Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) in London, Dokumentation

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Bedrohter Sprachen (DoBeS) in the Netherlands, and the Alaskan Native Languages Centre (ANLC) in Alaska). At April 2008 we store 2,400 hours of media (over 4.1Tb of data). There are 5,200 records in the PARADISEC catalog with data from 600 languages and 50 countries. We spend considerable time with many old tapes, preparing them for data transfer by cleaning and, in some cases, baking or placing them under vacuum to readhere the media to the backing tape. We return all tapes to the depositors as we have no conservation funds and no physical storage space. However, not all items in our collection represent legacy material. Some, and an increasingly large part, is ‘born digital’—that is, it results from current fieldwork using digital recorders and requires less work on the part of a digital archive, especially if depositors take care to use archival formats of media and enter their own metadata online. Working with legacy material we can observe what small additional steps a researcher could have taken to make their recordings more useful to us now. In some cases there may be no specific information about the tapes we have located in a box or filing cabinet, and, while there are accompanying field notes, we do not have the time or the personnel to work through field notes and to establish their relationships to field recordings. We are taking digital images of notes and putting them into an online delivery system that permits researchers to note the relationship that obtains between the notes and the tapes. We plan to allow online annotation of media that will enrich the existing collection, using the expertise of local experts. Simple descriptive metadata then allows us and potential researchers to locate the relevant media files and to reintegrate them with field notes. The ability to enforce standards on depositors extends to the description of the data, or the metadata that allows the data to be discovered. We use a cataloging system that provides a description of the item as well as of the process it undergoes from accession. The catalog is critical to the organization of the collection and includes a number of controlled vocabularies (including roles of people involved in producing the item, a standard language list and country list, for example) to ensure consistency of data entry accessed via pop-up menus. Geographic data can be associated with each entry via a box drawn onto a map (as seen in Map 8.1), or by reference to the country or language name, depending on the level of detail required. All of this metadata can be output in various forms, one of which is the Open Language Archives Community metadata set. We provide a dynamic repository (using a PHP query of our SQL database) of our metadata for OLAC searches in order to increase the visibility and so the discoverability of the material in our collection. This has been a fairly easy process that has meant that we were able to move our metadata system to an Open Archives Initiative conformant metadata repository in a few months. We encourage practitioners (whom we take to mainly include linguists, musicologists, and indigenous language workers) to deposit recorded media by providing them with a high quality digital version of their data in the short term. If an archival form

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Map 8.1 Density of items in the PARADISEC collection, an image from the search tool

of the file is created first and is then used as the basis for the subsequent effort of transcription and time-aligning, the resulting work has a citable source that should persist into the future, so we have been encouraging researchers to lodge their tapes with PARADISEC as soon as they return from fieldwork. We digitize or capture their data and create an archival (usually at 96khz/24bit Broadcast Wave Format or BWF), a working copy (data or audio CD), and a representational (linear MP3) copy with its persistent identifier in our collection. This gives them a digital file to work with, but more importantly it gives them a citable form of archival data with persistent identification. Their intellectual effort of annotating this primary data can then build on a firm foundation for both their own immediate goal (typically a descriptive analysis or a dissertation) and the long-term needs of having richly annotated primary data safely archived.

8.12 Austronesian Languages and PARADISEC Initially PARADISEC was conceived as being a repository for language material from the region around Australia. This was, in part, due to the recognition that Australian researchers working in the region had nowhere to deposit their research material, unlike those who worked with Australian languages for whom the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) was the location for depositing their data. While we have accepted data from languages much further afield than this, the bulk of the collection is from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the western Pacific. Of 6,040 items in the collection (as of January 2009), 3,600 are from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Pacific, as can be seen in Map 8.1 drawn from the geographic search tool in our catalog (density of shading indicates the number of items

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Table 8.1 A sample of Austronesian data in the PARADISEC collection Alexander Adelaar Amanda Brotchie Terry Crowley Mark Durie Tom Dutton Domenyk Eades David Goldsworthy David Goldsworthy Ralph Lawton Claire Moyse-Faurie Laura Robinson Leonard Drile Sam Cynthia Schneider Al Schütz Jeff Siegel Jeff Siegel Wolfgang Sperlich Tote Tepano Nick Thieberger Stephen Wurm

24 tapes, Salako, Embaloh 11 items. Tiraq 8 items. Paama, Sye, Ura, Malakulan languages 314 tapes. Acehnese. 295 tapes, in a range of PNG languages, including some Austronesian languages 12 tapes. Gayo 89 tapes. Music. 16 tapes. Music 7 items. Kiriwina 11 tapes. Xârâgurè, Xârâcùù 58 items. Dupaningan Agta, Eastern Cagayan Agta. 11 tapes. Dehu 62 items. Abma 6 tapes. 1966 Nguna 31 tapes. Fijian 3 tapes. Nauruan pidgin Niue and Namakir dictionaries 21 items. Rapa Nui 364 items. 1990s South Efate 161 items in various languages, mainly from Reefs/Santa Cruz

Indonesia Vanuatu Vanuatu Indonesia PNG Indonesia Indonesia and Malaysia Fiji PNG New Caledonia Philippines New Caledonia Vanuatu Vanuatu Fiji Nauru Vanuatu Easter Island Vanuatu Solomon Islands

in the collection). Of these roughly 1,300 represent Austronesian languages as can be see in the list given in Table 8.1. While each collection is different, some examples of items in the collection will illustrate the range of material held. Stephen Wurm’s estate includes several hundred tapes, including 120 Solomon Islands tapes and transcripts or field notes from the 1970s. Arthur Capell’s estate includes 114 tapes and 30 archive boxes of field notes from the Pacific, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. As a trial of how to manage the papers in these collections we took images of pages of notes, with a naming convention for files that allowed them to be assembled into an online presentation format. Some 14,000 images of Capell’s work are now online and have already been used by researchers who would otherwise have had to travel to Sydney to see them. A copy has also been provided to the Vanuatu Cultural Centre for local use. Similar work has been begun with Stephen Wurm’s papers and with the missionary Calvin Roesler’s papers in Asmat. While there is much more of this kind of material that could be made more accessible, due to a lack of funds we have not proceeded further with this work.

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8.13 What PARADISEC is Not PARADISEC is a project operating in virtual space between a number of sponsoring institutions. It was only ever funded at the bare minimum required to establish a digitization suite, server and the human infrastructure to support those activities. Much as we would like to, we have never been in a position to ‘value-add’ to our collection, and instead have to rely on the form in which depositors create and supply their data. We do provide guidelines and assist in reformatting if necessary, but we simply do not have the staff to do this kind of work. As a result, we have good infrastructure for what has been called ‘thin’ metadata—what we consider the minimum to make the data discoverable. We have not provided for in depth querying of particular datasets. While it may be useful, for example, to locate all subordinate clauses used by a male under 50 in a particular region, this is not the kind of query supported by our metadata.

8.14 PARADISEC: Future Plans PARADISEC began as a project between academic institutions, but has now become an incorporated entity (PARADISEC Inc) with deductible gift recipient status in Australia which allows us to seek sponsorship to cover the cost of digitizing collections. With a more secure funding base we could actively locate endangered collections of field recordings and preserve them by visiting small cultural centres which have analog tape collections and providing digital copies to them while safely storing archival versions. In addition to the large backlog of academic research outputs, we regularly receive requests for assistance with small collections, for example those made by patrol officers, missionaries, or travellers, often from the children of the recorders who recognize the value of the collection, but have nowhere for it to be housed. We participate in a number of initiatives to make linguistic data easier to create in forms that will be interoperable and archivable (such as the EOPAS and Field Helper projects mentioned above) and consider these kinds of initiatives to be integral to the future of language documentation.

8.15 Training Archives rely on the relationships they have established with their communities, both depositors and users. In general, the benefits of depositing are clear, in particular as we are digitizing analog tapes and holding copies at no cost for members of our consortium. The ability to be trusted, as a repository should be, arises from a number of factors, but a key for us has been the ability to provide advice and training to ensure the quality, both technical and in content, of recordings and associated derived material (transcripts, glosses, dictionaries, etc). The rationale is that if we want high quality

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recordings and well-structured archival data, then we have to provide training in its creation. We run workshops in using Toolbox, which is still the only tool that creates structured lexical files linked to interlinear text, and, as tools like Transcriber and ELAN are produced by our colleagues we introduce them to a community of users in our region at occasional workshops, both in our universities and in community-based language centres. Training graduate students, current practitioners and speakers of endangered languages to use these technologies is critical to their uptake and to the successful creation of linguistic resources that will endure into the future. New methods and tools keep appearing and collective wisdom is required to keep track of the best of them. A further issue is that there is and will be much more language recording than we in academia know about. It is therefore important for us to reach out to anyone doing this kind of work and to provide advice and training so that their efforts are as productive as possible. To this end Margaret Florey and I established the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD) which promotes sharing of information and has sponsored conference sessions and training workshops at a number of locations. The mailing list, launched in April 2004, has had around 730 messages since then, with 230 subscribers. The strong links between our archiving project (PARADISEC) and RNLD help to promote good archival storage of results of research and repatriation of older collections to their source communities. RNLD has run many training courses in the use of linguistic software, including some with an Austronesian focus at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and the University of New Caledonia.

8.16 Conclusion Field researchers can now have instant access to field recordings both to support analysis and to provide citable archival forms of data. This digital data is ideal for repatriation to the host community as it is easier to produce (CD copies can readily be duplicated) and it has been enriched with time-aligned transcripts and is more useful than tapes alone used to be. Linguistic practice benefits from exposure of primary data as linguists become more accountable for their analyses and at the same time provide richer data for more fine-grained analysis. Archival data is critical for long-term preservation of linguistic information and there is a need for more linguistic archives collaborating in the international network. These archival projects need to be collaborative at a national or international level because we have so little in the way of resources and we have similar needs. This, in turn, implies that we use common methods based in accepted standards among the community of linguists. To produce suitable forms of data from fieldwork we need to develop and propagate methods and tools that are easy to install and use,

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and don’t add too much to the existing workload together with archival infrastructure to support practitioners in language documentation efforts. In 1938 Edward Sapir, discussing the nature of linguistic data created by fieldworkers, said: I’m not particularly interested in ‘smoothed-over’ versions of native culture. I like the stuff in the raw, as felt and dictated by the natives. [. . .] The genuine, difficult, confusing, primary sources. These must be presented, whatever else is done. [. . .] There are too many glib monographs, most of which time will show to be highly subjective performances. We need to develop in cultural anthropology that anxious respect for documentary evidence that is so familiar to the historian, the classical scholar, the Orientalist. (Letter from Sapir to Fay Cooper-Cole, 25 April 1938, quoted in Darnell 1990:139)

Perhaps our anxiety today is that so much is possible in the way of recording and producing documentation of small languages and expectations of our outputs are also increasing. Today’s fieldworker must be anxious both about doing sufficient work on the analysis of the linguistic data, as well as producing well-formed documentation. My experience at PARADISEC is that researchers will engage with new techniques for recording and annotating field materials when they understand that it will provide better outcomes from their work. It is critical for successful curation of digital linguistic data that we train practitioners in new methods so that they can create archival data as part of their normal practice, depositing their material before analysing it, and so turning the old understanding of archiving on its head. In addition to the importance of preparing data for repatriation and for re-use in future, the methods described above allow us to create citable forms of our research data in order to do better research now, providing data together with an analysis and allowing our claims to be tested. Finally, our responsibility to the people we record is a motivation for creating locatable and accessible data repositories. There is a confluence of new technological tools with an awareness among many linguists of the need to deal responsibly with data they collect. Linguists can take advantage of new tools and infrastructure to develop our own work while leaving sufficient records so that we can earn the respect, anxious or otherwise, of posterity.

Appendix: A list of resources discussed in this chapter Annodex Capell papers online Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archives Network (DELAMAN)

http://www.annodex.net http://paradisec.org.au/fieldnotes/AC2.htm http://www.delaman.org

158 EOPAS EthnoER Eudico Linguistic Annotator (ELAN) Field Helper IMDI editor IT OLAC Open Language Archives Community Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD) Roesler papers online Rook TGN—Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Toolbox Transcriber Wurm papers online

Nick Thieberger http://wiki.arts.unimelb.edu.au/ethnoer/Main_Page. The EOPAS schema is here: http://ethnoer.unimelb.edu.au/eopas.xsd http://ethnoer.unimelb.edu.au This project was funded by the Australian Research Council (SR0566965). http://www.mpi.nl/tools/elan.html http://acl.arts.usyd.edu.au/FIDAS/ http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/tools/ http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/it_dos.html, http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/it_mac.html http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/metadata.html http://rnld.org http://paradisec.org.au/fieldnotes/ROES/web/roes.htm http://www.sil.org/ftp/software/mac/rook101_sea.hqx http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/ vocabularies/tgn/ http://www.sil.org/computing/toolbox/index.htm http://trans.sourceforge.net/en/presentation.php http://paradisec.org.au/fieldnotes/SAW2/SAW2.htm

9 Preserving and Promoting Indigenous Languages in Vanuatu: Possibilities and Constraints Hannah Vari-Bogiri

9.1 Background The Republic of Vanuatu is an archipelagic chain of some 83 islands, situated in the Southwest Pacific, extending about 1,000 km in a north-south direction (see Map 9.1). Vanuatu, formerly known as the New Hebrides, gained its political independence in 1980 from the joint Anglo-French colonial control. The people are known as NiVanuatu and are described as Melanesians, a name derived from the dark complexity of their physical appearance. Vanuatu is a complex multilingual country with a high linguistic density of actively spoken indigenous languages per head of population. It is highly diversified linguistically and culturally with over a hundred indigenous languages spoken among a population currently estimated at around 200,000. The Vanuatu languages belong to the Oceanic group of Austronesian languages. The linguistic situation of Vanuatu is complex and unique. The official languages are English, French, and Bislama, while English and French are legally the principal languages of education. Bislama, the English-based-lexifier pidgin, is given the highest status in the constitution, not only as one of the three official languages but also as the national language of Vanuatu, due to its unifying force within this multilingual country. Out of the estimated 106 indigenous languages, thirteen are considered large languages with around or more than 5,000 speakers (Lynch and Crowley 2001:6). Most of the local languages have a small speaking population, yet continued to be active for a long time due to their remoteness from outside influence, resulting from geographical factors. However, that scenario is beginning to change with the high mobility of people due to various reasons such as urbanization, cash economy, and education.

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Northern Mariana Islands

Marshall Islands

Palau

FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA

Nauru PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Solomon Islands

Tuvalu

Vanuatu Fiji New Caledonia

AUSTRALIA Norfolk Island

NEW ZEALAND

0

1000

2000 km

Map 9.1 Vanuatu within the Pacific

Because of the importance of each individual language, the preservation and promotion of all indigenous languages (endangered and actively spoken) in Vanuatu remain a matter of urgency. Furthermore, given the fact that most of these actively spoken languages have a small speaking population, they are already endangered to certain extent. Statistically, the number of indigenous languages in Vanuatu continues to decline.Out of the 106 languages, 81 are still actively spoken, seventeen are considered moribund or endangered, while eight have already become extinct (Lynch and Crowley 2001). However, these figures only relate to the languages already identified. Researchers today are still discovering undocumented moribund or endangered languages in Vanuatu that have previously been unidentified either with only

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Banks Islands

Espirtu Santo Ambae

A

ra

ki

Tangoa

Malakula

Pentecost

Ambrym

Epi

SHEFA Shepherd Islands

PROVINCE Port Vila

Efate

Erromango

Tanna

Map 9.2 Vanuatu with specific places marked

one last speaker left, or which are spoken by a handful of people living in a hamlet. The linguistic situation in the two big islands of Espiritu Santo and Malakula is still not well established. Hence, there is still a need for a basic linguistic survey to be carried out in these islands in which the linguistic situation is poorly known, to confirm the number of distinct languages, the number of speakers, and their geographical extent.

9.2 Reasons for Decline Language shift occurs as people either move to the language of a powerful culture, or shift to a dominant vernacular language. In Vanuatu, this process especially involves languages whose status has been elevated by religion as a mission lingua franca. The reasons for the decline of or threats to indigenous languages in Vanuatu are similar to others within the Pacific region. These include the high mobility of people due to education and the process of urbanization in relation to cash economy and economic advancement. People’s attitudes towards their own vernaculars as well as marriages to partners of different language backgrounds are also contributing factors.

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The shift to the languages of powerful cultures in Vanuatu is supported both from the top and from the bottom. From the top, the Constitution of the Republic of Vanuatu declares the metropolitan languages of English and French as the principal languages of education and the curriculum is mostly Western-oriented. From the bottom, parents’ attitudes support language shift as parents who are motivated by economic and social pressure aspire to this type of education for their children. They view education through international languages as a means through which their children can take part in economic development as well as improve their life and social status. Indigenous languages are regarded as socially and economically limited and marginalized. Secondly, a common phenomenon in Vanuatu is a shift from smaller indigenous languages to other dominant indigenous languages (see Map 9.2). Some languages die out because, while the population still exists, people shift to another indigenous language. Examples which have been recorded include Araki shifting to Tangoa in Espiritu Santo (Vari-Bogiri 2005), the Nume language shifting to Merlav in the Banks Islands ( Joel Seimo pers comm.), the Ura language being replaced by Sie in Erromango (Lynch 1983), the Sowa language of Central-South Pentecost Island being shifted to Apma (Abma) which is one of the biggest languages of around 7,000 speakers in Pentecost (Gray 2006), and the Aore language of Espiritu Santo has just recently become extinct with the death of the last speaker, an old woman, whose children have shifted to the neighbouring language Tutuba. The status of some languages has been promoted with the introduction of nonindigenous religions as the mission lingua franca within the ethnolinguistic community and beyond. Such examples noted by Crowley (2000) include the Mota language of the Banks Islands within the Anglican mission, West Ambrym as the lingua franca by speakers of North and South Ambrym, the Aulua language of Malakula by the Presbyterian Church, and the Efate-Shepherds languages within Shefa province. The Tangoa language (Vari-Bogiri 2005) was also promoted by religion as the lingua franca within the south of the Espiritu Santo area. The role of religion, which is predominantly Christian, is like a double-edged sword. Formal education was first introduced in Vanuatu through religion, using indigenous languages to promote literacy. Most of the leaders who led Vanuatu after its independence in 1980 were educated through mission schools and their early education was in the vernacular. Ironically, while on one hand attempts were made to promote literacy as a means of propagating the Christian message, on the other hand, it was endangering smaller languages which have subsequently shifted to the dominant languages promoted as the mission lingua franca. Another adverse effect of religion was its attempt to suppress traditional practices that are encoded in these indigenous languages. One such example is Araki, a dying language of Vanuatu which has shifted to Tangoa, a neighbouring language on Espiritu Santo, promoted through Christianity as the lingua franca within the area. On a more positive note, Raga is one of the actively spoken languages with over 7,000 speakers on Pentecost Island. Raga continues to be active despite a similar


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experience to Araki in terms of the mission lingua franca and the introduction of Christianity. The Mota language of the Banks Islands was used as the mission lingua franca within the Raga speaking area which was predominantly Anglican. However, both Christianity and traditional practices continue to co-exist and complement each other today. Rural—urban migration continuously increases as people move away from their traditional way of living to seek paid employment in towns. Urbanization is another process that results in languages shifting due to the desire for economic development, hence, negatively impacting indigenous languages and cultures. Urbanization provides a multilingual situation where Bislama, the national language, plays a dominant role as the lingua franca in almost all situations. Bislama is considered the biggest language in Vanuatu and although it was just introduced during the 1830s as a ‘contact’ and ‘business’ language, it is increasingly used as a second or even first language for many Ni-Vanuatu today. This is due to increasing rural–urban migration and inter-island marriages as well as to its unifying force within a multilingual situation.

9.3 Case Studies The two case studies presented here and summed up in Table 9.1 provide a microcosm of two extreme ends of the linguistic continuum in Vanuatu in terms of a dying language and an active language. They depict two contrasting scenarios in relation to the factors and issues contributing to the successful and unsuccessful implementation of the central policy to preserve and promote or revitalize indigenous languages and cultures. The first case study focuses on the dying language of Araki while the second case study focuses on Raga, one of the active languages of Vanuatu. 9.3.1 Araki, a dying language This study, on one hand, reveals the bleak situation that Araki is currently in, but on the other hand, it also describes combined efforts from outside intervention and community members to revive the language. Araki is a dying language (François 2002, Vari-Bogiri 2005) with a continuous decline in the number of speakers which now stands at fifteen. Araki language shows a vulnerable linguistic ecosystem which has been partially destroyed by religion and the shift to Tangoa, the mission lingua franca. A sociolinguistic survey of Araki (VariBogiri, 2005) reflects a negative scenario, lacking bottom-up commitment that is necessary for the successful implementation of the central policy to preserve and promote indigenous languages and culture. Lack of appropriate literature materials in the vernacular for educational purposes and the appropriate linguistic environment through family and community support were identified as hindering factors. Other factors listed in the survey as adversely affecting Araki comprise the high number of inter-island marriages, negative attitudes, a shift to Tangoa, the mission lingua franca,

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Table 9.1 Araki a dying language vs. Raga an active language Language

Araki

Raga

Status Active or Passive? Number of speakers Mission lingua franca Shifted to the mission lingua franca? People’s attitude Language use in kindergarten Language use in church Intergenerational transmission Traditional practices

dying passively proficient 15 Tangoa yes

active actively proficient 7,000 Mota no

negative Tangoa/Bislama

positive Raga

Tangoa/Bislama only in one extended family dominated and replaced by religion Ceremonial Tangoa; Bislama; others

Raga within all extended families

none

religious and secular, public notice yes—where the traditional wisdom, knowledge and skills are passed on to the younger generations

Language use Language used by women from other language group marrying to the island Literature material Traditional education system?

not much

actively practised and co-exist with religion Functional in all contexts Raga

because of Araki’s proximity to mainland Tangoa (see Map 9.3), and strong church and missionary influence and Bislama in almost all contexts. Its proximity to the urban area, as contrasted with Raga on the island of Pentecost, is also a contributing factor. However, as a result of the survey, an awareness workshop was carried out late December 2005 in which the members of the community were made aware of the status of Araki. Following this awareness programme, various efforts are now in place to revitalize this dying language which include outside intervention from individual linguists, SIL (Vanuatu) and UNESCO as well as from the community. A descriptive study and a bilingual dictionary of Araki—English was compiled by Alexander François in 2002 which today serves as a reference point, while SIL (Vanuatu) helped to translate the Biblical book of James into the language of Araki. Moreover, under the UNESCO project of preserving endangered languages, the members are now involved in writing down traditional stories, stories that reflect traditional practices, work on different semantic fields such as the wind, cultural calendar, fish and sea creatures, trees, and birds in the language of Araki as well as producing literature and educational


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N

Luganville Town Tangoa Araki 0

10

20 km

Map 9.3 Espiritu Santo showing Araki in relation to Tangoa and Luganville town

material on numeracy and literacy that will be used by the younger generations. Older fluent speakers of the language now use the language at the community level in all contexts. Adult literacy in the language is beginning to take place where members of the communities come together on a weekly basis to learn the language from the older people. Religious hymns and songs which are being translated into the language by the older church leaders are being used by all members of the community in church. Older speakers are also encouraged to help younger teachers introduce the language at the kindergarten level. Two positive elements suggesting that the language can be revived were identified by Vari-Bogiri (2005). Firstly, there are a number older people who still speak the

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language fluently who can pass it on to the younger generations. Secondly, children from one extended family, whose mothers are from different linguistic communities but whose fathers speak the language fluently, are today fluent speakers of the language. Although these two positive elements are already in place with outside interventions and current community efforts, its continuous success to reverse the language situation will depend very much on the attitude and the commitment of the indigenous people themselves. 9.3.2 Raga, an active language On the other hand, Raga (see Map 9.4) reflects an optimum condition necessary for the successful implementation of the central policy to preserve and promote the indigenous language and culture. Raga is different from Araki because it is isolated and situated far from the urban area. Implementing the vernacular education policy in Raga is successful because learning the vernacular in an artificial and formal environment like a classroom is supported by a natural environment or linguistic ecosystem through extended family and community support, as well as through the preservation and the continuous observations of traditional practices that have sustained the people’s lives for many generations. Although the language of Mota was the mission lingua franca during the introduction of mission schools by the Anglican mission, it did not destroy the language and culture. Initially, the Anglican mission school was located on Mota in the Banks Islands which made Mota the mission lingua franca. The Anglican mission recognizes the importance of culture complementing religion and ensured the co-existence of religion and culture as well as translation of work into the main languages. The mission school was later relocated to the northeast of Ambae within the same province and in close proximity to Pentecost where Raga is spoken. The people who speak this language continue to zealously guard and preserve their linguistic and cultural habitats as well as their traditional practices that make up their linguistic ecosystem. An important aspect about the Raga speakers is that wherever they go they bring with them their language and their culture. Raga is different from Araki because of the following reasons. Firstly, Raga is isolated, whereas Araki is more open to outside influence due to its proximity to the urban area of Luganville. Secondly, although both areas experience inter-island marriages, most women married to Raga people speak the language fluently, while this is not the case in Araki. Thirdly, in both cases, different vernaculars were used as mission lingua franca during the introduction of formal literacy by the mission schools. While Araki abandoned most of its traditional practices and succumbed to outside religion and shifted to Tangoa, the mission lingua franca, Raga language and the traditional practices continue to be actively practised today and both play an important role in all contexts as well as complementing church and religious activities in the community.


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9.4 Strategies for Language Maintenance After twenty years of independence, Vanuatu has come to realize that it is fast changing socially and culturally as a result of globalization, the result which could be partly detrimental to the indigenous languages and cultures. Ni-Vanuatu are also aware that Vanuatu is richly diversified linguistically and culturally and the various indigenous languages are important in reflecting the people’s cultural identity, their knowledge about their environment, their relationship with each other, their relationship with their land, their wisdom, the structure of their society and their governing systems. The indigenous people have detailed knowledge about their local environments that have sustained their lives for many generations.

N

R A G A

S O W A

A

0

5

P M A

10 km

Map 9.4 Pentecost Island showing the two largest languages: Raga in the north and Apma (the language to which the Sowa language has shifted) in the south

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The example of the cultural calendar and the traditional conservation methods in Raga illustrate this importance. Raga has thirteen months in their cultural calendar, the names of which are descriptive of the changes taking place in the environment, reflecting the people’s knowledge of their environment and the expectations of what needs to be done in responses to these environmental changes. These thirteen months revolve around the yam planting cycle. The traditional grade-taking ceremony in Raga is another example of a complex process which involves the social structure of the society as well as the linking of its people to their land. Through the gradetaking ceremony, chiefly status is achieved, words of wisdom are passed on, and the traditional approach to land and marine resource conservation is maintained from one generation to the next. Moreover, the knowledge of their ecosystems and their traditional practices that enable the sustainability of their environment is encoded in their indigenous languages. Once a language becomes extinct, the people’s identity, knowledge, wisdom and dignity are also removed and they are left with nothing. It is important to note that 80 per cent of Vanuatu’s population live in the rural areas and are governed by Chiefs and speak their indigenous languages. It is evident that Western education without the indigenous people’s linguistic and cultural component is inadequate for the majority who are rural dwellers. Consequently, the following legal and policy framework and other strategies are in place to remedy the situation.

9.4.1 The Constitution A legal and policy framework has now been put in place to rectify this situation. The conservation of the country’s linguistic and cultural diversity is addressed in the Preamble of the Constitution as well as in Article 3 (2). The National Council of Chiefs, representing the traditional governing system, is mandated under Article 28 (1) of the Constitution to make recommendations for the preservation and promotion of Ni-Vanuatu cultures and languages. The Ombudsman is also mandated under Article 64 (3) of the Constitution to ensure that linguistic rights prevail by observing and making an annual report to the national Parliament on the use of multilingualism.

9.4.2 Vernacular education policy The vernacular education policy which emerged from the Education Master Plan as a result of the Comprehensive Reform Program and the subsequent Education Act No 21 of 2001 is the first serious positive move taken by the government to actively implement the provisions of the Constitution to promote the use of vernaculars in the education system. The introduction of vernacular education into the formal education system would complement the Western education and bring a balance to the children’s education.


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9.4.3 National Language Council The legal establishment of the Vanuatu National Language Council (VNLC) in 2005 with 13 members representing various government and non-government organizations and institutions working on language-related issues has resulted in the first National Language Policy draft produced by this Council. The policy draft, in general, reflects both the multilingual situation as well as the Constitutional linguistic requirements. Section 5.4 of this policy draft focuses on the promotion and protection of the local and indigenous languages. It advocates and encourages the use, protection, and promotion of indigenous languages at home, in communities as well as through the formal education system. 9.4.4 Governmental initiatives Other ways in which the central government is showing its commitment to the cause of language revitalization and maintenance is through the various government departments. For example, the Vatthe conservation area in BigBay on Espiritu Santo has been established under the Vanuatu Government Environment Unit. The Health Department is allowing the possibility for the use of traditional herbal medicine. 2005 was declared as the year of aelan kakai ‘local food’ and both 2007 and 2008 are declared as the years of kastom ekonomi ‘traditional economy’. Through these official declarations, the Vanuatu government is publicly acknowledging and honouring these traditional practices which are encoded in the indigenous languages, which have sustained the livelihood of the Ni-Vanuatu people for many generations, and which have continued to complement the cash economy within the country today. In addition, locals are encouraged to appreciate, preserve, promote, and revitalize their languages and cultures while benefiting economically through the practice of eco-tourism and mini Arts Festivals. All these policy directives, Legislative Acts and commitments echo the principles promulgated in the constitution, the supreme law governing the Republic of Vanuatu, to protect, preserve, and promote linguistic and cultural diversity. 9.4.5 Language documentation initiatives In addition to these legal and policy frameworks, various government and nongovernment organizations and institutions are currently in place to help support the Constitutional requirement and the vernacular education policy to preserve and promote the indigenous language and culture. These include the Department of Education in relation to the implementation of the vernacular education policy, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre with a direct link to the communities through the field-workers, the Pacific Languages Unit of the University of the South Pacific with a link between the language communities and research work and the academic aspect of languages, and the Vanuatu Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and Translation and Literacy Programme (TLP) promoting vernacular literacy through Biblical translations. Other

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institutional supports include the Japanese Funds-in-Trust project via UNESCO on the preservation and revitalization of endangered languages, Mosel’s and Malau’s Volkswagen (DoBes) project on endangered languages (see Chapter 2 in this volume), as well as work carried out by individual researchers from various institutions working on different indigenous languages. The literature materials produced by these organizations and institutions are variously academic, educational, religious or secular in nature.

9.5 Constraints The overall scenario in Vanuatu now shows a strong central commitment in terms of the legal and policy framework as well as internal and external intervention through various language projects. However, certain issues and constraints which are impeding the successful implementation of the central policy to preserve and promote indigenous languages have been identified, ranging from geographical to economical. Vanuatu faces a range of challenges which hinder the progress of documenting, preserving and promoting indigenous languages. One of the biggest challenges is the geographical nature of the country. As a small island state, Vanuatu is geophysically fragmented and this, together with a lack of infrastructure, poses logistic and communication problems. The geography of the country is therefore a hindering factor which means that substantial funds for any project are diverted to logistics and communications. Another hindering factor is a lack of infrastructure to carry out research work efficiently, such as lack of electricity to use laptops to process and store information, or proper lighting to work at night, or an appropriate storage facility for storing and/or accessing documentation materials in the local areas. Long-term preservation of recorded print and audio materials in terms of quality is also very limited in the rural areas. Introducing vernacular education within the formal education environment within a multilingual country like Vanuatu poses major problems in relation to literature materials and finance. This paradigm shift from the oral traditional mode of learning where children actively learn from their elders in the natural environment through listening, observing, and imitating, to a written mode within an artificial environment poses the following problems. Firstly, not all indigenous languages have an established orthography or are well documented. Statistics reveal that, of the languages already identified, around 50 still do not have an established orthography or literature materials to enable the students to learn the vernacular at school. Consequently, there is a lack of literature materials to cater for the concepts taught. Secondly, there is lack of finance to produce adequate and relevant literature material in the various indigenous languages to support the vernacular education policy. Although on one hand there is the central commitment, on the other hand there is not


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enough funding to meet the requirements to enable the successful implementation of this policy. Lack of manpower in terms of indigenous professional linguists is another major concern. Vanuatu is a linguistic mine with over a hundred indigenous languages and has a high linguistic density yet lacks professional indigenous linguists. The root causes are the lack of indigenous people’s interest in this area. It seems that indigenous people lack interest in this area as most indigenous students who take courses in Pacific languages or in Linguistics take them as electives for other programs like Education rather than as core courses. Consequently, most people who carry out research into Vanuatu languages are non Ni-Vanuatu. A central (top-down) commitment to preserving and promoting the indigenous languages and culture will not be successful if there is a lack of bottom-up commitment in terms of community support and inter-generational transmission of the language within the family. At present, negative parental and community attitudes are impeding language maintenance as parents prefer their children to have access to the international languages in education over indigenous languages. The Araki language of Vanuatu is one such example (Vari-Bogiri 2005). This research demonstrates that Araki is a dying language because of the people’s negative attitudes, lack of awareness and bottom-up commitment, and the absence of inter-generational transmission within the family unit. Studies have shown that literature materials are an artificial means of preserving languages, and without family and community support, efforts to preserve and promote languages will be futile (e.g. Nettle and Romaine 2000, Fishman 1991, 2003). The case-studies of Araki and Raga, two languages of Vanuatu, depict the two contrasting sides of the same coin. The central top-down legal and policy framework to preserve and promote the indigenous languages through education is already in place, but there are a lot of obstacles for those who are actually in the field trying to implement the policy. Infrastructure needs to be well developed and more financial support is needed to develop literature materials of cultural relevance and educational nature to implement the policy successfully. Parents and community members will have to have a positive attitude towards their vernaculars and cultures and play a pro-active role in preserving and promoting their indigenous languages within the community for their children who are the future custodians of these languages. Within this era of globalization, more awareness is needed to help the locals value their vernaculars and cultures and help preserve and promote them for posterity.

10 Waima’a: Challenges for Language Documentation and Maintenance in East Timor John Hajek and John Bowden

10.1 Introduction In this chapter we detail our experience of working on Waima’a, a small language spoken in East Timor. In order to do so, we first outline East Timor’s complex history and linguistic diversity so that readers are equipped with the sociolinguistic overview—past and present—necessary to understand the experience of the Waima’a and other language communities in the nation—in particular the impact of colonial contact and of the national lingua franca, Dili Tetum. We then summarize current national language policy, including its implementation in the education system, and their implications for local languages such as Waima’a. Overall, we see how the many challenges to the local linguistic ecology have not only changed over time, but appear to have become more manifest in recent times. It is somewhat ironic that we have to report that the achievement of national independence is now revealing itself to be a greater threat to the long-term survival of Waima’a than anything that preceded it, even during the most difficult moments of East Timor’s colonial history. There are worrying signs of shift among the Waima’a in favour of Dili Tetum whose apparently inexorable rise in status has accelerated since the 1990s and even more so since independence in 2002. Attention then shifts to a detailed presentation of our activity related to documentation and maintenance efforts in favour of Waima’a. We first discuss practical issues, such as project management, training and, in particular, the need to provide the language with an acceptable written form that would then allow for ‘locally accessible documentation’ through published print materials for community use. Consideration follows of the outcomes—global and local—and the impact of our efforts on fostering local language maintenance. It is still not clear to what extent this particular objective has been satisfied nor what the long-term consequences will be, given that

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our intentions do not necessarily coincide fully with those of the local community or of national policy makers in East Timor. Finally, strategies are suggested for future action that could encourage language preservation and reverse signs of shift among the Waima’a, as well as the other national language communities in East Timor.

10.1.1 East Timor—a political snapshot East Timor became the world’s newest sovereign state on 20 May 2002. A small developing nation with approximately 950,000 inhabitants, it consists mainly of the eastern half of the island of Timor located in the Indonesian archipelago in Southeast Asia. It also includes two small islands (Ataúro and Jaco) as well as the small exclave of Oecusse located in otherwise Indonesian-controlled West Timor. For most of its history since the 1500s East Timor (once known as Portuguese Timor) has been marked by contact with and eventual colonization by the Portuguese. However, in 1974/75, political change in Portugal triggered a rapid process of decolonization in East Timor, leading to political instability and local declaration of unilateral independence in November 1975. The situation changed dramatically with Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in early December 1975 before the latter’s forcible integration into Indonesia as its twenty-seventh province in 1976. In 1999, as a result of international pressure, Indonesia finally allowed a referendum on self-determination. The rejection by East Timorese voters of an offer of autonomy within the Indonesian republic triggered a violent response by the Indonesian military and their local militias, resulting in mass destruction and population dispersal. Graphic images broadcast around the world led to United Nations (UN) intervention to restore order and to protect the local population, as Indonesian forces withdrew and left East Timor. With them went also the large numbers of Indonesians who had previously dominated the bureaucracy and the school system. The impact of the organized destruction was tremendous and cannot be understated. There was severe population dislocation, with most inhabitants fleeing their homes, or even forcibly removed across the land border into West Timor. Most of East Timor’s infrastructure lay in ruins with 95 per cent of East Timor’s school buildings destroyed. During transitional UN control (1999– 2002), significant international efforts were made to rebuild East Timor’s physical and human infrastructure, which continue today. In 2006 serious political instability rocked the nation necessitating the return of international military help. Despite the prospects of substantial oil-related wealth, East Timor remains a poor nation with significant development problems, including in health, education, and administration. These issues are of course nothing new in the developing world, but the consequences of the abrupt and violent end to Indonesian rule have led to a particularly unusual and difficult situation in East Timor, both in terms of national development as well as language-related issues.

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10.2 The Indigenous Languages of East Timor Current estimates suggest sixteen to nineteen languages are indigenous to East Timor (Hull 2004a, Gordon 2005 respectively). The small difference is due to the different treatment of closely related linguistic varieties as full languages or members of a dialect chain. This pertains mostly to Waima’a and closely related variants, Kairui, Midiki, and Naueti. Hull treats these as a dialect chain of a single language, while Gordon reduces the four down to three separate languages, Waima’a, Kairui-Midiki, and Naueti. Map 10.1 (modelled after Hull 2003) gives an idea of the geographical distribution of indigenous languages across East Timor. East Timorese languages fall into two distinct language phyla: most are of Austronesian origin (including Waima’a and the Dili variety of Tetum, the main lingua franca), while a small number (Bunaq, Fataluku, Makasae and Makalero) are non-Austronesian or Papuan and are related to languages spoken to the north on the islands of Alor and Pantar as well as New Guinea further to the east. A striking feature of East Timor is the extent to which it is a linguistic and cultural area, with extensive long-term contact and diffusion across language and ethnic boundaries (see, e.g., Capell 1943–4, Hajek 2006a, Hull 2001, McWilliam 2007). As a result, languages show a marked tendency to morphological simplification, shared grammatical structures, and lexical borrowing. There are, however, two grammatical features that clearly separate Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages: the

Map 10.1 Locations of East Timorese ‘national languages’ and dialects


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former are clearly verb + object languages with prepositions, while the latter are object + verb languages with postpositions. The language we discuss here, Waima’a, sits directly on the geolinguistic boundary between Austronesian and non-Austronesian (in this case Makasae). Further information about Waima’a and its speakers is provided in 10.5.1 below. Outside of Dili where Dili Tetum (also: Tetun Dili) is native, speakers’ first language has traditionally been the local vernacular. However, knowledge of Dili Tetum is widespread—with estimates varying from 60–80 per cent—and making inroads everywhere as preferred lingua franca. While the mechanism of transmission in the past is not fully clear, high levels of interethnic contact, movement to urban centres, and the activities of the Catholic Church have all favoured the learning of Tetum, which has gathered pace since the 1980s. However, in more isolated areas across East Timor it is still possible to find residents, young and old, who are proficient only in the local language.

10.3 An Overview of the Political and Linguistic Situation and Language Policy in East Timor: Past and Present With respect to the three major politico-historical phases identified briefly above in 10.1.1: (1) Portuguese contact and control (1500s–1975); (2) Indonesian occupation (1975–1999) and (3) United Nations intervention and eventual full independence (1999–), each phase, sketched briefly below, has been very different for the language situation in East Timor, including for the Waima’a area of particular interest here. 10.3.1 Portuguese contact and Colonization (1500s–1975) The Portuguese first visited the island of Timor in the early 1500s, and permanent contact was established some fifty years later. Outside of Dili, the capital and a few other centres and areas, the Portuguese presence was for a long time very limited and usually indirect. Even though Portuguese efforts to colonize and develop East Timor began to intensify in the twentieth century, as recently as 1970 there were no more than 1463 Portuguese (0.2 per cent of the population according to census figures and most of these were military personnel and administrators) resident in Portuguese Timor. During the entire Portuguese colonial period an earlier situation of stable multilingualism was maintained if not expanded: local languages were always spoken within their respective communities, with Portuguese added to the top of the linguistic hierarchy and spoken by very few (Hajek 2000). Only one language was known to be threatened during this entire time: in the 1950s the small community of speakers of Makuva (or Lovaia), a small Austronesian language, were reported to be well on the way to shifting to the dominant and surrounding non-Austronesian Fataluku (Hajek, Himmelmann, and Bowden 2003). 1 1

See also recent efforts by A. van Engelenhoven on that language at http://makuva.fataluku.com/.

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In most areas of East Timor the preferred lingua franca remained Tetum, as it was before the Portuguese arrived. Even the Portuguese and the large numbers of Chinese traders tended to use Tetum, particularly the more creolized and increasingly Portuguese-influenced variety spoken in Dili. It should also be pointed out that missionary activity by the Catholic Church since the sixteenth century also favoured some local languages, with the preparation of religious and other materials in Galolen, Makasae, Mambae but especially Tetum (Hull 1998). At the same time small numbers of locals receiving religious training and other education also learnt Portuguese. After centuries of relative neglect, by the 1960s Portuguese interest in East Timor had begun to intensify with a significant push in favour of local development. At the same time, Portuguese authorities became increasingly concerned by the need to ‘civilize’ the East Timorese—which required, among other things, competence in Portuguese. Not surprisingly there was an increasing emphasis on the teaching of Portuguese and encouragement to use Portuguese at all times (see, e.g., Hajek 2000). However, the sudden collapse of the Portuguese empire in 1974/1975 effectively ended these efforts before the goal of making East Timor fully Portuguese-speaking could be achieved. The rise in East Timor of local political movements, especially the left-leaning nationalist FRETILIN (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente), led to a greater emphasis on Tetum as the language of the people and as a tool in achieving local mass literacy (Thomaz 2002). But again little could be achieved in the brief interregnum before Indonesian forces invaded in December 1975. 10.3.2 Indonesian period (1975–1999) The period of Indonesian occupation is well-known as one of tremendous difficulty for the local population in East Timor, including the Waima’a (see 10.5.1 below). Local civil and military resistance to Indonesian occupation continued during all this time— with significant loss of life—until Indonesian withdrawal in late 1999. 2 This relatively short phase of East Timor’s history was, not surprisingly, marked by an intense process of Indonesianization—a major objective of Indonesian integrationist policy during this period. It was to be achieved through the use of the mass media, education, massive in-migration, military control, economic transplantation, and the elimination of Portuguese. In 1981 the local Catholic Church was finally forced to stop using Portuguese as its liturgical language, although it was able, with Vatican support, to replace it with Tetum. 3 From the perspective of the Indonesian authorities, the use of Tetum in religious services was still compatible with their integrationist objectives: as an Austronesian language it was only one step removed from Indonesian which they 2 The sad history of Indonesian occupation of East Timor has been extensively described. See, for example, Aditjondro (2000), Carey and Bentley (1995), Gunn (1999), and many others. 3 Although the Catholic Church in Indonesia seemed sympathetic to Indonesian control of East Timor, this was never recognized by the Vatican, due to a large degree to the result of lobbying by Catholic authorities in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe, and in East Timor itself.


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expected over time to become the main language of the Catholic Church in East Timor, as in Indonesia itself (Hajek 2000). At the same time, efforts by the Catholic Church to use other local languages seem to have stopped, as it focussed on developing Tetum for religious and other purposes, and struggled to deal with the exponential growth in the number of Catholics among the previously unconverted majority. There is no doubt that during this period the use of Tetum by the local Catholic Church, the only non-military counterweight to Indonesian control, was important in spreading knowledge of Tetum across East Timor as well as raising its status to a new level among the local population. While the spread of Indonesian and Tetum could be seen as potentially harmful in the longer term for local languages, these faced more immediate threats to their well-being. In particular, we note the severe dislocation suffered by the East Timorese coupled with the large-scale influx of Indonesian migrants into East Timor. In addition to the massive loss of life, during the 1970s and 1980s large refugee populations escaped into hiding for years on end in the forests and mountains where ethnic mixing was inevitable. At the same time local villages were often forcibly resettled by the Indonesian military into mixed zones, while Indonesian immigrants took control of the economy, schools and administration. Carey (1997) was concerned enough about the linguistic impact of all of these factors to talk about the ‘virtual extinction’ of East Timor’s indigenous languages other than Tetum. However, his concern was fortunately not borne out: one surprising aspect of East Timorese resistance during this period appears to have been the vigorous maintenance of indigenous languages in most local communities. While there is no doubt that knowledge of Indonesian, and also Tetum, spread rapidly among the population, the preservation and use of other local languages seem to have been understood everywhere as emblematic of resistance to Indonesian control and something to be valued. As we will see below, this situation now appears to be rapidly changing, to the detriment of most local languages, in the new East Timor. 10.3.3 The path to Independence 1999 and the East Timorese constitution The issue of language policy and planning in East Timor has been one of remarkable general interest around the world—with particular focus placed on the decision to reinstate Portuguese as an official language in the new East Timor. East Timor is, indeed, a particularly complex case, as a small emerging nation grapples with how to deal with three different ‘international’ languages (Portuguese, Indonesian and English) and the local lingua franca, Tetum (see, e.g., Hajek 2000, Hill 2003, Hull 1996, Taylor-Leech 2007, and others). By way of comparison, little or no attention has been paid by most observers to the other indigenous languages of East Timor. The choice of Portuguese was always seen by most of the East Timorese leadership as important in reversing forced Indonesianization, and in reinforcing the separate historical development over 500 years of East Timor from the rest of the Indonesian

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archipelago. 4 Nevertheless, for many in East Timor and elsewhere, the decision has been a controversial one and a matter of considerable debate. Although it was initially planned to give Portuguese greater status than Tetum, it was finally agreed during the constitution-writing process to give Portuguese and Tetum co-equal status as ‘official languages’ under section 13, clause (a) of the national constitution. As a further compromise, under section 159 Indonesian and English are ‘working languages within [the] civil service . . . as long as deemed necessary’. This latter decision, a late inclusion, reflects two important facts: (a) many East Timorese below the age of 45 are Indonesian-educated and have little Portuguese; and (b) the significant impact of a predominantly English-speaking United Nations administration (1999–2002) and the large numbers of international, English-speaking, non-government organizations operating in East Timor. English and Indonesian have no formal status beyond the civil service and the intention of eventual removal of both languages from that area is clear. While most attention has been paid by observers to constitutional arrangements for the four languages just discussed, some formal protection is also given to all of the indigenous languages of East Timor: ‘Tetum and the other national languages shall be valued and developed by the State’ (section 13, clause b). Whatever the practical outcomes of this clause, constitutional recognition, no matter how limited, is encouraging just the same. Few other countries accord such explicit status to their indigenous linguistic wealth. 5

10.4 Language Development Policy in East Timor Today On 14 of April 2004 the East Timorese government issued decree no. 1/2004 ‘Orthographical standard for the Tetum language’ which outlined its formal policy on Tetum and other local language matters (Bowden and Hajek 2007: 275–6). The first part of the decree focuses on the establishment and promotion of an orthographical standard for so-called ‘Official Tetum’ based largely on the variety spoken in Dili. The second part of the decree outlines the central role in local language affairs of the Instituto Nacional de Linguística (INL), located within the National University of East Timor. In addition to being identified as the ‘scientific custodian of Official Tetum’, the ‘INL must develop the scientific activities necessary to the preservation and protection of the other national languages, devising orthographical standards for each of them’. Although INL has been given official responsibility for looking after section thirteen of the constitution, the decisions of other government bodies also impact on national language policy. In particular, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports 4 This position is best expressed by Nobel Peace prize winner and East Timor’s current president, José Ramos Horta: ‘If you take away Portuguese language and religion, there is no such thing as East Timor’ (Chesterman 2001). 5 See http://www.unesco.org/most/ln2nat.htm for a listing of language-related provisions in national constitutions from around the world.


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(MECYS) has a major role, especially with respect to language use and curricula in schools (Taylor-Leech 2007, Quinn 2007). A major focus for MECYS has been the replacement of Indonesian as medium of instruction in schools by Portuguese and Tetum. Both languages have been introduced into the earliest years of primary teaching and their progressive expansion into upper years will allow for the gradual phasing out of Indonesian through the secondary system. Not surprisingly, policy implementation has not been unproblematic: among other things, most teachers are Indonesian trained, and relatively few are fully competent in Portuguese. While the ministry’s clear preference is for greater emphasis on the teaching of and in Portuguese, increased scope has now been given to Tetum, particularly in early years, since both teachers and students are more likely to be fluent in Tetum. There is no mention in MECYS policy documents of the other national languages (e.g. MECYS 2004), even though the vast majority of East Timorese children presently enter school without either official language. Such a position is not unique to East Timor: many developing countries have adopted so-called ‘submersion education’ in which only the use of the official language(s) is sanctioned in class. However, significant problems with such a model have been noted elsewhere (e.g. Lotherington (2004) and Taylor-Leech (2007)) including poorer educational outcomes, and reduced official language proficiency. The insistence on non-first language instruction in early years of schooling in East Timor also appears to go against a recent, more general trend, supported by international institutions, towards early vernacular education, e.g. Papua New Guinea, Guatemala, and Vanuatu (Sumbuk 2006, Dutcher 1997, Crowley 2000 respectively). There is of course solid evidence of the value of early literacy in children’s first language, both in general cognitive development and improved official language proficiency (e.g. Dutcher 1997, Bowden and Hajek 2007). Official exclusion of local languages from the education sector is undoubtedly motivated by what policymakers see as a necessary prioritizing of limited resources. As already noted, primary is the replacement of Indonesian with Portuguese (and Tetum) as quickly as possible. Given the presence of three languages already in the school system, the associated needs of national curriculum development, the provision of materials in Portuguese and Tetum, and of adequate teaching training in these languages, etc. . . . , East Timorese policy makers appear unwilling even to consider the possibility of early teaching in local vernaculars. The situation does, nevertheless, appear incongruent with the East Timorese constitution, and, in practice, the informal use of vernaculars in the East Timorese classroom to assist with learning cannot be avoided (see Quinn 2007 for examples). More recently, a formal decision has been made by MECYS for Tetum to be the medium of pre-school education. This is a valuable boost for Tetum, which despite co-officiality, is still seen by many as having lesser status than Portuguese. While this choice undoubtedly reflects greater knowledge of Tetum in East Timor and is intended to facilitate transition into primary school, it also runs the risk of facilitating first language shift from other local languages to Tetum among children (see also below).

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10.5 The Waima’a Documentation Project: Where to Begin? Between 1975 and 1999, Western researchers were denied access by Indonesian authorities to East Timor and any linguistic research on that area was conducted overseas. In the 1990s the first author had worked with members of the relatively large East Timorese community resident in Melbourne, Australia, while the second had extensive fieldwork experience in eastern Indonesia. However, both authors were able to visit in East Timor after 1999. Given the obvious depredations of 1975–99, and the dearth of information about East Timorese languages, other than Dili Tetum, East Timor seemed an obvious choice for urgent work on language description and documentation. 6 In 2002 the authors, with Nikolaus Himmelmann, began a large documentation project on Waima’a, as spoken in Caisido, with funding provided by the Volkswagenstiftung as part of its DoBes program. The choice of Waima’a as the focus of this project was strongly influenced by earlier fieldtrips to East Timor on the part of most of the researchers to the area around and beyond Baucau along the eastern tip of East Timor. During these visits we had developed good relations with members of the Waima’a community who were keen to assist in any language-related work. This element coupled with the relative ease of access close to the main Dili-Baucau coastal road were critical in deciding our choice of language. Our documentation project had two major aims. The first was the compilation of an extensive electronic archive of different speech events in Waima’a, supported by annotation, glossing and translation. The second was local capacity building, through the provision of training and technical infrastructure. It was hoped that this element of the project would assist with language maintenance and future language production and documentation efforts among the Waima’a. Training of locals would also make the project more effective by increasing the sense of ownership among members of the native speaker community (cf. Berez and Holton 2006:74). We return to detailed discussion of our project in 10.6 below. 10.5.1 Waima’a and Caisido: past and present Waima’a, the primary focus of our language documentation and description efforts in East Timor, has approximately 15,000 speakers resident in the region between the towns of Vemasse and Baucau, along the north coast of East Timor. It is bounded to the west by Galolen (Austronesian) and to the east by Makasae (non-Austronesian), and forms a dialect chain with Kairui-Midiki to the south. There is no written tradition, and literacy is normally in Portuguese and/or Indonesian. By way of contrast, Catholic missionaries have in the past used and prepared materials in Galolen and Makasae. Dili Tetum is also widely spoken throughout this region as the preferred means of interethnic communication. Capell (1943/44) appears to be the first to provide linguistic data 6 The primary source of information until recently was Capell (1943–44) based on field notes collected among refugees in Armidale, Australia during World War II.


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on Waima’a, mainly lexical items and translations of phrases. More information about the language has only become available in recent years, e.g. Hajek and Bowden (2002), Hull (2002). Although they extend down to the coast, the Waima’a people are clearly landoriented, with a traditional economy based on subsistence farming and goat-herding. Our work has focussed primarily on the variety of Waima’a spoken in the sub-village of Caisido (kai s’idu ‘banyan tree’) located some 5 km to the west of mainly Makasaespeaking Baucau, East Timor’s second city. Caisido has approximately 1900 inhabitants and forms part of the mixed Waima’a-Makasae suco (administrative village) of Tirilolo which extends into Baucau itself. Caisido sits in difficult terrain off the main highway between Dili and Baucau, on the Baucau plateau, a relatively dry, raised coral formation that shows severe erosion as a result of long-term human use. It has a small church and junior primary school, but most other local services and the market are located in Baucau. Lack of economic opportunity, as well as the recent depredations of Siam weed infestation have encouraged locals to seek work elsewhere—mainly in Baucau and Dili. In-migration into Caisido is rare. During the Indonesian occupation (1975–99), the Baucau plateau, including Caisido, was a major resistance area. Soon after the Indonesian invasion, the entire population of Caisido fled into local caves and woods where they hid for a number of years. They were eventually coaxed out of hiding under Indonesian pressure, and an Indonesian army post and junior primary school were established in Caisido. Population loss in Caisido was significant—often through illness and hunger while in hiding, but the use of Waima’a remained robust during this entire period. Today in Caisido the linguistic situation is perhaps best described as unevenly multilingual. Knowledge of Portuguese is limited to those few educated before 1975 and still alive today, and also increasingly by primary school students. This generational divide obviously reflects the lack of opportunity to learn or use Portuguese publicly between 1975 and 1999. There is little knowledge of neighbouring languages, Galolen and Makasae. Our initial expectation particularly of some Waima’a-Makasae bilingualism was not borne out, despite long-standing close contact and social alliances. Instead, Dili Tetum is always used for interethnic communication. We estimate that up to 30 per cent of Caisido residents currently do not speak Tetum, but it is spreading rapidly among younger speakers. Indonesian is only a recent arrival in the local linguistic ecology. It remains the preferred language of literacy for those between the ages of twelve and forty, educated during the Indonesian occupation. Overall we can say that current age-related patterns of language knowledge favour Waima’a-TetumIndonesian trilingualism among young adults in Caisido. However, as Indonesian has now been replaced in the local junior primary by Portuguese and Tetum, knowledge of that language is already beginning to decline. Outside of church and official contexts (e.g. school), Waima’a is still the first language in most of the Waima’a area, including Caisido. However, we have noticed a very rapid change in the last few years—with most adults making an effort to speak

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Tetum to smaller children who in turn have reduced ability in Waima’a. Such a pattern is most evident in and around Baucau town, where the Makasae dominate and more regular use of Tetum occurs. Mixed marriages here have also favoured the shift to first language of Tetum. A more drastic decline in the use of Waima’a among young speakers is now noted in locations along the main Dili-Baucau road where interethnic trade and communication is common (Bowden and Romanowsky 2007). Given the more advanced state of shift in these areas, it seems likely that the process in favour of Tetum had already begun before the departure of the Indonesians in 1999. With respect to Caisido, its location on a poorly maintained side-road off the highway helps to isolate the community to some degree, but there is still regular contact with and movement to Baucau. The end of Indonesian occupation, coupled with the desire to access post-independence economic and educational opportunities, appear to be the biggest factors in this process of shift. In the first instance, communities no longer have to resist assimilation by maintaining local identity through local language. Indonesian was clearly an outsider’s language and there is no evidence anywhere of locals shifting to it as their first language before 1999. The dramatically improved role and visibility of Tetum, both as a marker of shared East Timorese identity during Indonesian occupation, and particularly since 1999, have today also significantly altered the linguistic playing field in East Timor. Tetum’s official status, its new and very public use today in the media, government and business, as well as its introduction into early education are all significant factors in changing the traditional pattern of local multilingualism: they all help to encourage the use of Tetum by Waima’a adults to their children, and hence early linguistic shift among the latter.

10.6 Working on Waima’a: The Nature of the Documentation Project Evidence of incipient shift to Tetum among the Waima’a is of course part of a global phenomenon of language endangerment, as speakers of small local languages, subject to a complex range of pressures, take up languages of wider communication (e.g. Grenoble and Whaley 1998, Robins and Uhlenbeck 1991, Bradley and Bradley 2002, Cunningham, Ingram, and Sumbuk 2006). In an effort to stem this tide and maintain the world’s linguistic diversity, considerable effort is now expended on language preservation. Linguists who once tended to focus exclusively on language description and analysis are now, as part of this effort, increasingly supported to work on language documentation, which is intended to ‘. . . provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community’ (Himmelmann 1998: 166). For most languages of the world, including those of East Timor, there is relatively little data and no permanent record of any kind available. Language documentation is intended to address this gap—for the benefit of native speaker communities, linguists and others now and into the future. At the same time language documentation (creating a record) and description (understanding the system) are separate tasks but are


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not mutually exclusive and coordinated efforts should be expected to provide useful synergies in both directions. While the project’s aims seem laudable, its organization and management was complex to say the least (see Bowden and Hajek 2006 for some details). Truly international in nature, six project workers were located at four sites in three different countries: a trained native speaker in Baucau (East Timor), and chief investigators and others in Melbourne and Canberra (Australia), and Bochum (Germany). The project also brought with it a range of technical complexities: unreliable infrastructure in East Timor, software difficulties, and different operating platforms all had to be managed and worked around. Individual recordings would need to be worked on while at the same time allowing for the creation of a single Waima’a lexicon that drew on our transcriptions and glossing. Our workflow planning for the project also had to satisfy an INL requirement that annotations of all documented materials should be available not only in Waima’a and English, but also in Tetum and Portuguese. For practical reasons Malay/Indonesian also had to be included. Our local team member, Maurício Belo, educated during Indonesian times, and foreign team members Bowden and Himmelmann were more proficient in this language than any of the INL- sanctioned languages. However, no team member was proficient in all five project languages, and different parts of the glossing and other annotations had to be completed by different people in different locations. 10.6.1 Language documentation—achieving direct access for the community and fostering language maintenance A well-maintained and accessible electronic archive of language material is of course a boon to academic experts in the developed world. For native speaker communities in developing countries the benefit is more indirect and long-term, i.e. a permanent repository of linguistic and cultural knowledge kept in secure fashion at a number of mirrored sites around the world. It is hoped that over time their economic situation and technological expertise will improve such that allows reasonable access for the community. But in current circumstances, community members do not directly benefit from a digital archive. To circumvent this problem, we also planned for community input and training in the orthographic system for Waima’a (see below), as well as the subsequent preparation of documented materials in traditional paper format. While the durability of paper publications in such a tough environment cannot be guaranteed, their wide distribution helps to maximize their utility and allows them to be preserved over the longer-term. They also serve as a more direct means of assisting with language maintenance among the wider Waima’a community through their potential use in vernacular literacy development. While not all experts agree on the utility of literacy for small, previously oral, languages (cf. Mühlhäusler 1990, Grenoble and Whaley 2006: 118–21, Hinton 2001:

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239–40), our initial view was that on the whole it should be seen as a positive outcome. The writing down of Waima’a is, in any case, an inevitable outcome of the documentation project, and in current conditions the Waima’a can only access (part of ) the archive through reading. Our expectation was that the ability to read and write would be beneficial to language maintenance for a series of different reasons. It would increase native speaker pride. It would show the Waima’a and others that their language is as suitable for writing as are the official languages, and thereby encourage them to read and write in their own language. It could also stimulate further local literary production, while our planned production of materials for younger readers might encourage local efforts to achieve early literacy in Waima’a—in school or at home, while at the same time facilitating early literacy in Tetum and Portuguese (see above).

10.6.2 An orthography for Waima’a: first steps in establishing a written form Critical to all parts of our project was the early establishment of an orthographic standard. For it to be successful it needed to satisfy a number of what we term here ‘external’ and ‘internal’ factors. ‘External’ refers to the needs of: (a) linguists (including the team working on Waima’a); (b) the native speaker community as well as (c) the role of the Instituto Nacional de Linguística (INL). In order to facilitate our own documentation efforts on Waima’a, devising a spelling system that adequately and consistently represented the sound system in question was clearly a first phase requirement. It needed to be easy to use for documentation purposes, with no special characters beyond the normal Latin set in order to avoid potential technological incompatibilities and changes. However, given our aims of making our documentation archive fully accessible and of developing published materials for the Waima’a community itself, the community also had to be satisfied with the system. Native speakers may in the first instance be sensitive to the role of outsiders in influencing decisions about their language. They can also have their own ideas about the nature of spelling systems, and may be influenced by their experience of the different spelling systems of the languages in which they might be literate, i.e. Portuguese, Indonesian or Tetum. Finally, we also had to be sensitive to the role of the INL given its official responsibility for ‘ . . . devising orthographical standards for each of . . . [the national languages]’. Any spelling system for Waima’a also has to be consistent with INL policy on vernacular writing systems as well as being endorsed by the INL. With regard to what we term ‘internal’ issues, four specific matters had to be addressed: (a) the orthographic representation of segments not found elsewhere in East Timor, such as ejective stops; (b) the treatment of Tetum and Portuguese loans; (c) the treatment of Indonesian loans; and (d) dialect variation. After some consideration of all the above factors, the Waima’a team proposed the following spelling system, laid out in Table 10.1 according to basic features, in


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Table 10.1 Inventory of Waima’a consonant phonemes

voiced stop voiceless unaspirated stop voiceless aspirated stop voiceless ejective stop plain voiceless fricative glottalized fricative plain nasal voiceless nasal glottalized nasal plain lateral voiceless lateral glottalized lateral plain rhotic glottalized rhotic plain glide voiceless glide glottalized glide

Labial

Dental/alveolar

Velar

b p ph p’ f

d t th t’ s s’ n nh n’ l lh l’ r r’

g k kh k’

m mh m’

Glottal

h

w wh w’

which many ‘digraphs’ or sequences of two characters are used to represent individual sounds. The orthography developed for Waima’a satisfies the team’s technical requirements, and is also generally consistent with INL guidelines which seek to maximize compatibility with the official Tetum orthography. While with respect to unigraphic symbols the Waima’a spelling system replicates the smaller Tetum system, we also had to deal with the ‘internal’ issue of the many consonants unique to Waima’a: h appears in digraphs to indicate stop aspiration and sonorant devoicing, e.g. khaa ‘eat’, lhai ‘quick’, while apostrophe’ is used in digraphs to mark ejective stops, e.g. k’aka ‘root’. Tied to the formulation of the spelling system for Waima’a is the orthographic representation of loans. There is a large and increasing number of borrowed items from Tetum and Portuguese (the latter usually mediated through Tetum). The INL preference is for these to maintain the official Tetum orthography in all local languages where they are found. In this way they remain consistently represented and recognizable everywhere, while at the same time they facilitate the learning of Tetum and Portuguese by speakers of other languages. Such a choice is, however, not unproblematic, and the alternative strategy is to spell these loans in Waima’a and other languages as they are recorded. INL shows some flexibility on this issue— significant modification of loans is recognized as regular in Fataluku, taking loans too far from the source norms—in which case nativized forms are acceptable. In practice something similar occurs in Waima’a: loans are subject to considerable variation and different degrees of assimilation in the language: there are what appear to be regularly

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assimilated forms such as abisu (Tetum avizu) ‘announcement’, bersenti (Tetum prezente) ‘present, gift’ alongside multiple forms in other cases, e.g. borolema/problema ‘problem’, borobuka/proboka ‘provoke’. While many loaned items present no particular problems for Waima’a phonology, a number of consonants found in Tetum (borrowed in turn from Portuguese), e.g. /v z S Z/, are absent in the Waima’a system, since speakers normally modify them in their pronunciation of loans. In other cases, i.e. /ph p f/, the borrowed form with /p f/ is variably maintained. The adoption of Tetum-like avizu rather than more native abisu incorrectly suggests that native speakers are regularly able to use /v z/ and that avizu is basic in Waima’a. Native speaker co-workers have also to this point considered nativized forms to be more authentic, and have preferred their use as basic, particularly where no variation occurs. In order to meet the conflicting demands of national vs. local norms, we have opted for a partial compromise: where only one form of loanword is recorded, no matter how divergent from the Tetum/Portuguese source form, this is accepted as the orthographic form, e.g. agirau (Tetum agriaun, Port. agrião) ‘watercress’. Regular variation, where it occurs, is normally accepted, e.g. phaboor/favoor (Tetum favór, Port. favor) ‘favour’, kumbaletu/kompletu (Tetum kompletu, Port. completo) ‘complete’. Since native speakers may not be aware a word is a Tetum/Portuguese loan, the use of multiple forms also allows speakers to note regular patterns between assimilated and unassimilated forms. Over the longer term the use of orthographic doublets, which appear together in the same entry in our Waima’a glossary, may also facilitate the learning of Tetum/Portuguese, a previously noted INL objective. Indonesian loans are more problematic. From a practical perspective, Indonesian spelling norms and phonological structures sometimes conflict with those recommended by INL for Tetum and local languages. Official policy is to replace Indonesianisms as an unnecessary reminder of previous occupation. Such a position is not inconsistent with the behaviour of the Waima’a and other East Timorese who increasingly avoid the use of Indonesian, and rely more heavily on Tetum and Portuguese. As a result, few Indonesian loans have been maintained in the preparation of our Waima’a glossary, typically only where simple alternatives are not available, but which are also consistent with Waima’a phonological and spelling norms. With respect to the ‘internal’ question of dialect variation, we have been careful when preparing materials for the speech community to always specify the variety used as ‘Waima’a Caisido’. Of course the development of a spelling system for one variety can favour its rise as the standard for the entire language, even where that is not an objective. In the preface (reinforced by the title) to our Glosáriu Waima’a Caisido (Belo, Bowden, Hajek, Himmelmann, and Tilman 2005) we are explicit that the dialect used is that spoken in Caisido and surrounding areas and is different from the Waima’a spoken further afield. Two major dialects appear to exist: coastal (including Caisido) and mountain. However, the phonological differences between the two dialects are small and the orthographic system in Table 10.1 is well able to deal with these, and allow them to be preserved.


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Our proposed spelling system was submitted to the INL and to the Waima’a community for evaluation. In November 2002 at a community meeting between the Waima’a documentation team and members of the Waima’a community the orthography was presented and discussed. The response was very positive with most present quickly able to use the new spelling system, after a brief training session. Community feedback, including on the preferred spelling of their ethnonym, was then provided to INL. Both spelling system and native ethnonym (Waima’a rather than Waimaha or Waimoa) were accepted by INL.

10.7 Current and Long-Term Outcomes of Waima’a Language Documentation and Maintenance Efforts: Have We Met the Challenge? Despite the complexities of running an international documentation project, the initial and primary objective of a comprehensive primary corpus has been achieved for Waima’a. The electronic archive for the project (Belo et al. 2002–6) can be seen at the DoBeS website, housed by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. The archive contains more than 80 hours of (mostly audiovisual) recordings, as well a large lexicon with more than 4,000 items. While work continues, much of the material has been transcribed and then translated (into 3 or 4 languages) with additional commentary and annotation. Annotation protocols have been followed that should facilitate future access and use. A very broad range of material is included in our archive including story-telling, everyday activities, historical reporting, political debates and local cultural practices and ceremonies (see Hajek and Himmelmann 2006 for details). This is a significant achievement when one considers how little was previously known about the Waima’a and their language. In terms of the second objective of local capacity building intended to assist with Waima’a language maintenance, reasonable progress has been made, despite political instability and recurrent power and communication difficulties in East Timor. We specifically included in our project provision of training workshops for local academic linguists in conjunction with the INL in Dili, the national capital, in a manner somewhat akin to those discussed by Florey and Himmelmann (this volume) for Indonesia. Unfortunately, our offer was not taken up by the INL at the time and we were not able to proceed on this front. As a result, our efforts at capacity building were perforce very local. In addition to community consultation and short workshop training re our proposed orthography discussed previously, we held extensive training sessions with Maurício Belo, who worked as the primary local contributor to the project in Baucau. Belo was primarily responsible for data collection, and initial analysis of recorded materials. Initial training was conducted at a fairly rudimentary level: prior to our arrival in Caisido, Belo had never used a computer so training began with imparting a basic understanding of computer file and document structures and proceeded to digitization of sound files,

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recording of transcriptions in Word, import of Word files into Toolbox and so on. Belo was also trained to compile basic metadata. Given his status as local native speaker and project worker, he was also charged with providing any assistance to the local Waima’a community as required, e.g. guidance on how to use the orthography, the distribution of printed materials in Waima’a, and any follow up. We also established successful collaborations with the teaching college, Instituto Católico para Formação de Professores (ICFP) in Baucau, as well as with local and expatriate staff working there. The ICFP provided access to basic infrastructure, and we have donated our technical equipment in turn. In collaboration with our team the ICFP has also established a research group on local language and culture (Makasae and Waima’a)—intended to study and preserve local cultural heritage, as well as feeding into local teacher development. It has already resulted in successful local publication on Makasae culture (da Costa, Guterres, and Lopes 2006). However, the long-term status of this initiative remains to be seen, since ICFP’s long-term strategy and interests may change. The corpus collected for the documentation project is, of course, a tremendous resource for descriptive work. Efforts in this area are also ongoing, but a number of descriptive materials have already been completed, and included in the Waima’a archive. These include, among other things, a short grammatical sketch for archive users and a series of published studies, e.g. Stevens and Hajek (2004). With respect to local access to the documentation archive, four books, using our orthography, have been produced so far. Three are graded reading materials: Hire alfabetun ene, an alphabet book introducing children to the sounds of the Waima’a alphabet (Belo and Bowden 2005); Tunu kai-telu, a collection of short stories for early primary school children (Belo, Bowden, and Himmelmann 2005); Manu-kumu kai-hitu, a longer more complex traditional tale for older primary school students (Belo, Bowden and Himmelmann 2005). The fourth is a short 184 page four-way (Waima’a–Tetum– Portuguese–English–Malay) glossary, Glosáriu Waima’a Caisido (Belo et al. 2005). It draws on the larger archived lexicon and also contains a trilingual (Tetum–Portuguese– English) description of the spelling system. All four items were published in Baucau and widely distributed in Caisido and surrounding area (they are also archived in electronic format). The community’s initial response was very positive and has resulted in new speech performances, such as a video-recorded scene of a circle of young men sitting under a tree reading aloud together. Recent follow-up to see what the impact of the publications has been in Caisido has produced some surprising results. As expected, the presence of Waima’a in print is an ongoing source of community pride. We are very pleased also that the alphabet primer and story books are being used by students at home and in class—early exposure to reading in Waima’a is occurring in school despite the lack of official recognition. However, some caution is also needed: for the present it seems teachers may be primarily interested in transitional literacy only in Waima’a. Feedback suggests they would like more material to be made available with a focus on learning Portuguese and


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Tetum. More investigation is required to understand whether teachers view Waima’a literacy as a temporary phase or a permanent means of maintaining Waima’a in the community alongside Tetum and Portuguese. The teachers’ desire is also consistent with the frequent use by the community of the glossary to facilitate their knowledge of the official languages and English. An unexpected effect has been positive interest shown by many Makasae in Baucau who have also expressed their desire for a similar four-way glossary for their language—for the same reason of facilitating access to Tetum, Portuguese and English. Our hope that our published materials would stimulate local production has not been borne out, with few exceptions: (1) young adults studying in Baucau and Dili who have access to email are known to write in Waima’a using the orthography; and (2) an academic report on a local archeological dig has also now been translated into Waima’a by members of the local Waima’a community using our published multilingual glossary as a tool for finding Waima’a equivalents of words from the original English and Tetum text (Oliveira 2005).

10.8 Drawing to a Close It is somewhat ironic that the greatest threat to Waima’a and the other national languages of East Timor appears more evident today in a newly independent East Timor. Earlier phases of Portuguese colonization and Indonesian occupation—very different from each other in many respects—seem to have posed no permanent threat to their survival. The largely laissez-faire and hands-off approach of the Portuguese that operated for centuries was only changed in the 1960s as Portuguese authorities rushed to turn the East Timorese into loyal Portuguese-speaking citizens of their empire. But even this was too late to have any impact before Portuguese rule collapsed. Even the much more negative consequences of Indonesian occupation, coupled with intense Indonesianization, seemed to have had no longstanding effect on the survival of Waima’a and the other local languages. The Waima’a, like other groups, seemed in most areas to have clung to their native language as the language of the home and of interaction with other Waima’a. However, during this period there was no doubt that the status of Tetum continued to rise, with some evidence of shift already in the late 1990s to this language among some Waima’a-speaking trading communities along the main Dili-Baucau road, as well as among mixed Waima’a-Makasae families in Baucau township. In the post-occupation period the status and presence of Tetum, alongside Portuguese, have risen dramatically further. While constitutional recognition has been given to the remaining indigenous, national languages, and some mechanisms put in place to foster them, they face clear signs of threat. Economic factors, the rush to participate in the national economy, as well as their official exclusion from the school sector also play a role in weakening their position in favour of Tetum. Our efforts in East Timor have focussed on a major documentation project on Waima’a, one of the country’s national languages. Many project goals have been

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achieved: (1) substantial documentation and archiving; (2) local training capacity building; (3) the development of a Waima’a orthography as well as the preparation of published materials for use by the community; and others. All of these activities are also intended to support language maintenance in the Waima’a community by fostering pride in their language and providing them with the necessary tools and materials for language and literacy development. The informal use of our materials in schools and at home is a positive step so long as it is working towards language preservation rather than facilitating a phase of transitional literacy leading ultimately to a permanent shift to Tetum and Portuguese. Yet despite our efforts, many signs today are not positive. During the course of the project we have noticed a marked shift, since 2002, by adults to using Tetum with small children in Caisido, our field site village—presumably to support their educational and employment prospects in a new East Timor. The speed of change is striking, although the situation is not terminal and can still be reversed. For this to occur, a number of possible strategies—both national and local—come to mind (see also Grenoble and Whaley 2006, Hinton and Hale 2001). These include: (1) a change to national education policy to allow the formal use and promotion of vernaculars in preschool and primary school education; (2) a more active role for the INL in promoting the other national languages as well as the benefits of the multilingualism traditionally practiced in East Timor; and (3) greater responsibility for and activity in favour of language maintenance on the part of the Waima’a themselves. Particular emphasis could be given to changing local and national attitudes with respect to the importance of local language literacy: we see no inconsistency in maintaining into adulthood early local language literacy while at the same time achieving improved literacy in official languages. These objectives are in no way mutually exclusive. Indeed, such an outcome would no doubt be useful in maintaining local languages and achieving national development outcomes. Moreover, we do not consider resourcing to be as great an obstacle to achieving these goals as is often thought. Experience elsewhere, e.g. Eritrea, which shares with East Timor a strikingly similar recent colonial history, economic profile and linguistic setting (Woldemikael 2003, Bowden and Hajek 2007), shows that much can be achieved, including nationally supported vernacular education, at relatively low cost, provided there is a will—at both national and local levels.

11 To Be or Not to Be: Challenges Facing Eastern Penan in Borneo Peter Sercombe

11.1 Introduction In the early part of the twenty-first century, there exist relatively few communities that continue to live exclusively by full-time hunting and gathering (cf. Endicott 2007). Furthermore, there can hardly be a hunting and gathering community in existence that has not been affected by the rise of the nation state. This has been accompanied by a frequent tendency towards national uniformity (Lee and Daly 1999) and attempts to absorb and homogenize diverse groups into a single citizenry, especially in terms of language and culture. In addition, there have been the increasing effects of the monetary economy and industrialization, often impacting considerably in areas of valuable natural resources inhabited by hunter-gatherers 1 and other politically (and demographically) minor groups. The political control by centralized power structures of hunter-gatherers, and ethnic minorities in general, is often seen as in their and a nation’s best interests by the state and its mouthpieces at least (Sellato and Sercombe 2007). Borneo in Southeast Asia is described as the world’s third largest island. It comprises Indonesian Kalimantan, the East Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah and the independent nation of Brunei Darussalam (hereafter Brunei). Borneo straddles the equator and is approximately 750,000 square kilometres in size. There was an estimated population of fifteen million people at the end of the twentieth century. Of the three main ethnic clusters in Borneo (in demographic terms), Chinese, Dayak and Malay, the Penan form part of the Dayak group (‘upriver’ people). Dayak peoples are seen as both indigenous to Borneo as well as being non-Muslim, although there are exceptions to this, especially in Kalimantan, as outlined by Sellato and Sercombe (2007: 6–7). 1 By hunter-gatherers, I am referring to people whose means of subsistence is based on the collection of wild foods and game, with no plant cultivation or animal husbandry (Sellato and Sercombe 2007: 4; Lee and Daly, 1999: 3).

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Map 11.1 Borneo Island with areas inhabited by Penan inside the dark dotted line (from Sercombe and Sellato 2007)

Nomadic hunter-gatherers in Borneo are frequently referred to by theethnonym Penan, or Punan (and further discussion of nomenclature can be found in Sellato and Sercombe 2007; Needham 2007 also makes useful distinctions between different ‘Penan’ groups). There are two main language varieties of Penan (Eastern and Western) in Sarawak. Both are dialects of Kenyah (Blust 1972; Sercombe 2006), a language that is spoken by hill rice farmers inhabiting longhouses (homes under a single roof housing whole communities) in Borneo’s hinterlands. Linguistic distinctions between Eastern and Western Penan coincide with the geographical and sociocultural separation of these two congeries of peoples. The Eastern Penan comprise a discrete set of ethnolinguistic communities (in so far as they speak mutually comprehensible varieties of a single language) who traditionally inhabit hilly areas in the interior of northeast Borneo. (See Map 11.1 for parts of Borneo where Penan live.) Specifically, these are upstream from the middle part of the Baram River, and east towards the Limbang River watershed in Sarawak, as well as northwards into the southern part of Brunei’s western divide (where there is a single settled community of around sixty in Eastern Penan). The people of Eastern Penan constitute the most socio-economically disadvantaged citizens of both Malaysia and Brunei.

Challenges Facing Eastern Penan in Borneo

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This chapter considers the Eastern Penan of Sarawak and southern Brunei. 2 It comes about as a result of extensive fieldwork with and among Penan since 1992. The approach adopted here is an ecological one. This entails ‘the study of interactions between any language and its environment’ (Haugen 1972: 325; see also Mühlhäusler 1996). From this follows sociocultural information which is essential for an understanding of other language specific issues discussed in this chapter. Sociocultural issues include political relations (between Penan and the state government); the physical environment inhabited by the Penan and their economic circumstances; as well as state-provided educational provision and academic achievement among Penan; and ways in which the above are linked to threats to the future of the Penan language. The chapter continues by suggesting how attempts are being made to contain or, ideally, to avert these threats of language attrition (although it is accepted that attempts to reverse language shift are notoriously difficult [Fishman 2001]). These attempts include both educational and first language support through a modest dictionary project.

11.2 The Penan: From Nomadism to Permanent Settlement Over the course of the twentieth century, most Penan communities have undergone a number of radical changes among which have been: a general shift from residence in short-term hilltop camps to permanent settlement next to riverbanks. Sedentism, however, has not always brought a better quality of life from a Penan perspective (Voeks and Sercombe 2000). Most Penan communities are now involved in swidden agriculture (frequently, with limited success) and, occasionally, wet rice cultivation. A growing need to participate in the monetary economy (to obtain goods such as clothes, foodstuffs, outboard engines and fuel; as well as subsidizing children at primary school) has led to an increase in Penan engaging in wage labour (where this is available often, ironically, for logging companies) at low rates of daily pay. Even so, most Penan still continue to hunt and collect uncultivated wild flora, and other forest products (where these can be obtained) for consumption, sale or trade. The Penan remain a low social status group despite settlement (cf. Rousseau 1990; Sercombe 1996a and 1996b). They are often seen as backward due to their (previously) nomadic lifestyle and failure to accumulate capital wealth (cf. Sellato and Sercombe 2007). Traditionally, Penan groups were small (up to around 50 persons); they have had an acephalous form of social organization and a limited range of ritual traditions (cf. Needham 2007). However, settlement has brought an expansion in groups’ sizes, as well as increased, regular and more intense interaction with settled groups and government officials. Penan social structure and culture have been affected by the following factors to varying degrees since shifting to permanent settlement. A government-paid salary for all village headmen, in both Sarawak and Brunei, has stimulated economic 2 The term Penan is used from here on and (unless otherwise stated) refers to Eastern Penan groups in Sarawak and Brunei (the only places where communities of Penan live).

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divisions within Penan communities, a previously unknown phenomenon. Furthermore, this salary has also ascribed official status to the headman’s role, which was previously only nominal. Conversion to Christianity among nearly all Penan in Sarawak, as well as conversion to Islam among half the Penan in Brunei, have affected attitudes towards previously held animistic beliefs, most vigorously among Evangelist-leaning groups in Sarawak, who now often denigrate previous animistic practices (Sercombe 1996a). Extensive logging carried out by government-licensed companies in Sarawak has brought about a massive decline in the availability of wild food, and other material resources. Deforestation and insecurity regarding land tenure has also affected deepfelt spiritual associations with the landscape among Penan (cf. Brosius 2007), although not in Brunei where the government has not so far permitted commercial harvesting of local wood for export. The above have had dramatic consequences for many Penan communities, including acute material and physical hardship for many Penan in Sarawak; a decline in symbiotic relations among Penan communities following the abandonment of the sharing of foodstuffs as, for example, in the Penan village of Long Buang (Plate 15) on the Apoh River (Sercombe 1996a); as well as resorting to the use of drugs among some groups (see Chan 2007). Eastern Penan in Sarawak display complete incomprehension that both the state and national governments can permit, let alone support, what they generally perceive as the outright pillage of rainforest they inhabit, to which they claim rights of tenure and upon which they have depended for generations. This confounds their perception that a fundamental part of government’s role is that of caretaker of its citizens. Commercial deforestation has led to strong anti-government sentiments and the blockading of logging roads; and these reactions have been widely catalogued for over 20 years in the press, mass media literature, and in academic works (e.g. Far East Asian Economic Review 1985 and 1988; Hong 1987; Davis and Henley 1990; Davis et al. 1995; Ideal 2000; Brosius 2007, among many others). Still, despite Penan reactions, and criticism from elsewhere, there has been no change in federal or (Sarawak) state government policy towards the logging of primary rainforest.

11.3 The Penan and Contexts of Language Use Most Penan still live in rural upriver parts of Borneo. 3 The interior of the island contrasts considerably with coastal areas in a number of respects. Coastal parts of both Brunei and Sarawak are where there exist metalled roads, large towns, and other features of the modern world, with a high level of use of each country’s national language, especially as a lingua franca (between, for example, Chinese and Dayak groups). The interior, however, remains relatively undeveloped; it is forest paths, rivers 3 Three communities of Penan, those in Bakong, Niah, and Suai, long ago moved downriver towards the coast and underwent varying degrees of adaptation to neighbouring cultures and languages (Needham 1965).


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and dirt logging tracks (the condition and usability of which are contingent on nature’s seasons) that are the main arteries between outlying rural villages. There are few towns, or commercial or state-provided facilities (such as shops, schools, hospitals, piped water or electricity) in upriver parts of the island. As mentioned, many Penan villages are now situated close to communities of long-settled rice-farmers, with most Penan now living at least within a day’s journey on foot from their nearest neighbours (often much less). Penan contact with other groups means they are generally exposed to a minimum of three languages beyond their own in their daily lives, and these include one or more of the following in Sarawak: Kayan, Kelabit, Kenyah, or Sa’ban (the ethnolinguistic groups located nearest to Penan); in Brunei, neighbouring groups include Dusun and Iban, with a recorded high degree of affiliation to local Iban (Sercombe 2003). Penan are inevitably primary bilinguals through acquiring a neighbouring language via informal exposure; and they are balanced bilinguals by often having a high level of second language competence. This second local language is also additive in that it is acquired without pressure and generally functions, in areas where Penan live, as a means of wider communication within the larger sub-district speech community. Formal education in Sarawak initially became available with the establishment of missionary schools under British colonial administration. At the outset, the medium of instruction in Sarawak’s schools was English, although considerable use was made of local languages, especially at primary level, to facilitate basic communication at the early stages of children’s education. Following the point in 1963 at which Sarawak joined Malaysia, the number of primary schools expanded throughout the state, and education became more accessible to rural communities. Formal education remained in English in Sarawak until 1976, when there began a gradual transition to Malay medium (although English continued to be an official language until 1985). In Brunei in 1964, two years after a small group of Penan had settled in Sukang in the south of the country, a primary school was opened there with Malay medium education. In 1985, Brunei instituted English medium education from the fourth year of primary school for the subjects Geography, History, Maths and Science. No academic or linguistic allowance is made for pupils who come from non-Malayspeaking backgrounds in Malaysia’s and Brunei’s government schools (cf. Grenoble and Whaley [2006], who suggest that, worldwide, that there is growing recognition of minority rights). The school curricula in both Malaysia and Brunei contain no Penan history, stories, myths, pictures, language or songs, ignoring the value of their oral traditions (cf. Harrison 2007). And, thus, a sociocultural approach to bilingual education is precluded in both countries which could, otherwise, make use of resources available in children’s communities, exploiting ‘funds of knowledge’, whereby the domestic environment becomes a legitimate educational resource (cf. Moll 1992). When Penan children enter primary education, they are submerged in language education that takes place in either a second or foreign language(s). As stated earlier,

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Penan children are taught in Malay medium in Sarawak throughout their school years. In Brunei, primary education is through Malay until year three, following which it shifts to English medium (theoretically at least, for the aforementioned subjects— Geography, History, Maths, and Science). Children are thus under pressure to be multilingual in Malay (the national language of Malaysia and Brunei) and English if they are to progress in education. Minority groups with a different first language from the national code are obliged to acquire a sufficient level of the selected medium in order to benefit from the formal education to which they are exposed, a form of transitional bilingualism which (whether deliberate or not) aims at language shift (cf. Gunn 1997; Martin 2002; and Wellen 2006). This can be exemplified through, for example, the Brunei government’s publicly stated ideology Melayu, Islam, Beraja (‘Malay Islamic Monarchy’) through which Malay culture and, by implication, the Malay language are elevated to the level of national culture. Certainly, Penan children need to adapt to using other languages in the classroom setting (from the first year of primary education) and, ultimately, to adjust to these linguistic and other pressures or to leave school with low levels of attainment if they have been unable to adapt sufficiently. Furthermore, non-Penan teachers are unlikely to know or want to learn Penan, given the status of the group and thus the ‘invisibility’ of their language (cf. Harrison 2007: 145). In interior parts of Borneo, neither Malay nor English is endemic. In terms of language ecology, these languages of education have limited ethoglossic (or ‘communicative’) functions for the Penan outside the immediate school environment in either Sarawak or Brunei. Malay is more likely to have some degree of lingua franca value between rural inhabitants and non-local teachers or other government representatives from coastal areas who are cognisant of neither Penan nor other local languages, but the form of Malay used is localized, Bazaar Malay (for details, see Needham 1958; also Collins 1987). English is largely irrelevant in contexts where Penan live (except, of course in schools). However, many Penan adults endorse the value of English, and also associate it positively with the earlier colonial administration (cf. Brosius 2007; and BBC 2007), although few Penan have more than the most basic knowledge of the language. 4 Malay, nonetheless, is linguistically more accessible to pupils than English as a language that is typologically closer to Penan. The contrived and formal educational roles of Malay and particularly English bring about a somewhat ‘artificial ecology’ (cf. Mühlhäusler 2000: 326) in schools attended by Penan. Upriver schools constitute (prescribed) language islands dislocated from the community and district language ecologies inhabited by Penan and their neighbours. This does not necessarily imply, however, that English and Malay have no role in formal education, but that there are currently some substantial problems in the implementation of these in education in isolated rural contexts. Not the least of these is the inadequate access to resources for Penan, such as print and electronic media which might otherwise support and enrich 4 This perception of English shares parallels with Platt’s (cited in Fasold 1984: 49–50) notion of a Dummy High for Mandarin among non-Mandarin-speaking Chinese in Malaysia.


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Table 11.1 Penan and educational attainment Researcher

Geographical Area

Issues

Kedit (1982)

Mulu district in the middle Baram River area of Sarawak

Langub (2000)

Belaga River District of Sarawak

A survey among six Penan communities shows that just a handful of individuals from three of these groups had attended or completed any formal education. A report concerning five Western Penan communities reveals that Penan children were unwilling to board at a school or to be parted from parents. When a primary school was established near to their homes, there was initially a high rate of registration, but attendance was irregular and dropped when children from a traditionally sedentary group enrolled at the school. Bullying, school discipline, lack of parental pressure to attend school, and a tendency for Penan to forage for food in the rainforest with their children are cited as reasons for poor school attendance. Penan representatives evaluated government rural educational provision with an ‘F’, the lowest rating. Penan comprise the majority of school pupils, but they have the lowest rate of academic success (vis-à-vis neighbouring groups of Dusun and Iban), with only one Penan ever having progressed to secondary education since 1964. There is also poor Penan attendance at the school. Among the few Penan who remain until the final year (primary 6), none were able to produce more than a few words of spoken or written English, after six years of exposure to the language.

Sarawak News (2002) Baram River District of Sarawak Sercombe (2002a)

Sukang in the Upper Belait River area of Brunei

the learning of English and Malay. There is also hardly any opportunity to use either English or Malay beyond the context of school. With regard to formal education, Penan parents value this but their children do not appear to benefit from it in its present form. Yet, Penan living in the interior are reliant on education for upward economic mobility, the only way they are currently likely to improve their material lot. This lack of attainment in formal education in Sarawak and Brunei, with concomitant low levels of text literacy, means relatively few Penan have completed primary education and even fewer have progressed to secondary, let alone higher, education, in the last three decades, as evidenced from data provided in Table 11.1.

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The table spans a twenty-year period and shows evidence of poor levels of school attendance (for various reasons), low achievement, and dissatisfaction with the kind of provision offered to Penan children by the government. Formal state-provided education has yet to allow the Penan to take advantage of what national social development may have to offer them. A basic disadvantage for many Penan children remains their relative (and, not infrequently, absolute) material poverty, which has a number of implications and consequences among which is the not infrequent need for them to assist in planting and or gathering food. Besides this, there are a number of other mitigating factors that impede Penan chances of educational advancement, further to those mentioned above. One of these factors is print literacy, literacy being rooted in specific and nationally centred cultural values in Malaysia and Brunei; and these are embedded in and equate with second or foreign language learning, meaning Malay and English. It is through the use of Malay that state ideology (closely associated with Islam, the national religion of Brunei and Malaysia), along with the state-dominated concepts of ‘race’, ‘language’ and ‘nation’ (central to the language ecologies of Brunei and Sarawak), are promulgated (see Martin 2002; and Wellen 2006, for further discussion). 5 Similar to the manner in which ‘English was used to spread Christianity and Western civilization, so Malay is being used to spread Islam and Islamic civilization’ (Mühlhäusler 1996: 209) throughout Brunei and Malaysia, such that literacy becomes a conduit for social and political change (cf. Dubin 1992: viii–ix). Related to this is that the ‘acquisition of literacy has, for centuries, been associated with the ability to manipulate economic power, giving rulers and governments substantial incentives to develop a cadre of literacy specialists’ (Csikszentmihalyi cited in McGroarty 1996: 31). And, it is from these elite groups that Penan (as well as other minority groups) are inevitably excluded. There is, in fact, little print literature in Penan; the few examples include religious works, such as the Penan New Testament (Bible Society of Singapore et al. 1974). And, more recently, Langub’s (2001) compilation of orature in the form of a printed collection, but these rare examples of Penan in print and sold in shops that Penan are unlikely to visit. There is a sharp divide between the traditionally oral and flexible culture of the Penan in the face of the teaching of literacy (and other) skills in schools (Sercombe 2002a). Learning in school is divided up (artificially, into discrete subject areas) and there is stress on individualization versus communality. In traditional oral cultures, learning is apprentice-like and non-formal. With the advent of writing, the individual becomes isolated and learning becomes work rather than play-oriented (Ong 1967). In literacy, language tends to be viewed in isolation, and printed matter takes on separate meaning and becomes the focus rather than the conduit for learning, divorcing it from experience. And, two (among other) particularly seminal distinctions between ‘literate’ and mainly ‘non-literate’ cultures are salient here, as described by Topping (1992: 5 Malays, in Brunei and Malaysia, are considered Muslim by definition. And, converts to Islam in Brunei can receive a monthly stipend from the national welfare department for families with unwaged adult members.


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29): in schools, there is an emphasis on linear thinking and this is held up as the ideal (contrasting with a tendency towards holistic conceptualization among oral cultures); in addition, the image of personal success or failure at school begins with print literacy (rather than each individual having a part to play in a predominantly oral context). Furthermore, Penan children’s behavioural and learning styles are frequently quite different from those of other students, as well as from what is expected by the institutions in which they are taught (cf. Heath’s [1983] seminal work among North American communities and the conclusions she drew about how patterns of language use in the home community impact on levels of achievement at school). Outwardly, however, Penan conform submissively in classrooms (cf. Saville-Troike 1996: 375). Enculturation in Penan homes, with little formal discipline, often results in a lack of familiarity with social norms regarding participation in classrooms and reluctance to participate and talk in class (cf. Philips 2007, who describes similar problems regarding Sioux Indian children in the USA). As suggested, reasons for students from language minority backgrounds’ lack of achievement are often ‘sociopolitical in nature . . . manifested in the micro-interactions between educators and students’ (Cummins 2000: 103). Nevertheless, despite the rather gloomy picture outlined here, there has been some educational advance among Penan. Long Lamei primary school, the first to be situated in a Penan village, with a number of qualified Penan teachers (in the Upper Baram area of Sarawak), has produced more Penan primary school graduates than any other school in Sarawak attended by Penan (although there do remain problems similar to those already mentioned). More recently, there have been three higher education Penan graduates (one male and two females) from the relatively new University of Malaysia in Sarawak. These Penan, however, are unlikely to return to their villages. They are more liable to be attracted to and absorbed into the state civil service; and, consequently, to be posted to urban or suburban administrative centres to prevent them becoming spokespersons for the articulation of Penan political grievances.

11.4 Threats to the Future of Penan Penan can be considered an endangered language, with a total number of less than 10,000 speakers (Krauss 1992) or a language ‘at risk’ (Grenoble and Whaley 2006: 18). It is, and is likely to remain, a low status language with hardly any institutional support. While the Penan are not currently declining in number—in fact their total population is increasing (Sercombe 2002b)—the domains of use for the language are shrinking as their hunting and gathering way of life becomes unsustainable. Essentially, foraging has become more of a supplementary socio-economic activity than a means of basic subsistence (cf. Harrison 2007). Formal education and literacy training, in Malay and English, have also usurped some aspects of socialization and informal education in Penan. The lack of written materials in Penan reduces the chances of its continuity.

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However, parts of the New and Old Testament of the Bible are available to Penan in Sarawak (but not Brunei), thus there is an orthography for the language, although it appears overly laden with diacritics (Sercombe 2006). While the time span during which Eastern Penan might evanesce as a distinct code obviously cannot be foreseen, the threat was perceived in the early 1960s. Needham (1965) alluded to language shift among Penan communities and assimilation to neighbouring groups for those Penan who had relocated downriver towards the coast in Sarawak. Nonetheless for nonPenan, Penan remains a means of identifying members of this ethnolinguistic group, since the language continues to be exclusive to Penan for intra-ethnic communication (Sercombe 2003). However, for Penan themselves, language is not necessarily a marker of identity (ibid.) (Plate 16). Lexical borrowings following more intense contact with other groups are a phenomenon that reveals some of the changes occurring in Penan. It seems virtually a given that culture-specific content vocabulary is the most commonly borrowed aspect of any language. This includes elements borrowed directly as a result of contact, mainly in the form of loanwords for culture not previously part of Penan. 6 This is a widespread phenomenon and by no means indicates language shift (as with the way, for example, in which the lexical mass of English has expanded). Items listed in Table 11.2 are nominal forms, those most currently adopted, that occur as linguistically unmarked innovations in Penan. For the Penan language to undergo evanescence, it would seem that a number of conditions need to be in place—ironically, including alterations in the Penan’s circumstances that are those most likely to allow greater socio-economic advancement. The conditions include easier access and/or substantial migration of Penan to coastal urban districts from the interior; substantially more Penan involvement in wider society and social institutions; increased exposure to both national and international media; increased exogamy (which currently remains fairly limited); a greater desire for individual achievement among Penan communities, with a concomitant shift in values (personal and group), that appear to be occurring to some degree, among the small Penan group in Brunei (Sercombe 2007), along with the incorporation of features of other languages into Penan as spoken in Brunei, which has already been documented (Sercombe 1996b). This latter reveals: codeswitching in intra-ethnic discourse, with the incorporation of Iban and Malay (for which there are Penan equivalents), features of Iban and Malay syntax and morphology, along with the loss of the verbal infix -in- (for indicating completed events), a Proto-Austronesian feature which can still be observed in Penan speech in Sarawak (ibid). 7 6

For example, the item sadin ‘sardine’ derives from use by Malaysians recruited as soldiers to assist the British army during the Second World War and, then, during the Confrontation in the early 1960s, in Sarawak, who adopted the term as a means of referring to tinned food. Another item of similar origin is risin ‘rations’. 7 Penan’s use of Iban and Malay, in Brunei, however, does not seem to have been affected by Penan (in terms of lexis, phonology, or syntax).


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Table 11.2 Lexical cultural borrowings in Penan Borrowed item8 begawai gawai orang putih kopi borak tabang wang pasepud surat cuti komiti risin motor senepang gaban/gaben pelitah tin

Source language: Iban (I); Malay (M) I I I/M I/M I/M M (tambang) I/M M (paspot) I/M I/M M M M M M I/M (perintah) M

Penan literal equivalent

English gloss9

Ø Ø irah mobeng ba’ panaa’ ? Ø sen/ligit Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø/tajau11

to have a festival festival caucasian coffee rice wine fare money10 passport “ holiday committee rations outboard engine gun (shotgun) picture/photo government tin

11.5 The Penan and Language Maintenance In the case of Penan, fortunately perhaps, the challenge currently appears to be one of language maintenance rather than reversing shift (cf. Grenoble and Whaley 2007). Ironically, the maintenance of Penan can be accounted for largely by factors that are diametrically contrary to those listed above (as threatening the language). These include geographical isolation, in that when Penan move to coastal areas, they accrue wider social contacts and are more likely to become assimilated to wider urban society and abandon their language due to its limited economic value (cf. Grenoble and Whaley 2006; and Harrison 2007). Penan is still the primary language of socialization among most families, and coincides with (a-) according to Krauss (cited in ibid: 6– 7), which translates as the ‘language is learned by all or most children’ (ibid: 6).

8 These borrowings were all observed in the speech of Penan in Brunei (cf. also Bending 2006: ix– x, which contains a list of words many of which are borrowings from Malay, or from English via Malay). 9 The glosses given here are for the borrowed items, not for the suggested Penan equivalent where there is one. 10 The term sen derives from Malay in which the same lexical item refers to coins or small amounts of money. Ligit derives from Malay ringgit and has been phonologically adapted to Penan. 11 Penan tajau has probably been borrowed from Malay. The borrowing of tin has allowed for further distinction between containers made from different kinds of materials.

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The lack of success at school among Penan has meant greater levels of Penan intragroup dependency. There is also a relatively very small number of non-Penan living with and among Penan and this reduces the incursion of other languages in domestic settings. The social separation between Penan and neighbouring non-Penan communities increases intra-group cohesion, symbiosis and, consequently, language maintenance (although, see Kulick [1992] for a notable exception). Most adult male Penan (who are those with greatest mobility, mainly for economic reasons) continue to use their first language because their social networks are still predominantly linked to kin groups. In recent years, the idea of language maintenance support for Penan has emerged. The main aims of this support are to: raise the profile of the language by enhancing its social status among Penan as well as neighbouring groups; and to try and boost levels of Penan academic achievement, particularly during the early stages of primary education. The concern about low success rates is one that has been voiced by Penan (as reflected in, for example, row 3 of Table 11.1 above. The idea of providing language support as a means to improve educational attainment was suggested by Ezra Udha (a Sarawak University graduate, from Long Lamei) and supported by other members of his community. The attempt at realizing the aims above is through the production of a dictionary of around 5,000 separate lexical items of Penan, with equivalents in Malay and English, the two media of formal education in Malaysia and Brunei. And the literature (e.g. Grenoble and Whaley 2006: 68) suggests that dictionaries can have substantial value in language revitalization and maintenance. Other important benefits include the involvement of Eastern Penan in this work, and thus a larger role in the documentation and perpetuation of their own language in written form, whilst also adding to their repertoire of text literacy. While some Penan have literacy skills, many are monoliterate in Malay only, especially those in Brunei. This project is being undertaken with Sarawak State Government approval and the sponsorship of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP No. FTG0001). It involves the collection and checking of vocabulary across a range of villages in the interior of Sarawak, in environments where Penan is spoken in a form that does not reflect extensive borrowing and use of items otherwise already present in the language. Among other benefits, it is intended to provide an opportunity for Penan primary school children to gain text literacy skills in their own language in school at an early age, and subsequently to enhance their self-image, pride in their own language, as well as the transfer of literacy skills and motivation towards learning Malay and English. It was over fifty years ago that UNESCO (1953: 11) recognized that it is axiomatic that the first language is the best medium for teaching a child. In psychological terms it was seen as the system of meaningful signs that works best in the child’s mind automatically for expression and understanding. And, sociologically, it is perceived as a means of identification among members of the community to which the child belongs.


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Finally, educationally, the child learns more quickly (in the first language) than through an unfamiliar linguistic medium. There is evidence to support this proposition, and this includes the success in promoting Purépecha in the Meseta Purépecha of Michoacán, Mexico, where schools’ initial duty to children is to ‘introduce them to reading and writing in Purépecha (Ragone and Marr 2006: 117). Previously, Larson et al. (1980) also describe successes in bilingual education (in pupils’ first language and Spanish) in a relatively remote part of the Peruvian rainforest. These successes were mainly achieved as a result of involving local residents in decision making and actively contributing towards the establishment of and maintenance of village schools. Nonetheless, it is accepted that there are a number of large challenges that can mitigate against the success of such projects, besides simply the enormity of the lexicographic work. Dixon (cited in Stebbins 2003), for example, takes a dim view of the chances of outsiders’ attempts at language support and Stebbins (ibid.) describes the personal, political, and financial costs that can only be properly understood through the struggles of doing such work.

11.6 Conclusions This chapter sets out to clarify the challenges faced by Penan in modern times. While the primary concern is language this cannot be separated from larger social challenges, hence an ecological approach through which salient social and cultural factors have been outlined. These include issues of deforestation and customary land rights which dominate the circumstances of the Penan in Sarawak. These are unlikely to disappear or diminish in significance in the near future. Linked to these are the ubiquitous issues of Penan poverty, low status, and lack of educational success. The HRELP dictionary project, referred to above, cannot remove these problems but it may make a small contribution to Penan communities’ self-image and pride in their culture and language as a distinct manifestation of their present and past ways of life (as well as others’ perceptions of these). It may also enhance the life chances of Penan, through the use of their first language in contexts in which it has hitherto been seen as irrelevant.


PART IV Pedagogical Approaches to Revitalization and Maintenance


12 Digital Transmission of Language and Culture: Rethinking Pedagogical Models for E-Learning D. Victoria Rau and Meng-Chien Yang

12.1 Introduction The technology of e-learning has dramatically changed the genre of the language textbook, the context of language teaching and learning, and the traditional roles of language teachers and learners. The key benefits of e-learning, such as the ability to meet individual learning needs, access a wider range of resources, and be exposed to multimedia materials, including both images and sounds, are particularly useful for the design of teaching materials for less commonly taught languages and/or endangered languages, since such textbooks are not readily available and are extremely costly to produce. However, little research has been conducted to explore the pedagogy of using information and communication technology (ICT) in the promotion of minority language teaching and research. Some efforts have been made to develop web-based interactive language learning materials for the two major Austronesian languages, Indonesian and Tagalog, which have also been the best documented languages in Austronesian linguistics. Henry and Zerwekh (2002) describe the SEAsite (www.seasite.niu.edu), featuring welldeveloped materials for both beginning and intermediate students of Indonesian and Tagalog, and for mainland Southeast Asian languages, such as Thai and Vietnamese. Their language materials consist of text, audio, pictures, on-line dictionaries, and interactive exercises and quizzes. Their interactive exercise types focus primarily on receptive skills of reading and listening comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and This chapter was partially supported by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, University of London. The preliminary version was presented at the 2006 International Conference on Austronesian Studies in Kaohsiung, Taiwan (6/8–9/2006) and the Joint AAAL and ACLA/CAAL Conference in Montreal, Canada (6/17–20/2006).

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grammatical sentence construction. Their on-line dictionaries are organized by root form, thereby posing potential difficulties for beginning students, who may have trouble searching for words. In addition to extensive information in both second language (L2) and English on the culture, art, history, politics, and religion of their respective countries, the Tagalog site also has a chat room and a popular discussion forum that their Tagalog staff regularly monitor and provide answers to the questions posted. Software for teaching the two well-documented Austronesian languages has also been produced, such as Hoven’s (2003) MMInteraktif, an Indonesian listening comprehension software package, and McFarland’s (2006) CAI program for teaching Filipino. Hoven (1997) provided a detailed discussion on pedagogy. Her package was designed on the basis of sociocultural methodology (Vygotsky 1978) to introduce, develop, and reinforce appropriate learning strategies at the same time. The interaction between Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and endangered languages has been an under-researched field. Ward and Genabith (2003) identified special constraints that determine the endangered language’s CALL requirements. Although the constraints tend to be culturally specific and may vary from case to case, some of the requirements they proposed point to the need for considering language documentation issues in developing CALL in the context of endangered languages. They further suggested that CALL materials be integrated with, or contribute to, language documentation efforts in an endangered language community. Ward and van Genabith also showcased a working example of Nawat courseware, developed using their software template for this endangered Uto-Aztecan language of El Salvador. In the process of digitally archiving Yami, an endangered Austronesian language, Yang and Rau (2005) also integrated CALL materials with language documentation. Rau, Yang, and Dong (2007) provided a historical account of Yami language teaching, from a grammatical syllabus (Dong and Rau 2000b) to a communicative syllabus using a multimedia CD as a resource (Rau et al. 2005), to the development of interactive online learning based on the digital archiving project. We discussed the methods used and challenges of each stage of preparing Yami teaching materials, and proposed rethinking pedagogical models for e-learning, the gap addressed by this current chapter. This chapter aims to provide a pedagogical e-learning model to meet the challenge of developing e-learning materials for the Yami language, based on digitally archiving Yami language documentation for the purpose of preserving the endangered language. The process of building a platform for the e-learning materials needs to be informed by an in-depth investigation of the contexts of language teaching and learning, so that the design of information and communication technology materials can meet the learners’ needs. This chapter begins with background information on the Yami language and its vitality, followed by the purposes and outcomes of developing e-learning materials for Yami, and culminates in a proposed model which takes into consideration the special needs for e-learning development for endangered languages.

Pedagogical Models for E-Learning

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12.1.1 Yami language and its vitality Yami is a Philippine language, spoken by the indigenous people on Orchid Island (Lanyu in Chinese), a small offshore island southeast of Taiwan and at the northern tip of the Batanes Province of the Philippines. Politically, the island is under the administration of Taiwan. Yami constitute 93 per cent of the 3007 residents on the island (Rau 1995). Almost half of the population is either above 50 or below 20 years old. Young adults usually seek employment in Taiwan. According to Rau’s (1995) sociolinguistic survey, there was only one village out of six on the island where children still used some Yami in daily interaction. Yami has been offered as an elective in elementary school since 1998, but Yami is gradually being replaced by Mandarin Chinese. Chen (1998) has compared the language proficiency, language use and language attitude among three generations of Yami and found a language shift to Mandarin and a decline of Yami language ability as age decreases. Lin (2007) re-examined language use and language ability among Yami teenagers and found that while Yami is still spoken in Iraralay, the other five villages show continuing decline in the use of Yami by teenagers with their parents. However, Yami teenagers were found to have a positive attitude towards Yami language and identity and strongly support any efforts to promote or maintain their language. Be that as it may, most of the teenagers admitted that they prefer speaking Mandarin over Yami. 12.1.2 Rationale for developing e-learning for endangered language documentation Yami language documentation had been carried out in the framework of ‘traditional fieldwork’ for ten years before it embarked on the new phase of ‘documentary fieldwork’ in 2005. Rehg (2007) characterized ‘traditional fieldwork’ as generalizationoriented with a goal of linguistic description of a specific language, whereas ‘documentary linguistics’, following Himmelmann (2006: 1), is data-oriented with a goal of creating a lasting, multipurpose record of a language. At the beginning of the phase of documentary fieldwork, Yang and Rau (2005) proposed a conceptual framework that connects three different tasks related to language documentation: language archiving, language processing and creating e-learning materials. It addresses the needs of a field linguist who has collected some endangered language materials from an indigenous community and intends to establish a shareable language resource via the internet. Three principles were followed in preparing the four-volume multimedia materials in Yami (Rau et al. 2005): (1) selecting interesting topics covering a wide range of genres and structures, (2) adopting a communicative task-based approach closely tied with standards and assessment, and (3) using ICT (information and communication technology) to enrich the contents and modes of presentation. The topics and sequence of grammatical structures followed the standards implemented by the

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Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan closely. The first two volumes comprise constructed dialogues based on a story line of a Chinese student touring Orchid Island. The main character flies back to Taiwan at the end of Volume Two. The third volume includes many dialogues constructed based on the folklore and narratives Rau and Dong collected previously (2006). Volume four is a collection of short stories and descriptions of cultural activities ranging from traditional to contemporary events. During the process of building a platform for the e-learning materials, Rau, Yang, and Dong (2007) quickly discovered that it would not be sufficient to simply make the four volumes of prepared language materials available on the Internet without making drastic modifications to the format. What are the benefits and constraints of e-learning? What online support is required? To address those questions, we decided to target Chinese graduate students in Taiwan who were interested in learning an indigenous language. In the process of building the e-learning program, C. Yang (2007) conducted a formative assessment of those students’ needs, which shaped modification of the program, such as adding online learning games, pronunciation drills, and self-assessment (http://yamiproject.cs.pu.edu.tw/elearn/learning.php). After the program had been established, we began to explore how well it met the needs of Yami youths on Orchid Island and its applicability to other indigenous language communities. 12.1.3 Feedback on Yami e-earning from indigenous communities The Yami e-learning program (http://yamiproject.cs.pu.edu.tw/elearn) has received positive feedback from indigenous language teachers in Taiwan and has the potential to become a model for building e-learning programs for other languages. According to Rau and Yang’s survey (2007: 122–3), the indigenous language teachers showed most interest in using the (1) online dictionary, (2) online audio or video clips on daily conversations and indigenous knowledge, and (3) online animation in developing their own course materials. The Yami teenagers’ attitude towards e-learning, on the other hand, is mostly pragmatic. The only impetus for them to use the e-learning materials currently is for test preparation of ‘certification of indigenous languages’ to enter better schools (cf. Huang 2007). Although we recognize the importance of bottom-up strategies in language revitalization, we are proposing a status building strategy by increasing visibility of the endangered language and culture nationally and internationally. We believe providing high-quality materials online translated into English and Chinese, incorporating the e-learning program into the graduate curriculum of Austronesian linguistics, and teaching the language to Chinese learners at the college level will eventually add status to the language and hence will increase the motivation for Yami parents to transmit the language to their children.


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12.2 Proposed Model for Development of E-Learning and Pedagogy In the following paragraphs, the discussion focuses on the status building strategy. We first describe our mediated action derived from three central tasks in the development of our e-learning website, following Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) guidelines of ethnographic nexus analysis. Finally, we propose Conole et al.’s Model (2004) as a basis for developing our e-learning pedagogy and summarize our strategy by which community materials can be developed. 12.2.1 Context The Yami language has been used as an exemplar language in the graduate seminar on Austronesian Linguistics at Providence University since 1999. The first attempt by Rau to teach Yami structure to three MA students in linguistics culminated in the publication of the Yami Textbook (Dong and Rau 2000b), in collaboration with Dong, a Yami native speaker with training in ethnology. The continuing effort in description and documentation of Yami has gone hand in hand with language teaching since then. The four-volume coursebook with CD (Rau et al. 2005), as mentioned previously, was produced and field tested with seven college students at Dong Hua University, when Dong was invited to teach a required four-semester course on the Yami language in the Department of Indigenous Languages and Communication during 2003–2005. In the spring of 2005, Dong and Rau co-taught Yami to five graduate students at Providence one hour per week as part of the Austronesian Linguistics seminar, using the first two volumes of the multimedia materials as the coursebook. Dong was responsible for providing Yami language input by modelling pronunciation and supplying vocabulary and sentences to mediate communication in Yami, a modified Community Language Learning approach (CLL, Curran 1976). Rau, on the other hand, played the role of a linguist, explaining grammatical structures in L1. The goal of this course was to familiarize graduate students in linguistics with the Yami structure. The development of e-learning materials began in Fall 2005, with a grant provided by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP) to the authors for digitally archiving Yami texts in Rau and Dong (2006), and other materials collected for this project. The four-volume coursebook with CD (Rau et al. 2005) provides the scaffolding for further development. Yang played a key role as the e-learning developer, training computer technicians and graduate students to use the programs, while Rau was the content provider and researcher, participating in the process of transforming the teaching materials from print and CD versions to an online interactive version. The e-learning materials were first field tested in Rau’s graduate seminar, ‘Austronesian Linguistics: Yami structure, function, and teaching’ in Spring 2006. Dong and Rau co-taught Yami to seven graduate students at Providence one hour per week as part of the Austronesian Linguistics seminar, using the first volume of the multimedia materials as the coursebook. Among this group of graduate students, three of

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D. Victoria Rau and Meng-Chien Yang University Students

Learners

Community Members

Content Providers

University Researchers

E-learning Developers

E-learning Website

Figure 12.1 Participants in Yami e-learning (adapted from Ward and van Genabith 2003)

them had previously taken a course in English CALL, three others were interested in Austronesian linguistics, and one linguistics student who had taken the same seminar before was recruited to help with action research on the course. The same course was repeated in Spring 2007; the results were reported in Rau et al. (2007). All the participants in developing the e-learning materials are represented in Figure 12.1.

12.2.2 Participants The targeted learners are university students, focusing primarily on graduate students in applied linguistics at Providence University with the potential to be extended to the community members who are two or more generations removed. The community members were brought into the picture through two initiatives. First, Rau and Dong obtained a letter of permission from a community representative to express their interest in participating in the HRELP-funded project and invited two members to provide video clips for the research. Second, the authors held a workshop on Yami Revitalization in the community eight months after initiation of the project to facilitate continued partnership of the community members with the research team. During the workshop, several local language/culture activists were invited to present their strategies for language revitalization, in addition to our team members’ progress report on our documentation project and development of the Yami e-learning program. The university researchers are primarily content providers and e-learning developers, with the potential goal of becoming learners. The three major figures in the project are (1) Rau, an applied linguist who did extensive research on Yami, (2) Dong, a native Yami who had knowledge and experience in linguistic analysis and Yami


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language teaching, and (3) Yang, a computer scientist with an expertise in digital archiving and e-learning. As shown in Figure 12.1, each participant serves at least two roles in the process. While the middle-aged and older generations of community members provide content, the university students in applied linguistics and computer sciences help develop interactive activities. The role of the traditional language teacher is embedded in the university researchers and community members in this project, whereas the students served double roles as learners and e-learning developers. Thus, as predicted by Hanson-Smith (1997), language teachers, in addition to performing the same functions they do now—lesson planning, individual counselling, preparation and selection of materials, evaluation of process and product, etc.—have relinquished some of their power and authority, not to the computer, but to the students themselves in the use of technology. In fact, the graduate students learning Yami were empowered as they were invited to contribute e-learning activities to the project, as discussed in the following section. Additionally, the core team members were also empowered as they were committed to collaboration in an interdisciplinary manner for many years. 12.2.3 Significant cycles of discourse The two most important cycles of discourse in the process of developing the e-learning website include weekly classroom interactions and developer meetings. 12.2.3.1 CLASSROOM INTERACTIONS The Yami class was part of the Austronesian Linguistics Seminar, which met weekly during the third period for fifty minutes after two periods of discussion on selected journal articles on Austronesian linguistics. Rau, the instructor of the course, invited Dong to provide Yami native speaking input in the classroom setting. When the class began on February 2006, there were seven graduate students taking this course. In the middle of May, one ELT student dropped out for personal reasons; however, she indicated the most enjoyable part of the course, the one that she would miss the most, was learning Yami. The three remaining ELT students expressed their interest in investigating Yami e-learning as their goal of taking this course, whereas the three linguistics students were attracted to this course for various reasons including the instructor’s expertise in Austronesian linguistics. The classroom was designed for graduate seminars with students seated around the table with a clear separation between the linguistics and ELT disciplines. The two instructors (Rau and Dong) were seated at the side where the white board and the screen for the computer projector were placed. Each Yami session was videotaped by a linguistics graduate student, who served both as an auditor of the course and a research assistant. The place that was foregrounded or backgrounded changed depending on which dyad was role-playing. The camera followed the action around the classroom. However, the white board was the default foreground as it was used heavily to provide visual cues for grammatical explanations.

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The discourses that were most central to the development of e-learning materials were the language learning activities, originally written for the four-volume multimedia materials (Rau et al. 2005) and revised to meet the needs and fit the time frame (fifty minutes) of the classroom instruction. The learning activities were available from the WebCT for the students to download before the class meetings. They were expected to use the sound files on the web (http://yamiproject.cs.pu.edu.tw/elearn) or the printouts from the Microsoft word files of the coursebook to preview the lessons. During each session, the students were first asked to role play in mini-dialogues after repeating the examples read by the Yami instructor. Grammar explanations in Chinese followed the introduction of Yami sentences, although the classroom interactions featured communicative functions of language. The students’ homework assignment, sent to the two instructors by email for comments and corrections, was also backgrounded, although some students’ productions would be selected to showcase students’ performance (e.g. songs) on the website. Towards the end of the semester, the students’ homework included identifying Yami verb affixes and case markers for nouns. Each student was also assigned to create an interactive online activity as an assessment based on the lessons they had learned. The instructors provided an example of a jeopardy game and encouraged the students to use software, such as Hot potatoes (http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked), Quia (http://www.quia.corn./web/index.html), or Macromedia flashcards (http:// www.macromedia.com), to develop their own activities for assessment. The students’ contribution to the online activities turned out to be an empowering experience, as expressed in a focus group discussion with the authors. The e-mail correspondences between Rau and Dong between classes played an important role in the process because the ‘invisible’ discourse actually directed the contents of the classroom activities. The activities were ‘fleshed out’ before the class met each week. After being tested in the classroom setting, they were revised for the computer technicians to upload on the website. The video camera, placed at the opposite end of the room from the two instructors, was a mediational means of directing our classroom discourse. The purpose of videotaping the classroom interactions was to collect video footage of live interactions between the instructors and learners. The action of videotaping for the class was based on the need to produce multimedia e-learning materials, which can be further traced to concepts and principles in e-learning. A blending theory, proposed by Rossett et al. (2003), served as a mediational means for our action. A blend is an integrated strategy for delivering on promises about learning and performance. Possibilities of blended learning include: (1) formal vs. informal, (2) technology-based vs. people-based, (3) independent vs. convivial (social), and (4) directive-oriented vs. discovery-oriented. The Yami classroom interactions tended to feature the formal (instructor-led), technology-based, convivial, and directive-oriented ends of the learning. Videotaping of the classroom interactions was necessary to add these items crucial for


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self-paced learning, with the goal of developing a complete online e-learning course in Yami that does not require the presence of instructors. In summary, we have seen how the classroom interactions served as a significant cycle of discourse in the development of Yami e-learning. The life histories of people, places, discourses, and objects all interact, leading towards directional change and transformation as discussed in the following paragraphs. 12.2.3.2 DEVELOPER MEETINGS The other crucial cycle of discourse was the weekly developer meetings. The research team began meetings on a regular basis when the project began in August 2005. Rau, as the principal investigator (PI), recruited two people to join the project: a linguistics graduate student who indicated interest in writing his MA thesis on Yami and another assistant who had extensive experience working on previous Yami research projects. Both had sufficient computer skills to carry out the tasks required for the project. Yang, as the co-PI, recruited a computer science graduate student to write computer programs as his thesis topic and three other computer technicians to work on the two websites for this project. The website for the digital archive (http://yamiproject.cs.pu.edu.tw/yami) records all the activities for this project. The team met weekly in a large administrative meeting room with a U-shaped table in the College of Foreign Languages and Literature where the PI was housed, but six months later, we moved to a graduate seminar room in the same building with a computer connected to the internet. As the room was equipped with internet access, it helped focus the team members’ attention on the development and maintenance of our websites. The PI and co-PI presided at the meeting. We were seated next to each other at the side where the white board and the screen for the computer projector were located. At the beginning of the semester, the PI primarily relied on the co-PI to provide training and guidance for the team and delegate responsibilities for the computer technicians to carry out their work. After six months, the PI began to exert more leadership and decided to implement two activities which brought changes to the relationship of the team. First, the PI invited the co-PI and one computer technician to co-teach a course on ‘Technology and Second Language Learning’ to a group of in-service English teachers for the Continuing Education Program at Providence, in response to an urgent call for help from that program. The major sources of teaching materials were based on the CARLA website (http://www.carla.umn.edu/technology/institue). This teaching experience provided opportunities for the three of us to integrate our expertise in elearning and second language acquisition. The PI learned about the co-PI’s concepts of e-learning and learned from the computer technician how to use several software packages to create online lessons. This inspired the PI to develop the Jeopardy game for a Yami lesson as an online assessment activity. During the process of teaching, two guidelines gained prominence in directing changes in the design of our e-learning

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materials: Gillette et al. (1999) Guidelines for Reviewing and Evaluating Web Pages and Barker (2002) Canadian Recommended E-learning Guidelines. The other initiative provided a link with the community members. After eight months of research, the authors decided to hold a workshop on Revitalizing Yami on Orchid Island to provide a forum for dialogue between the community members and the team. The goal of this workshop was twofold. The first and foremost objective was to gain some consensus on orthography issues, especially the spelling of /r/ and /z/ to refer to retroflex and trill respectively. The other goal was to update the local people on our project to gain support from the community. Among all the talks presented in the workshop, the e-learning component of the project was most warmly received, with high expectations. This led to a further plan from the co-PI to incorporate animation into each lesson, as discussed in the following section. In summary, the developer meetings served as the second significant discourse cycle that shaped the direction of our actions. 12.2.4 Changes In this section, we describe what actions we took as participant-analysts in this nexus of practice that transformed discourses into actions and actions into new discourses and practices. The two key points to be discussed are the collaborative teaching experiences and the workshop on Orchid Island. The collaborative teaching experience was a turning point for the two actions of the PI. The discourses in the two cycles changed her belief about whether e-learning could displace and eventually replace classroom instruction in Yami, transforming her thinking on pedagogy from the more people-based to the more technology-based end of the curriculum spectrum. This also reinforced Dong’s decision to propose e-learning as an alternative to her teaching at Dong Hua University as long-distance travel to the east coast posed increasing obstacles. Her action led to the PI and co-PI’s further decision to accelerate the process of developing the e-learning materials during the summer vacation to meet the immediate needs of e-learning in Fall 2006. The e-learning program was finally completed and integrated into the Austronesian Seminar at Providence University in Spring 2007. The hours for teaching Yami in a classroom setting actually increased from one to two hours per week, while the online materials played a supplementary role. Meanwhile, grammar explanation was reduced to minimum with most of the classroom activities focusing on communication. As a result, the native speaker teacher was foregrounded and the linguist was backgrounded. The workshop on Yami language revitalization in April 2006 on Orchid Island was another key point in the cycle because it led to two major actions taken by the co-PI. First was his attempt to design the e-learning model based on his interviews with the instructors and the learners, as presented in Rau and Yang (2007: 118–19). Second, the co-PI organized a group of undergraduate computer science majors to work on


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an animation project for the e-learning, as a result of the desire expressed by the community members. The nexus of actions led to the second move by the PI to test the acquisition order of Yami phonology and syntax in a longitudinal study, reported in Rau et al. (2007), a natural follow-up to test whether the e-learning material sequencing matches the order of second language acquisition. In summary, this discourse analysis has enhanced our understanding of the mediated actions and paved the way for comprehending why a certain pedagogical model was developed, as described in the following section, to reflect the changes brought about by actions of all parties involved.

12.3 E-Learning Pedagogy and Design In what follows, we give a comprehensive and detailed description of (1) the pedagogies of the e-learning, (2) the planning and design process of the e-learning development, (3) the process of aggregating the contents for building the e-learning platform, and (4) the process of establishing the proper online interactions. 12.3.1 E-learning pedagogy To create the proper e-learning courses for the Yami language, we propose a mixed model adopted from a study by Conole et al. (2004). In this model, the process of learning is categorized as a framework with six components: Individual, Social, Reflection, Non-reflection, Information, and Experience. Compared to traditional learning theories, Conole’s six-component learning model was developed specifically for e-learning practitioners to design e-learning programs more easily to map to the pedagogical contents. These six components represent the learners, learning process, learning activities, methodologies and self-reflection of the learners. Our proposed model is similar to the above-mentioned model in that it also has six components. However, the learners’ reflection and non-reflection are replaced with cultural practice and documenting and annotating to better represent the context of Yami language teaching and learning. The six components are shown in Figure 12.2: (1) Individual: The learners are the focus of the whole learning process. (2) Information: The whole documented materials related to the Yami language, including texts, recordings, video etc., provide the sources of information. (3) Cultural Practice: The learning is linked to unique Yami cultural items. (4) Social: As the learning process involves interactions with tutors and peers, the learning process can be described as collaborating or mutually beneficial activities.

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Individual

Cultural Practice

Information

Experience

Documenting and Annotating

Social

Figure 12.2 Representation of proposed model

(5) Experience: The learners’ on-site experience will enhance their learning strategies and increase their Yami language proficiency. (6) Documenting and annotating: The learning is integrated into the process of documenting and annotating the Yami language. The advantage of Conole’s model is that the e-learning developers can easily identify the pathways between two components and can develop a step-by-step approach to craft the e-learning program to fit pedagogical requirements. Our proposed design adopted the structural framework of Conole’s work but foregrounded the importance of documentation for endangered languages. This is consistent with Himmelmann’s (1998, 2002, 2006) proposal to conceive of language documentation as an independent field of linguistics, many other scholars’ concern about incorporating digital archives into documentary linguistics (e.g. Woodbury 2003) and suggestions about how to use modern technology to handle data and build a corpus (e.g. Austin 2006, Johnson 2004). The two components of reflection and non-reflection in Conole’s model are included in the component of experience in our proposed model. Therefore, we adjusted the components to include these parts. The proposed model takes into consideration the special needs for e-learning development for endangered languages. This model can be used in the development of e-learning programs for other endangered languages. In Figure 12.2, the representation of the proposed model illustrates the basic concepts necessary to both learn and preserve an endangered language.


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As we were conducting the digital archiving and documentation project for the Yami language, we found that many parts necessary for transforming the materials from people-based to technology-based were missing. Hence, the traditional pedagogical models for second language teaching cannot be grafted together without changes when designing and conducting e-learning courses for the Yami language. In addition, the e-learning plan for the endangered language should be considered as a plan for the school for all community described in Young (2002). In his study, the school for all community is described as the innovative web learning environment that is used as the virtual community for teachers and learners to study and learn via internet. In designing the e-learning environment for the Yami language, we aimed to build an environment for all different learners following this concept. The proposed model was used to map the Yami language learning pedagogy and different evaluation tools for constructing the e-learning materials for the Yami language. In documenting and archiving the Yami language, we were also building an e-learning platform simultaneously. We illustrate the process of developing the Yami project as an example to validate our model as follows.

12.3.2 Planning for e-learning In this section, we describe the preparation and design of the e-learning program for the Yami language using this model. The e-learning site for the Yami language includes several different online programs for different groups of learners. These groups include community members, university students, and researchers. For the Yami language, we consider the e-learning program as an approach to preserve this language. Therefore, the planning for the e-learning program includes the following steps: (1) Collection of learning materials for the Yami language: Materials are being continuously collected and archived to supplement the four volumes of the Yami language multimedia learning materials (Rau et al. 2005). (2) Design of learning activities: The learning activities include different kinds of classroom activities and self-assessment. (3) Production of online materials: These learning materials and learning activities are transformed into online digitalized contents. Suppose that we plan to design an e-learning course for a particular group of learners, the steps for developing the e-learning course are as follows: (1) Analyse the learning goal of the learners and describe the characteristics of the learning activities. (2) Use the proposed model to highlight key components of the learning activities and map these highlighted components to a pedagogical template.

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D. Victoria Rau and Meng-Chien Yang Course

Characteristics

Introduction to the Austronesian language: Yami language

Basic Yami structure Yami lessons following a mixed grammatical and functional syllabus Course instructor and Yami instructor give examples and lead the learning activities

Components (Grey circles) present

Individual

Cultural Practice

Information

Experience

Documenting and Annotating

Social

Figure 12.3 Map of the course to the proposed model

(3) Use this pedagogical template to organize the learning materials and learning activities. The outcome of this step is a set of e-learning courses. (4) Refine the contextual links of these e-learning courses and provide specific information to these courses. Ward and Genabith (2003) suggest that CALL courseware developed specifically for a given language will be better than courseware developed following general principles (e.g. Auld 2002). Thus we illustrate not only the final product, but more importantly the planning steps for developing the e-learning materials for Yami at Providence University. The characteristics and highlighted components in the model are shown in Figure 12.3. The mapped pedagogical template is shown in Figure 12.4. Figure 12.3 and Figure 12.4 show how to apply our proposed e-learning model to the design and teaching of a graduate-level Yami language course. An analysis of the goals and materials of this course leads to a summary of the characteristics of this course (Figure 12.3). Three components of the basic model are present in the course: individual, information and social. Based on these components, the learning process is designed as the template including four steps: online materials, panel discussion, class collaborative activities and instructional recitation (Figure 12.4). Each process is mapped to a specific e-learning process developed with proper ICT technology. The online materials are mapped to the presentation of the course materials. The panel

Pedagogical Models for E-Learning Pedagogical Template

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e-learning Mapping

Online materials are presented as course-based interactive Yami language learning materials Online Material

Panel Discussion Student A

Student B

Class Collaborative Activities

Tutor No1

(via Internet) Synchronous and Asynchronous discussion (via phone or face-to-face) Sound and Visual enhancement

Tutor No 2 (Native Speaker)

Tutor No 3 (Material Designer)

Student C

Online Learning Game 2

Online Learning Game 1 Student Group1 Is learning Game 1 effective?

Redo Online Learning Game 1

Instructional Recitation

Yes

No

Instructional recitation includes video clips and audio sound tracks of the related course

Figure 12.4 The pedagogical template

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discussion is mapped to the setting of an online discussion. The class collaborative activities are mapped to the process of selecting an effective collaborative learning game. Finally, the instructional review is mapped to online learning materials such as Yami language video and audio clips which are useful for the learners to review the course materials. 12.3.3 E-learning implementation. We have developed the first version of the multimedia e-learning platform for the Yami language based on the following guidelines: (1) The e-learning system provides an interface simple enough for the beginner. (2) The e-learning system includes different levels of the course materials with the possibility of adding new materials. (3) The e-learning system provides many visual effects to stimulate interest in learning the Yami language. (4) The e-learning system provides a comprehensive dictionary and an effective searching tool. The e-learning system is developed as a group of dynamic web pages which are stored in a web page server with a database engine for manipulating the course materials and the learning records. The current e-learning platform for the Yami language includes the following components: (1) The Yami course materials, classified into three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. In each lesson, the materials include the Yami text, sound tracks, Chinese and English translation, word analysis, grammar, learning activities, and exercises. (2) The Yami dictionary, organized in alphabetic order. (3) The system setting tool which includes the interface setting, the learning log setting, and the web display setting. (4) The online learning activities which students can use to practise on their own. (5) The virtual learning group which allows the students to email their learning logs to their own mailbox and the teacher’s mailbox. 12.3.4 Establishing the proper interactions After the Yami e-learning courses were put online, the next task was to ensure that the materials could perform successfully for online teaching. That is, users can interact properly with the e-learning system. The process of developing proper interactions was long and repetitive. The outlook and style of the Yami e-learning platform have been changed several times to make the Yami e-learning easy and straightforward.


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Since the ultimate, targeted users of the Yami e-learning platform are Yami youths and community members who have very limited computer skills, we made an effort to ensure that these users would operate in a ‘safe exploration’ environment when they use the e-learning materials. Based on this consideration, the Yami e-learning platform is designed with the following guidelines: (1) The menu and functional buttons are clearly displayed. (2) The entry point of each lesson is clearly identified. (3) The sound of each sentence can be played by pushing the button placed at the beginning of the sentence. (4) The dictionary can be searched in a simple and easy format. (5) Exercises and quizzes can be found in each lesson. We believe that proper interactions will lead to effective e-learning using the materials. In addition, the above-mentioned guidelines are designed to make the interface simple and easy-to-use when one is developing e-learning materials for minority languages.

12.4 Proposed Model for Development of Community Materials Finally, we propose a collaborative model for developing community materials based on our experience in language documentation and establishing the e-Learning program for Yami. In essence, we argue for community materials to be developed based on a long-term collaboration between community activists, linguists, and IT professionals. In light of the Yami case, the process of developing community materials does not necessarily need to follow a linear order of: documentation > grammatical analysis > writing textbook > development of course materials > building e-learning materials. Rather, it can start from any component and build on each other simultaneously and cyclically when the opportunity arises over a long period of time. Tracing back the history of our collaboration, it all began with Dong inviting Rau to study her language after they met at a conference on Aboriginal languages in Taiwan in 1994. Dong’s initial plan was to publish a Yami dictionary, whereas Rau was more interested in developing teaching materials for college students. After conducting a sociolinguistic survey on Orchid Island (Rau 1995), they decided to work on a college level Yami language textbook (Dong and Rau 2000b), built from constructed dialogues and texts. Meanwhile, more texts were collected (Dong and Rau 1999, 2000a), grammatical analysis was carried out (Rau 2002, 2005; Rau and Dong 2005), and the four-volume course materials (Rau et al. 2005) were developed and tested on college students at different institutions. Their work was not acknowledged as valuable by the community until their book Yami Texts with Reference Grammar and Dictionary was finally published (Rau and Dong 2006) and delivered to the community. In addition to the publication of their major book, the other turning point of their relationship with the community was the addition of Yang’s computer expertise to the language documentation project in 2005. The community members’ high expectation

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of what IT technology could contribute to a language project has increased their motivation to collaborate with the Providence team. In addition, the development of the team could be another important factor influencing the final outcome. The Yami case began with transmission of Yami language and culture to college students, using a status building strategy of language planning. In the process of learning to package and present the materials to graduate and undergraduate students, the relationship between the linguist and the indigenous language expert has always been of equal partnership. Although the interactions with the learners were frequent, community involvement had been somewhat limited until computational expertise was brought into the project and transformed the group dynamics from a ‘lone wolf ’ approach to an interdisciplinary team. In other words, the formation of the team does not necessarily follow the order of: principal researcher (linguist) + community > involvement of Indigenous language expert > need for computational expertise > need for test group (the graduate students). Instead, the graduate students played an important role in the initial development of the community materials, whereas the community was the last to respond positively to the project and to express willingness to be involved.

12.5 Conclusion Following the nexus analysis, we described the process of developing the e-learning program for Yami to preserve the endangered language. Several actions we took as participant-analysts were identified in this nexus of practice that transformed discourses into actions and actions into new discourses and practices. Based on our analysis of the historical body of the persons, places and significant cycles of discourse, we developed a pedagogical model that integrates digital archiving with e-learning. In this model, the contents and learning activities of the Yami language were described as six components arranged as the endpoints of a hexagon. Documentation of language and culture is included as a unique component in e-learning design for endangered languages. Using this model, the design and implementation of the elearning program for the Yami language could easily be validated. The development of community materials in the Yami case demonstrates a status building strategy, beginning from graduate students as the targeted learners and working back to the community youths when they are ready. It also illustrates a collaborative approach involving long-term commitment to the language community and bringing in key players and IT technology at the right time.

13 Neverver: A Study of Language Vitality and Community Initiatives Julie Barbour

13.1 Introduction and Background The Neverver language, with fewer than 600 speakers, is spoken in the villages of Limap and Lingarakh on Malakula Island in Vanuatu. In central Malakula, Neverver stands alongside numerous other local languages, but more significantly, two dominant written languages: English, the medium of formal education, and Bislama, the medium of religion, politics and regional affairs. Community members wish to develop literacy in the Neverver language but efforts thus far have been hindered by a lack of many different resources needed for this kind of development. In this chapter, I outline steps taken to develop vernacular literacy so far, and discuss a number of linguistic and non-linguistic issues that have arisen through this process in 13.2. I explore the current status of the Neverver language in the context in which it is spoken today, using the language vitality assessment proposed by the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages (UNESCO 2003) to identify key threats to the language in 13.3. I then discuss activities that are being undertaken to address the community’s desire for vernacular literacy and opportunities that may be pursued in the future in 13.4. Activities that are being undertaken are not necessarily a direct community response to threats to the language; however, they are positive actions which are likely to maintain and strengthen the Neverver language. Finally, in 13.5, I consider the role of the linguist in supporting community language initiatives, particularly in the context of carrying out linguistic research in Vanuatu. Malakula Island is the second largest of more than eighty islands that make up the Vanuatu archipelago. It is home to some twenty-four actively spoken indigenous languages, along with a further 15 languages that have been identified as either extinct or moribund (Lynch and Crowley 2001). This extraordinary number of indigenous languages is spoken by a population estimated to be around 27,000 (Lynch

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and Crowley 2001: 67). Neverver, like all the indigenous languages of Malakula, is thought to belong to the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family and specifically to the Central Vanuatu Linkage (Lynch and Crowley 2001: 19–20). Lynch (2007) proposes that Neverver’s closest known genetic relative is the moribund Naman language. Lynch (2007) places Neverver and Naman in a sub-group of Malakula languages spoken on the western coast of the island. This placement appears at odds with the current location of the Neverver speech community on the eastern coast of Malakula (see Map 13.1); however, according to oral history, the community was traditionally located in the interior of the island. Population movements towards the eastern coast are still recalled by the oldest community members. Following the arrival of Christian missionaries in the 1880s, the villagers gradually moved from the interior of Malakula towards Bushman’s Bay and Crab Bay. They settled in Limap village in the Netmatlamp River Valley and in Lingarakh village in the Nurumbat River Valley. A few community members have moved further towards the eastern coast, residing in the small plantation settlements of Losarsar and TFC. Malakula, with its large number of indigenous languages, has long been multilingual; however, the recent population movements have brought Neverver speakers into daily contact with speakers of numerous other languages. Today, Neverver speakers interact with speakers of the related Avava language located in Khatbol, Taremp, and Tembimbi villages. Neverver speakers also have contact with speakers of the Northeast Malakula/Uripiv language to the north of the Neverver region, and the remaining speakers of the moribund Naman, Vivti and Tape languages. There is regular contact with speakers of the Neve’ei language, in Vinmavis village on the western coast of Malakula which is linked by a foot road to Lingarakh village. Marriages and exchanges between Neverver speakers and members of all of these other speech communities continue to take place today. In addition to increasing contact with speakers of other indigenous languages, the movement of the Neverver speech community towards the eastern coast of Malakula has brought Neverver speakers into regular contact with Bislama and English, two dominant written languages. Bislama, Vanuatu’s constitutionally recognized National Language (Vanuatu 1980), has been the lingua franca in the wider Malakula context for many generations now. All Neverver community members can speak this language and most have some literacy skills in Bislama. English and French were asserted as the languages of education and government in Vanuatu during the joint French-English colonial rule. Following Independence in 1980, English and French were named the languages of formal education in the Vanuatu constitution (Vanuatu 1980). English and French were also named the Official Languages of Vanuatu along with Bislama (Vanuatu 1980). Of these three languages, Bislama is the most widely spoken on Malakula. English and French remain prestigious because of their ties to education, administration and increasingly, financial success. Although there are French-speaking areas in Malakula, the Neverver region is predominantly exposed to English and

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Map 13.1 Location of Neverver speakers among other indigenous languages in North-Central Malakula

members of the Neverver speech community have not been observed to make use of French.

13.2 Early Efforts to Develop Literacy Neverver first came to the attention of the academic world when a short word list appeared under the name of Nesan in A. Bernard Deacon’s (1934) anthropological volume on Malakula. A second word list was published much later under the name of Lingarak in Darrell Tryon’s (1976) comparative study of the languages of the then New Hebrides. The paucity of information about Neverver led to it being described

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as both undocumented and unwritten in Lynch and Crowley’s (2001: 18) bibliographic survey of the languages of Vanuatu. While it is true that the language was virtually unknown to linguists, the language was not unwritten. One community member has worked extensively on developing an orthographic system for Neverver, for the purpose of translating hymns from English and Bislama into Neverver. The translator, Chief Jacob Naus, attended a short translation workshop in the 1980s. This was reportedly run by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The Chief acquired some knowledge of orthographic development on this course and began work on a writing system for Neverver. Over a period of twenty-five years, he translated more than 300 hymns into Neverver. His goal was to introduce vernacular literacy to the wider community so that community members could sing hymns in Neverver. Chief Jacob’s work eventually stalled as his writing system did not gain currency with the community. Only those hymns that were taught orally were successfully learned by community members. Some of the hymns have proven very popular and are sung in church services today; however, they represent a very small portion of the complete body of Chief Jacob’s work. A number of factors contributed to the marginalization of Chief Jacob’s work. Features of the Neverver phonemic system, including word-final devoicing of many consonants, the presence of epenthetic consonants, alternations between voiceless stops and fricatives in word-final position, and the presence of phonemes that are not in either the English or Bislama inventories, all caused representational difficulties. The phoneme inventory for Neverver contains series of five prenasalized consonants, among which is the bilabial trill. There is also a bilabial fricative. Using either English or Bislama as a basis for assigning symbols to these phonemes is not particularly helpful and many words appeared with multiple spellings in Chief Jacob’s work. Additionally, certain representational choices made by Chief Jacob proved unpopular with community members. For example, in representing the velar fricative, Chief Jacob selected the symbol ‘h’. This symbol was rejected by many speakers because the neighbouring Avava language, English, and Bislama all have a phonemic /h/. ‘H’ was generally considered to have a value which was quite different from the velar fricative. Aside from representational issues, Chief Jacob faced other difficulties. Although he was able to secure funding from the local government to have his hymns typed, the work was undertaken by a non-Neverver speaker. The typist’s lack of knowledge of the language meant that the manuscript could not be proof-read as it was being prepared, and this resulted in numerous errors occurring. The finished product, of which only two copies were ever provided, required some skill to interpret. Chief Jacob also began to suffer from health problems. Arthritis afflicted his right hand to the extent that he was forced to dictate to a younger family member, or otherwise attempt to use his left hand to transcribe new songs. Both solutions to this problem were inadequate as again, errors found their way into the work. Chief Jacob’s hearing also suffered and he was increasingly unable to access the opinions of


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other community members on matters of pronunciation and the numerous semantic extensions required to solve translation problems. A further problem was that many community members expected a word-for-word translation or at least a literal translation of hymns. Chief Jacob’s metaphoric interpretations and efforts to maintain cultural appropriateness did not conform to many people’s expectations of religious material and they quickly abandoned their efforts to learn songs in Neverver that they felt contained ‘bad translations’. Chief Jacob, unable to defend his translation decisions and at times unable to hear critique, became increasingly isolated in his work. The difficulties that Chief Jacob experienced in his work led to his request for a linguist to visit the community and provide support. The request was made to the late Professor Terry Crowley, who regularly visited Malakula Island to conduct his own research. Crowley, knowing of my interest in linguistic field research, proposed that I work with the Neverver speech community and August 2004, I began work documenting the Neverver language. 1

13.3 Evaluating Language Vitality Prior to the initiation of the Neverver documentation project, there were no specific details available about the sociolinguistic context in which the Neverver language was spoken. Between August 2004 and December 2005, I undertook a total of nine months of fieldwork in the Neverver speech community. As well as documenting the spoken language, I was interested in the general vitality of the language. I made observations about language use, discussed language attitudes with various community members, and carried out an informal house-to-house survey to gather information on speaker numbers and reported language competency. In order to evaluate the vitality of the Neverver language, I employed the Language Vitality Assessment proposed by the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages (2003). In their article ‘Language Vitality and Endangerment’ (UNESCO 2003), the Expert Group propose a set of nine factors for evaluating the vitality of an individual language. These factors are intended to be used as a tool for identifying the most urgent needs of a language community. The nine factors of the language vitality assessment include factors relating to the basic vitality of the language, the domains in which it is used, the current levels of linguistic documentation and literacy, and attitudes towards the language (UNESCO 2003: 7). Most of the factors involve a scale, with languages that score five on the scale being safe with respect to that particular factor and those that score zero being highly endangered. The complete language 1 This project was generously funded by a Graduate Studentship from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Documentation Project based at SOAS, in London. I am indebted to Professor Terry Crowley for supporting the initial phases of my research project, prior to his untimely death in January 2005.

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vitality assessment for the Neverver speech community is presented in the Appendix. 2 What follows is a summary of the points most relevant to the discussion of literacy development. At times, I will consider the Neverver villages of Limap and Lingarakh separately and, at times, I will present the speech community as homogeneous.

13.3.1 Language statistics and transmission patterns In the language vitality assessment (UNESCO 2003), factors 1 to 3 deal with the numbers of people who speak the language and its transmission patterns. The total population of the Neverver speech community is fewer than 600. 3 This figure includes the members of all households where at least one parent speaks Neverver as their dominant language. Almost all of the speakers live in the villages of Limap or Lingarakh, or in family hamlets surrounding these two villages. Around fifty more live in family hamlets that are located up to three kilometres away from the main villages, near coastal coconut plantations. There are some non-community members in the surrounding villages who speak a little Neverver, but these people do not have direct family ties to the community and are not included by the community in their count of speakers. Limap village, home to around 160 Neverver speakers, is geographically rather isolated. Foot roads into the deep interior have been abandoned and Limap can only be reached by a single farm track from the eastern coast (see Map 13.1). Limap villagers tend to be occupied with matters close to home. Travel to other villages, including Lingarakh, is only undertaken on special occasions. In Limap village, Neverver is the dominant language of communication and 88 per cent of households reported themselves to be Neverver-dominant. For families in which Neverver is not dominant, Bislama is the dominant language of communication between children and their parents. Outside of the home, Neverver is the most commonly heard language, although Bislama also occurs. Its use is triggered by the presence of non-community members, or by communication in domains where Bislama is employed rather than Neverver. Many Limap residents, particularly members of the older generations, are multilingual. They speak up to three indigenous languages alongside Bislama. In the village context however, this multilingualism is rather inactive, as the knowledge of other local languages is seldom required for day-to-day communication. 2 The evaluation of the vitality of the Neverver language presented in this chapter is based almost entirely on my own ‘outsider’s’ observations of the speech community. Community members would likely offer slightly different ratings (or ranges of ratings) than those that I have come up with. 3 This figure differs significantly from the population of 1,250 estimated by Lynch and Crowley (2001: 79). The estimated population was extrapolated from census data collected in 1989 and the assumption was made that a sizable number of people in surrounding villages are also competent Neverver speakers. My own figures are based on a house-to-house head count during a field trip in 2004 and exclude those people who are considered non-community members but who may have some knowledge of the language. Even if such non-dominant speakers are included, it is unlikely that an estimated population would be significantly over 700 speakers.


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Lingarakh village, home to nearly 350 people, is far less isolated than Limap. Lingarakh is located across the Nurumbat river from the Avava-speaking village of Khatbol. As Lingarakh and Khatbol have grown, the physical and social boundaries between the two villages have become indistinct. Additionally, community members regularly traverse the island to Vinmavis and Tisvel villages on the western coast. Daily transportation is available from Lingarakh into Lakatoro, the provincial centre of the Malampa (Malakula-Ambrym-Paama) province. ‘Going to town’ is undertaken for entertainment as well as business. There are employment opportunities in the government offices and businesses in Lakatoro for those with appropriate skills, and young men can find casual employment on coastal plantations between Lingarakh and Lakatoro. While Neverver is still the dominant language of most people in Lingarakh, it is found in just 75 per cent of households. Around 17 per cent of households are Bislamadominant and just over 8 per cent of households make use of another local language, most commonly Avava or Neve’ei, as the dominant language of communication. In contrast to the reported, though largely inactive multilingualism in Limap village, the residents of Lingarakh village are more actively multilingual. Bislama is used regularly for a variety of daily interactions, along with other vernacular languages and some English. The actual population size of Lingarakh appears healthier than the smaller Limap; however, Lingarakh village has a higher proportion of community members who are dominant in other languages while almost all of the Limap residents are Neververdominant. Not only that, villagers in Lingarakh are constantly in contact with speakers of other languages. Thus, there are pressures on Neverver in Lingarakh that are not present in Limap. These pressures place the language at greater risk in Lingarakh than in the smaller and more isolated Limap village. 13.3.2 Domains of use Factors 4 and 5 of the UNESCO (2003) language vitality assessment concern domains of language use. The vitality of a language can be evaluated not only in terms of the number of domains in which it is used, but also in its capacity to make the transition into new domains. In the Neverver speech community, the domains in which Neverver is spoken have decreased. Traditional cultural practices have gradually fallen out of use in favour of western cultural practices. New communicative domains have emerged in both Limap and Lingarakh, but there have been few attempts to expand Neverver into these domains. Speech events concerning the church and public ceremonies, as well as regional politics and education, take place in Bislama or English rather than Neverver. Neverver is thus excluded from a number of domains that have become central to contemporary life. In the domain of religion, Presbyterian beliefs and practices are now the centre of community life. Superficially, church events and the church hierarchy appear

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to have replaced many traditional events and social structures; however; the reality is that traditional beliefs and practices correspond well with Presbyterianism. There is evidence of local interpretations in the practice of Presbyterianism and at the same time, traditional practices have been incorporated into the contemporary religious system. For example, many traditional rituals associated with gardening have been absorbed into church rituals. Linguistically however, religion is a domain dominated by Bislama. There are no religious materials in Neverver as yet. Hymn books are printed in Bislama, and personal bibles are either in Bislama or English. Services are conducted in Bislama, with occasional bible readings in English. Neverver is used for a small number of hymns that community members have learnt but it is not used for prayer or teachings. Rather, people use Neverver for more secular matters such as community notices at the end of the church service, for the children’s story told during the service, for gossip, and for disciplining children. In the domain of education, community members report a traditional process whereby boys and girls were initiated separately into the roles and responsibilities of society. This has been replaced by English-medium formal education. There is no formal instruction either in the medium of Neverver or with Neverver as a subject. Neverver is used for basic organizational purposes in the local kindergartens but even at the pre-school age, there is an emphasis on teaching English to prepare children for primary school. This is carried out mostly through the medium of Bislama rather than Neverver. In Lingarakh, Bislama is used by necessity in the kindergarten as there are a number of children in the village who do not speak Neverver. Formal education is offered in English at the area primary school in Lingarakh and also at Rensari primary school to the south of Limap. Both primary schools are staffed by teachers from different parts of Vanuatu and the teachers interact in English and Bislama. The schools cater for children from the linguistically diverse villages of central Malakula. The children board with local families during the week and they generally interact in Bislama with their host-families and with each other. The communication pattern of using Bislama in any multilingual context is well-established at this age in these linguistically heterogeneous area primary schools. In the domain of media, with respect to Radio, Newspapers and Television, there is no Neverver-based new media available at present. English, French and Bislama are the languages of these new media in Vanuatu but these are accessed rather rarely in the villages of Malakula with poor transmission being a significant barrier. Newspapers can be purchased in Lakatoro but few families read newspapers regularly. Television has not reached the villages as yet, though DVDs and videos are played during special events and workshops. Bislama-medium educational films are extremely popular. In the future, it is likely that access to media technology will continue to increase, even in the more remote villages of Malakula. Given the cost of producing television, radio and newspaper materials, the domain of new media


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is more likely to be dominated by English, French, or even Bislama than in any of the indigenous languages of Vanuatu. At present, new media is less important in the Neverver-speaking region than the traditional oral networks used for distributing information. These oral networks function effectively in Neverver, in other local languages, and in Bislama, depending on who is passing on information to whom. Education and religion are another matter, as Neverver is marginalized in these domains. 13.3.3 Language attitudes Factors 7 and 8 of the language vitality assessment (UNESCO 2003) consider support for the language at both local and national levels. Positive attitudes towards endangered languages can signal interest in and support for language maintenance activities. It was my observation that a conscious awareness of language endangerment was present only among older community members and community leaders. The awareness of potential language loss was more strongly articulated in Limap village than in Lingarakh. The following statements were made on numerous occasions in Bislama during the fieldwork periods:

r Young people say this (. . .) wrongly; they should say it like this (. . .). r People in Lingarakh don’t speak as well as we do here in Limap. r People today don’t understand the deeper meanings of words; their understanding is like the leaves on trees rather than the tree trunk itself. These comments show an awareness that Neverver is undergoing change and is perhaps weakening. In terms of language attitudes, the comments indicate that people consider contemporary changes to be undesirable. A further comment was made to me on many occasions in the context of discussions about my role as a language documenter and collector of rarely used vocabulary items:

r It is good that you’ve come to write down our language, Julie. Now you can teach it back to us. While over-estimating my role in language revival, this comment signals that community members believe their linguistic knowledge has gaps and that it would be good to do something about these gaps. Certainly, documenting Neverver means that the language used by older speakers can be made available for younger speakers to learn from. Although community members did express concern about language change and erosion, many did not express the belief that Neverver is in danger. In general, when language was discussed, attitudes were generally expressed with respect to the role of various languages in the formal education system. Strong local support was expressed for the continued use of English in the education system. Bislama was regarded as an essential means of communication within the wider Malakula region and Vanuatu in

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general, although many people expressed the view that it was not a suitable language for education. The use of Neverver in kindergartens was generally thought to be a good idea though not at the expense of preparing children for their English-medium primary education. In terms of official support for vernacular languages, the constitution of Vanuatu offers protection for local languages, but it is English, French, and Bislama that are declared the official languages and English and French that are declared the languages of education (Vanuatu 1980: Chapter 1. 3 (1)–(2)). Official protection for indigenous languages has meant that the Vanuatu National Cultural Council and the Vanuatu Immigration Service support foreign researchers, particularly those invited by local communities, in the provision of research permits and visas. Attempts are currently underway at a national level to provide more comprehensive support for indigenous languages. In November 2005, the draft Vanuatu National Language Policy was presented for public comment (Vanuatu National Language Council 2005). This policy is explicit in its support for the indigenous languages of Vanuatu: 5.4 The Local or Indigenous Languages With over 100 different indigenous languages, Vanuatu is linguistically very diverse. These languages are vital expressions of Vanuatu’s social and cultural identity, expressing the intimate relationship of ni-Vanuatu to their land and traditions. There is an urgent need to preserve, and where appropriate revitalize, some of these languages that are on the verge of extinction. Viable indigenous languages—those languages which a significant number of children continue to acquire as their first language—should be promoted for the use of future generations. Vanuatu has an obligation to use, document, promote and protect our indigenous languages. (Vanuatu National Language Council 2005: 4)

Since Vanuatu gained independence in 1980, there has been a well-documented desire to introduce indigenous languages into the lower levels of schooling in Vanuatu (cf. Crowley and Lynch 1986, Regenvanu 2004). This matter is explicitly addressed in the National Language Policy in Article 5.4.1, where it is stated that ‘as much as possible, indigenous languages are to be used as the language of instruction in early childhood learning up to primary level’. There is a more generally expressed desire to see vernacular literacy develop, with Article 5.4.3 stating that ‘indigenous language are to be promoted for use in adult and childhood literacy acquisition programs’ (Vanuatu National Language Council 2005: 4). It has been my experience that members of the Cultural Centre are very pleased to hear about local efforts to develop literacy and encourage researchers to facilitate such activities; however, it is unclear whether concrete support for community initiatives is available. People living in remote villages like Limap and Lingarakh are generally unaware of the availability of resources and the processes that they need to engage in to access these.


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13.3.4 Literacy development and language documentation Factors 6 and 9 of the language vitality assessment (UNESCO 2003) measure the availability of resources for literacy projects, and the type and quality of documentation that exists. Neverver scores rather poorly with respect to these factors. As noted above, Neverver was thought to be an unwritten language. Although a large collection of hymns has been translated into Neverver by a community member, this material has not been distributed through the community and literacy skills are limited to just one elderly community member. Prior to 2004, only brief word lists in Neverver had been published. Now that a documentation project is underway, the type and quality of documentation for Neverver is improving rapidly; however, much of the data collected so far has not been distributed among community members. The bulk of the materials that form the documentation corpus are held in digital form at the University of Waikato in New Zealand and community members have no access to this as yet. The language vitality assessment presents a picture of Neverver as a language with a small and rather vulnerable speech community that is beginning to show signs of language shift. This is particularly the case in Lingarakh village, with a higher percentage of households dominant in a language other than Neverver. Intergenerational transmission will likely be interrupted in those households, as the next generation of children grow up more confident in languages other than Neverver. More concerning is the reality that Neverver has not transitioned into any new domains. Education, religion, and financial success are all seen as prestigious and are all associated with literacy skills in English and/or Bislama. These domains, and the skills associated with them, are likely to continue to grow in importance. As this happens, the traditional domains in which Neverver still plays a central role may become less relevant. The attitude of community members towards the vitality of Neverver is perhaps most worrying. The larger Neverver community does not appear to be terribly concerned about the vitality of the language. While there is a general awareness that the language is in some way being eroded, this awareness has not yet translated into a firmly articulated desire for ‘language maintenance’.

13.4 Where to From Here? Community Initiatives and Opportunities Given the lack of concern expressed by the speech community about the future of Neverver, one might consider that the language is best left alone, gradually succumbing to either Bislama or another local language with each passing generation. It is important to observe, however, that although most community members are not talking explicitly about addressing language shift or about language maintenance activities, a number of language-related initiatives are being undertaken. These activities are recognizable elements of language maintenance programmes. Some of the initiatives

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relate to the use of the written language in the domain of religion, which serves as the contemporary focal point for community life. There is also a growing interest in the introduction of literacy skills to children through the local kindergartens. Five language initiatives are discussed below. 13.4.1 Developing a hymn book The development of a Neverver hymn book is the most significant literacy activity to have been initiated by a member of the Neverver speech community to date. As described in 13.2, Chief Jacob Naus began working on translations of hymns into Neverver in the 1980s. He has generated a huge body of work which has the potential to be an invaluable literacy resource for the community. Given the significance of religion to contemporary community life, and the enthusiasm for singing as entertainment, hymns written in the vernacular could lead to widespread vernacular literacy among adults; however, it has required the intervention of a foreign linguist to distribute Chief Jacob’s work through the speech community. Chief Jacob faced many linguistic and personal problems while working alone; he has been able to address these problems through me, in my role as visiting linguist. Regarding linguistic difficulties, I have developed a draft orthography for use in the larger language documentation project. It is reassuring that the draft orthography contains the same number of contrasting segments as the Chief ’s locally developed orthography. The main difference in our work is in the representation of certain sounds to align with community preferences, and the standardization of spelling, which I can achieve easily using computer technology. Chief Jacob has been very supportive of my linguistic contributions to his hymn book. He has encouraged me to find representational solutions that are acceptable to the wider speech community. He continues to use his own orthography for new songs, but permits me to re-write his material in the new orthography. Chief Jacob and I were delighted to observe primary school children with low level literacy in English reading aloud over my shoulder while I transcribed his songs. Young adults with stronger literacy skills have poured over draft song booklets, finding hymns that they already know in English or Bislama. They sing aloud in Neverver, teaching one other to read new words. Regarding personal difficulties, Chief Jacob and the wider speech community have made use of me as a mediator. People had felt unable to critique Chief Jacob’s work directly but they have been happy to express their views to me, an outsider. The hymns have transitioned from being ‘too much work’ to interpret, to being widely accessed. On my second field trip, when I had produced a small number of draft hymn booklets, community members had no hesitation in coming to me and pointing out typing errors and inconsistencies. They also engaged in discussions with each other over their preferred translations of particular lexical items and phrases, and passed on their comments to me. At the time of writing, multiple copies of Chief Jacob’s


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hymns had been sent to Lingarakh and Limap villages in a series of six booklets. So far, I have received detailed feedback on the first of the six hymn books. This feedback has mostly been directed towards further standardization and occasionally the use of contemporary pronunciation in the written form. With multiple copies of the hymn booklets now available, both the Limap and Lingarakh communities have instituted weekly singing sessions to learn the new songs. These weekly sessions follow a community-led literacy workshop for youth, where the written form of the language was introduced. Community members report positive feedback both from speakers of Neverver, and also from speakers of other local languages whenever Neverver songs are sung at public events. Chief Jacob has maintained contact with me beyond the fieldwork periods, encouraging me to move the hymn book towards publication. He has a clear understanding of my role as mediator and he has put aside his personal ownership of the hymns in order to encourage community ownership. This change in ownership from individual to community can be seen in the way that the community has engaged with the printed material by singing, teaching each other songs, discussing translations, and critiquing aspects of the work.

13.4.2 Beginning Bible translation A growing interest in the Neverver community is the activity of Bible translation. The launch of the Uripiv New Testament on Uripiv Island in late 2005 attracted attention throughout Malakula. In Lingarakh and Limap, interest in Bible translation is most commonly expressed by community leaders who hold positions within the church hierarchy. Despite their interest, they have not initiated Bible translation yet. One reason for this is that people are aware that their knowledge of Neverver is not as extensive as the knowledge of their parents’ generation. Even the oldest community members, now in their 60s and 70s, display considerable differences in their lexical knowledge with gaps in some areas and a wealth of knowledge in others. As part of the larger language documentation project, I spent time recording lexical items. My lexicographic activities were observed with much interest as I interacted with people from different generations in the villages, gathering ‘forgotten’ words, old meanings, and contemporary usages. Once people realized that my goal was to record all usages of a word rather than a single ‘correct’ usage, they participated enthusiastically in this part of the project. On one occasion, during my second field trip, a church elder in Limap brought me a carefully preserved copy of Pastor Bill Camden’s (1977) Bislama–English dictionary. He leafed through the text with me, saying that a Neverver version would be highly valued by the community. The idea of a single source of lexical information, represented in a dictionary, is immediately appealing to those considering translation work. Such a document has the obvious advantage of outliving its contributors. Not only that, it can offer a standardized set of

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spellings, and a record of the attested usages of words, allowing translators to bypass some of the problems that Chief Jacob faced in his work on hymn translation. Once the Neverver dictionary is prepared in draft form, church elders have indicated their intention in beginning collaborative Bible translation. The Summer Institute of Linguistics offers translation courses in Vanuatu and it may be possible for some community members to attend one of these. However, it is worth pointing out that members of the Neverver speech community have grown up in a multilingual context and routinely read and interpret religious texts in Bislama and English. While external intervention to facilitate translation may be of some value to the community, internal motivation has a greater potential to contribute to the long term success of this activity. Any written material will be likely to filter down into prayer and discussion groups that the translators participate in. Eventually, translated materials may find their way into religious teachings in the wider community, giving Neverver a place beside English and Bislama in the central domain of religion. 13.4.3 Recording oral tradition One activity that I undertook in the Neverver documentation project was to record traditional narratives in Neverver. Prior to my arrival, this activity had not been undertaken by community members and it proved to be quite a challenge. Only the very oldest community members felt confident enough to be recorded telling traditional stories. Other stories, originating from outside the Neverver speech community, were shared with more confidence as speakers were less concerned about retelling these external stories ‘correctly’. Once I had gotten to know community members more personally, I learned that people were still creating stories. When I expressed an interest in recording these, younger community members were quite forthcoming in telling me contemporary stories. These new stories were composed by individuals in the community. They are an interesting juxtaposition of strong moral and religious themes, traditional characters and magical or miraculous events. They stand alongside contemporary translations of Bible stories, and add a contemporary layer to the existing oral traditions. Contemporary stories play an important role in the speech community. The stories are used for teaching purposes and are told during Sunday school, in the story segment of the formal Church service, and during kindergarten classes. There is a strong awareness among community members of the pedagogic value of stories. Although community members had not attempted to record their own stories prior to my arrival, the story-tellers were enthusiastic about having their stories printed in booklets. Language consultants working with me on the documentation project took on the task of editing a number of stories that I had recorded and they are now working on translations into Bislama. Although the language consultants lack resources to reproduce the stories within their speech community, they are collaborating with me to create these materials. This process is giving them the opportunity to develop


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their own literacy skills. They will then have the potential to collect new stories and generate further written material for pedagogic use. 13.4.4 Documenting trees and plants Another activity that became an important part of the Neverver documentation project was the collection of ethnobotanical data including a bank of digital images of trees and plants. At various times during my fieldwork, many different community members participated in this documentation activity. A small group of us, accompanied by at least one older community member to identify plants and provide ethnobotanical information, would head out into the jungle armed with notebooks and my digital camera. On an average excursion, we would record between fifty and one hundred species or varieties of flora and we would listen to stories about the cultural significance of various plants. Initially, I believed that ethnobotanical documentation was a researcher-initiated activity; however, it came to my attention that at least one younger man had been taught quite a lot about trees and plants by his father. This community elder passed away during my first field trip but his son continues to display a strong interest in ethnobotanical documentation. He knew the names of many species that his peers were unsure about. While he lacks vernacular literacy stills at this stage, his interest in this aspect of the documentation project may lead him into a more comprehensive attempt to record ethnobotanical data and I aim to provide him with a set of images and notes collected during the documentation project so far. More generally, older community members are very interested in having access to the collection of images and their indigenous names as a means of reacquainting themselves with this knowledge. 13.4.5 Developing vernacular kindergartens As mentioned in 13.3.2 above, both Limap and Lingarakh villages have locally run kindergartens. These are ostensibly vernacular kindergartens, established in order to introduce children to formal education through the medium of their indigenous language. The establishment of the kindergartens is in line with the Vanuatu government’s ten-year Education Master Plan (1999), whereby the kindergartens are established and maintained by the local community with little or no government support. Until recently, the kindergartens have focused on introducing the children to basic English, through the medium of Bislama. The vernacular kindergartens offer an excellent opportunity to develop vernacular literacy among the youngest generation of Neverver speakers. There is some community interest in pursuing this; and external support has been provided to develop suitable resources. Given the longstanding emphasis on preparatory English, the community may need to be persuaded to endorse any new understanding of the function of pre-school education. In late January 2008, two community members made the journey from Limap village in Malakula to Hamilton in New Zealand to work with me on the Neverver

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documentation project at the University of Waikato. 4 The two young women who came are both involved with the Limap kindergarten and they also participated as language consultants on the documentation project during my field trips. Over a five week period, we completed the editing and translation of a set of stories and further developed the Neverver-English dictionary. In addition, we were able to spend time developing a range of literacy resources for use in the Limap and Lingarakh kindergartens including a Neverver alphabet booklet and a counting booklet, large-print stories with pictures, and laminated flash cards to familiarize children with the written form of the language. The women took multiple copies of these resources back to the villages, along with newly learned word processing skills that will enable them to continue resource development as and when the technology is available. The community initiatives described above represent a solid interest in literacy development in the Neverver speech community. Although not planned in a formal way or managed by a language committee, these emerging interests are already seeing the distribution of literacy skills through the community, to elders, to young people, and to new generations of children.

13.5 The Linguist’s Role in Community Language Initiatives The local initiatives for language-related activities that I outlined in 13.4 represent a positive step towards the continued use and strengthening of the Neverver language. The development of vernacular literacy within the Neverver speech community should allow the language entry into the key domains of education and religion. Crucially, some of the steps being taken towards vernacular literacy have been locally initiated. It is well established that local initiatives are the key to successful language maintenance projects (cf. Nettle and Romaine 2000; Fishman 2001a). Such initiatives however, may rely on external support to get started. External support can involve material resources, such as the technology to record and reproduce language. This is a core requirement for the Neverver speech community, as people have very limited access to recording and printing technology. External support can also involve human resources, such as a linguist to assist with the formulation of an orthography. Again, this has been the case in the Neverver speech community, where a linguist was specifically requested to support orthographic development. Crowley (2004) considers how linguists can contribute to the support of Pacific languages. In his view, linguists have obligations to fulfil when they engage in research activities. These obligations are to various stakeholders in the research process, perhaps most importantly to the speakers of the language being studied: ‘We have an 4 This workshop was generously funded by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato and sponsored by clothing donations from Sport Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand.


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obligation to provide advice and education about language issues, to assist in the development of writing systems and written literatures, to advise about language development, and to document all languages in a form that is of interest – and understandable – to members of local communities’ (Crowley 2004: 320). When carrying out cultural research in Vanuatu, the obligations that Crowley (2004) discusses are formalized in the research agreement which is signed by the individual researcher and the Vanuatu National Cultural Council (n.d.). This agreement specifies that the researcher must create ‘a product of immediate benefit and use to the local community’ and ‘contribute to the interests of the local community in whatever ways possible so as to maximize the return to the community for their cooperation in the research work the research contract’ (Vanuatu National Cultural Council n.d.). Most importantly, ‘there will be maximum involvement of indigenous scholars, students and members of the community in research, full recognition of their collaboration, and training to enable their further contribution to country and community’ (Vanuatu National Cultural Council n.d.). This means that foreign researchers are formally obliged to participate in community activities, including the training of local people. In the context of carrying out research with the Neverver speech community, community members have articulated clearly how they would like me, as the visiting linguist, to contribute to their projects. My contributions therefore include collaboration with community members to develop an orthography, and to prepare and distribute materials written in this orthography. Along with these linguistic contributions, I also provide the community with access to the technology needed to produce these outputs. Early reports suggest that the community initiatives undertaken to date are enjoying success and finding support; the long-term result may well be improved language vitality.

Appendix: Results of the UNESCO Language Vitality Assessment of the Neverver Speech Community Factor 1: Intergenerational language transmission Limap Village (5. Stable yet threatened)

Lingarakh Village (4. Unsafe)

Neverver is spoken in most contexts by all generations with unbroken intergenerational transmission. A small number of children in Limap are dominant in another language.

Most, but not all children in Lingarakh speak Neverver as their first language, but this may be restricted to specific social domains. In some families, another local language or Bislama has become the dominant home language and Neverver is only used for communication outside the home with other Neverver speakers.

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Factor 2: Absolute number of speakers Limap Village

Lingarakh Village

TFC Plantation Settlement (coastward of Limap Village)

342

23

158

Losarsar Settlement (coastward of Lingarakh Village) 23

Factor 3: Proportion of speakers within the total population Limap Village (4. Unsafe)

Lingarakh Village (3. Definitely endangered)

Nearly all speak the language.

A majority speak the language; in a number of families with small children, the children are growing up with another language as the dominant home language.

Percentage of households with differing dominant languages

Percentage of households where Neverver is the dominant language of children Percentage of households where Bislama is the dominant language of children Percentage of households where another local language is the dominant language of children

Limap %

Lingarakh %

88

75

12

17

0

8

Languages reported to be spoken by the Neverver speech community Limap Village

Lingarakh Village

Actively used indigenous languages

Neverver

Reported known indigenous languages

Avava Neve’ei Uripiv (Northeast Malakula) Paamese Vivti A Pentecostal language Bislama

Neverver Avava Neve’ei Uripiv (Northeast Malakula) Paamese Asoruan (Maskelynes) Tape (Marakus, Tautu) Nitita (Viar) Bislama English

Additional (non-indigenous) languages


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Factor 4: Shifts in domains of language use Limap Village (4. Multilingual parity)

Lingarakh Village (3. Dwindling domains)

Bislama is the primary language in the official domains of government and public offices and in the church. A diglossic society has developed with Neverver associated with informal and home contexts, and Bislama associated with most official domains.

Neverver is used in home domains and for many functions, but Bislama is beginning to penetrate home domains. Language shift appears to be underway.

Factor 5: Response to new domains and media Neverver speech community (1. Minimal) Neverver is used in only a few new domains and its role is limited in these domains.

Factor 6: Materials for language education and literacy Neverver speech community (1. Minimal) A practical orthography is known to a small number of community members.

Factor 7: Governmental and institutional language attitudes and polities, including official status and use Neverver speech community (4. Differentiated support) Non-dominant languages are protected primarily as the language of the private domain. The use of the non-dominant language is prestigious.

Factor 8: Community members’ attitudes towards their own language Limap Village (3.)

Lingarakh Village (2.)

Many members support language maintenance; many others are indifferent or may even support language shift.

Some members support language maintenance; some are indifferent or may even support language shift.

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Factor 9: Type and quality of documentation. Pre-documentation project (2004) (1. Inadequate) Initially, there was a word list containing around 180 items published in Tryon (1976) under the name ‘Lingarak’. Grammatical sketches, audio and video recordings and texts did not exist. A handwritten set of translated hymns, and two typed version of this were held by one community member in Lingarakh village. Mid-documentation project (2006) (2.5. Fragmentary ∼ fair) There is now a partial grammatical description and a draft dictionary containing some 3,000 items with accompanying example sentences for some items. There is also a corpus containing 110 text recordings, most of which have been at least partly annotated. Also in the corpus is a series of over 60 elicitation sets each containing grammatical and lexical data. The set of hymns translated by a community member into Neverver has been digitized and the standardization and distribution process has begun. Post-documentation project (2008) (3.5. Fair ∼ good) There is a grammatical description, dictionaries, and text collections; a corpus of annotated audio recordings has been completed and some video material has been collected. The material has been distributed among community members.

14 First Language Education in Multilingual Contexts in the Philippines Catherine Young

14.1 The Philippine Context Kaplan and Baldauf (1998:355) describe the Philippines as ‘linguistically heterogeneous with no absolute majority of speakers of any given indigenous language’. The Ethnologue (Gordon 2005) lists 171 living languages within the Republic of the Philippines. McFarland (1980) suggests that there are 120 languages spoken in the country while Dutcher (1982:6) describes the linguistic situation as comprising ‘from 70–150 mutually unintelligible vernacular languages’. Headland (Chapter 6 of this volume) suggests that there are between 100 and 150 languages spoken in the Philippines. Sibayan (1967) suggests that the Filipino people have had to face the language problem at practically every stage in their history. Spanish colonization from 1521 until 1898 and the period of American rule from 1900 until the establishment of the Philippine Republic in 1946 have both had an impact upon language use in all walks of life, but perhaps none more than in the area of education. While the Philippines is a linguistically diverse nation, policies for literacy development in education have focused primarily on a bilingual approach using only Filipino and English. The Philippines Country ‘Education for All’ Assessment (1999) reports that the language of instruction fails, in many instances, to facilitate learning, leading to a high dropout rate among students. ‘For many poor children, the long trek (to school) had not been worth their time and effort, especially as learning appeared to be difficult using a vernacular different from that used at home. So they left school.’ (Philippine EFA report 1999:9). Gloria Baguingan (1999:2), an educator from the northern Philippines and a speaker of Ilocano and Balangao, notes that students from minority language communities ‘ . . . do not possess the background, attributes and skills of the dominant language group (they are) distanced from the sources of power and status held by the majority groups who speak the major languages’.

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The report of the Philippine Commission on Educational Reform (2000) also recommended that Local Government Units (LGUs) and the Indigenous Cultural Communities (ICCs) of ethnolinguistic areas could be encouraged to carry out programs and projects such that they could develop the necessary resources to be able to implement vernacular teaching in the primary grades in their respective areas (Young 2001). In April 2000, when the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Educational Reform (PCER) were published, renewed impetus was given to the national use of linguae francae such as Ilocano, Cebuano, Ilonggo, and other minority languages. The preamble to Specific Proposal Seven of the reform agenda reads: While reaffirming the Bilingual Education Policy and the improvement in the teaching of English and Filipino, this proposal aims to introduce the use of the regional lingua franca or vernacular as the medium of instruction in Grade One. Studies have shown that this change will make students stay in, rather than drop out of, school, learn better, quicker and more permanently and will, in fact, be able to use the first language as a bridge to more effective learning in English and Filipino as well as facilitate the development of their cognitive maturity. (PCER 2000: 60)

14.2 Multilingual Education Fishman emphasizes the role of children and families in language maintenance and vitality. If a language is going to be used by the next generation, parents and their children need to affirm the importance of their language and culture in relation to the daily life of the community and make intentional choices to use the language of the community in specific domains. ‘The road to societal death is paved by language activity that is not focused on intergenerational continuity i.e. that is diverted into efforts that do not involve and influence the socialization behaviours of families of child-bearing age.’ (1991:91). Over the last century, many people who speak minority languages have become aware of the rapid changes that are taking place in the world outside their communities. They would like to have access to new information and technologies and to government education programs. However, they often face two problems—they do not speak the language that is used in the government programs and therefore, in order to succeed in the education system, they have often been forced to sacrifice their linguistic and cultural heritage. This situation seems to be changing. More people, including those in power, have realized that minority language communities have the right to education in a language they speak and understand. Programs that begin in the learners’ mother tongue are being established in minority communities around the world. Most of these programs are community-based, supported by NGOs, government agencies, universities and others from the majority cultures. UNESCO (2003a) notes that ‘. . . while there are strong educational arguments in favour of mother tongue (or first language) instruction, a careful balance also needs

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to be made between enabling people to use local languages in learning, and providing access to global languages of communication through education’. Can programmes with such characteristics be developed in a multilingual and culturally diverse social context such as the Philippines and other Asian nations? In order to provide optimum educational opportunities for learners from minority language communities, it would appear that a structured use of the home language on entry to school, systematically progressing to the languages defined in the Bilingual Education Policy, would provide a firmer foundation in language education for minority language students. Curriculum content sends messages to the child that affect self-esteem and identity. Positive identity and high self-esteem cannot develop where the latent curriculum is telling the child that their experiences are second best or valueless. Thus, a commitment must be made to an integrative approach in curriculum development where differences in language and culture are respected and viewed as strengths for the development of a pluralistic Philippine society. Both in the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia, three areas have been observed to be critical in the successful implementation of multilingual education (MLE) programmes that provide learners with quality language education beginning in the first language. They are (1) Committed, motivated individuals and institutions from the ethnolinguistic community and others who will support implementation and sustainable development of a programme. Effective stakeholder involvement with intentional leadership development as a component of capacity building. (2) Structured approaches that will enable learners to build a firm foundation of literacy skills in their first language and bridge successfully into one or more languages that can be used for life-long learning. (3) A supportive policy environment for language education. Among languages communities of the Philippines, there are a number of examples of good practice, illustrating the context in which multilingual education beginning in the mother tongue is happening within both the formal and non-formal sectors. Each of these areas will be discussed below. Malone (2007) emphasizes that ‘multilingual education programmes require a supportive political context, thoughtful planning, careful preparation, and cooperation among multiple agencies, organizations and individuals.’ Figure 14.1 below by Malone (2007) describes the components of strong and sustainable MLE programmes. It is important that each component reflects strong input by and support from stakeholders in order that programmes can be well-grounded within the local community and adapt to meet the changing needs of the multilingual community as languages change roles within the society. Minority language education programmes are both supported and recommended in a number of documents suggesting language-in-education policy development for

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Catherine Young Supportive language and education policies, with clear directives for implementation and sustainability

Preliminary research that provides information about languages and language communities and that identifies resources for MLE

Cooperation among supporting agencies— local, district, national and international

Monitoring, evaluation and documentation to assess learners’ progress and identify program strengths and weaknesses Recruitment and training that bring motivated and respected people into the programme and build their professional capacity

Awareness raising and mobilization that generates interest and support for MLE at all levels

Essential components of strong and sustained MLE programmes

Graded reading materials, in the learners’ home language and additional languages that help them build competence and confidence in reading for enjoyment and learning

Orthographies for each minority language that are acceptable to mother tongue speakers and to appropriate authorities

MLE -specific instructional materials that build on the minority learners’ language, knowledge and experience and enable them to ‘bridge’ to one or more additional languages

Figure 14.1 Components of strong and sustainable MLE programmes (Malone 2007)

the Philippines (Philippines Department of Education, Culture and Sports 1999, Asian Development Bank 1999, Philippine Commission on Education Reform 2000, Brigham and Castillo 2000) and are widely promoted in internationalrecommendations from UNICEF (2004), UNESCO (1996, 2000, 2003a, 2003b, Schaeffer 2003) and other international multilateral organizations (UNHCR 2004; Rae 2006). However, current practice in the Philippines indicates that approaches to multilingual education beginning in the first language of the learner are generally in initial stages of development or localized and not yet widely implemented. The recommendations included in the 1999 Asian Development Bank/World Bank Education Sector Study underline the need for community members, including family members, to be active participants in the process, planning and management of education in order that educational interventions including multilingual education will be responsive to needs in the community, particularly children and young people. Gloria Baguingan (undated report) has worked with educators from the Ifugao, Bontoc, Kankanaey, and Kalinga languages of the northern Philippines, training them to develop materials and strategically and intentionally use the first language in the classroom. Curriculum development, teacher training, materials production and, not least, institutional and community support need to be in place before a successful, sustainable multilingual education programme beginning in the first language of the learner can be established. Community-driven multilingual literacy and education programmes with locally-supported educational planning incorporating local authorship


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and local-language literature development can be both the impetus and foundation for further language development work in the community—such as the development of dictionaries, multilingual wordlists, graded reading material in multiple languages, teaching-learning materials for formal and non-formal education programmes, collections of oral literature (as appropriate), and grammatical description.

14.3 Capacity Development Community participation is crucial in the planning, execution and management of approaches to literacy. According to Robinson (1997:2) ‘the capacity of individuals and communities needs to grow as the vision (for literacy) takes root’. This is particularly important if programme development and management is to be handled within the community rather than by outside agencies. Brown (1996) saw community participation as crucial in the planning, execution and management of approaches to literacy in the community. This means three kinds of activity:

r Training in skills: including capacity building and vision sharing skills. r Promoting access to resources: not all resources need to be available locally, but they need to be managed locally.

r Institutional development: there must be some organized collective responsibility to ensure that the vision is carried forward and extended within the community. Community members should have the capacity to be advocates for the needs of their ethnolinguistic group as well as the expansion of appropriate approaches to other minority language communities. If these capacities are retained only by the initiator of the programme, it will never be sustainable, particularly if the programme initiator is an outside agency. Dorian (1998:21) argues that ‘Moral support and technical expertise, including linguistic expertise, can and should be offered, certainly, but acceptance or rejection will necessarily lie with individual communities. Even in the event of acceptance, effective leadership can only come from inside the community’. From the beginning, local people should be seen—and see themselves—as co-workers in the achievement of the vision. From the outset, the philosophy of the programme planner must be as an equipper of others to become interdependent workers. SIL International, the Translator’s Association of the Philippines and other national and international NGOs have partnered with a number of language communities in the Philippines to implement educational approaches which begin in the first language of the learners and transition to the national languages of the country. Critical to the development of these programmes has been the emphasis on capacity building among community members in all aspects of sustainable programme development. Continuing to include others and share the vision for on-going education in the community

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is a process that local people take upon themselves, as they become ‘owners’ of the programme.

14.4 Multilingual Education in Ethnolinguistic Communities 14.4.1 Manobo communities of Mindanao There are eleven varieties of Manobo language listed in the Ethnologue (Gordon 2005): Agusan Manobo, Ata Manobo, Cinamiguin Manobo, Cotabato Manobo, Dibabawon Manobo, Ilianen Manobo, Matigsalug Manobo, Obo Manobo, Rajah Kabunsuwan Manobo, Sarangani Manobo, and Western Bukidnon Manobo. Matigsalug Manobo is spoken in Davao del Norte and southeast Bukidnon, Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The population of the ethnolinguistic community is 30,000 with around 5,000 monolingual in Matigsalug Manobo (Gordon 2005). In their assessment of the process of working with the Matigsalug Manobo of central Mindanao to establish a community based and community managed non-formal multilingual education programme for young people and adults (van Riezen et al 1999), Robert and Margaret Hunt and Karsten and Irene van Riezen acknowledge that it is necessary to invest significant time in the mobilization of local community members before implementing the technical aspects of the programme in order to develop effective ownership of the programme at community level. Matigsalug Literacy Education Incorporated (MALEI) is an officially recognized nongovernmental organization (NGO) which has won awards from the regional Department of Education three years running for the best community literacy programme. This has raised the self-esteem of the Matigsalug Manobo people. Lynne Pina is a Filipina educator from the Translators Association of the Philippines who has worked in partnership with the Western Bukidnon Manobo community to implement non-formal multilingual literacy programmes for adults. Pina (1992) writes that ‘If we want a program to continue, the local community must participate in the initial planning, organizing and running of the program . . . the finishing of tasks . . . in no way guarantees the basis for sustainable impacts. That can only come when people within the social context have captured and internalized the motivating vision, have acquired the capacity to train others in the necessary skills and have access to resources’. The Obo Manobo language is spoken in the area on the northeastern slopes of Mt Apo, between Davao del Sur and North Cotabato, Mindanao. The Ethnologue (Gordon 2005) lists 93,341 speakers of Obo Manobo with 35,000 monolingual in Obo Manobo. Bogobo is a common alternate name used for this ethnolinguistic community. The Obo Manobo Active Language Resource and Community Development, Inc (OMALRACDI) is an indigenous people’s organization. 1 One of the intents of 1 This organization was formally registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines in March 1999 (Vander Molen and Khor 1999).


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the leadership of the group is to highlight the Obo Manobo language as a resource and one of the first activities of the committee was to spearhead the completion of a population/language survey of the outlying Obo Manobo communities. This was seen as necessary by the community led steering committee in order to ascertain the areas in southern Mindanao where the language is actively spoken and areas open to literacy, beginning in the mother tongue. The leadership of this organization are involved in raising awareness of the language and culture of the Obo Manobo and:

r promotion of literacy—equipping Manobos to become literacy teachers and supervisors for adult non-formal education.

r production of materials for the literacy programme. r translation of Scripture—by pastors and leaders from churches in the Obo Manobo community.

r facilitation of health care and education programmes. r community service. r analysis and documentation of the Obo Manobo language. Members of OMALRACDI have also been involved in the research and documentation associated with ancestral domain land claims. If community members feel they have an effective role in making positive change within their community and see OMALRACDI as the vehicle to accomplish this, it seems that they will continue to see the potential of using the Obo Manobo language as a valid instrument among other languages for meeting the development needs of the Manobo community.

14.4.2 Lubuagan Kalinga The Kalinga languages of the northern Philippines are classified as South-Central Cordilleran/Central Cordilleran languages and related to the Itneg languages. The Ethnologue (Gordon 2005) lists eight varieties of Kalinga languages: Butbut Kalinga, Limos Kalinga, Lower Tanudan Kalinga (Minangali), Lubuagan Kalinga, Mabaka Valley Kalinga, Madukayang Kalinga, Southern Kalinga, and Upper Tanudan Kalinga. The municipality of Lubuagan lies in the province of Kalinga in the Cordillera mountains. Lubuagan has approximately 12,000 speakers who live in two valleys. Few non-Lubuagans live in the area and those who move into the municipality through marriage or for business purposes learn Lilubuagan, the local language. There is one school district with thirteen elementary schools and three high schools. Members of SIL International: Philippines have worked alongside members of the Lubuagan Kalinga community, the Department of Education at all administrative levels, and local school teachers to implement a flourishing multilingual education programme within the formal elementary education system (Dekker 1999, Dekker and Dumatog 2003; Dekker and Young 2006).

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Initial community mobilization steps included the explicit desire to share the ‘vision’ for mother tongue literacy for young children as the foundation for quality education in Filipino and English—the national languages of education. SIL linguists Greg and Diane Dekker were involved in language documentation, working with local leaders to raise the value of the Kalinga language in the eyes of the community. Orthography was developed based on both the phonological and morphophonemic characteristics of the language and the relationships between the Kalinga language and other languages of contact. Participatory research, collaboration in the process of linguistic research, and community-based decision-making encouraged the local teachers and community leaders to identify strongly with the orthographic choices that were made. The teachers were equipped to explain the writing system for the language and teach reading in the Lubuagan Kalinga language. Teachers and others language speakers have produced books in the local language with illustrations from local artists. These include trilingual reading books, a math book, health books, and a social studies book. Vernacular language awareness activities—such as reading contests and song writing competitions—have been initiated by school teachers and other community members and have become part of local events such as fiesta and school closing activities. Teachers were trained in the process of holding writer’s workshops for others in the community. This has empowered the teachers to be more successful in the classroom as has been noticed by Cirilo Bauer, a member of the communityled First Language Component steering committee and Sanguniang Bayan Secretary in the Municipal Government of Lubuagan. He affirmed the approach being used, saying, ‘Since using the First Language Component approach, the teachers have been enriched, their teaching methods have improved and the students can understand more easily’ (UNESCO-SIL 2007). In preparing for the implementation of the first language-based multilingual education approach, the linguists shared stories of what was happening in neighbouring language communities and shared sample materials from Tuwali Ifugao (Hohulin 1993, Young 1999), another mountain community, and talked of the theoretical studies (Cummins 1976; 2000; Baker 2006) that gave credibility to the approach that was being discussed. Through intentional conversations, they learned the concerns of the community regarding language and culture change issues. However, it required a young teacher (Rose) in one of the private schools in the central town of Lubuagan to be willing to take a risk. She was offered the opportunity to take a course at Nueva Viscaya Institute of Technology, Bayombong for MA credit that included a component focusing on multilingual education strategies taught by Dr. Gloria Baguingan, an educator from the Balangao community of Mountain Province. Rose tried this innovative approach in an elementary classroom with Grade One students using Lilubuagan, the mother tongue of the students, as the basis for teaching Filipino and English, the national languages of education. The general opinion of the school administration was that the children in Rose’s class demonstrated the best results in standardized tests for 25 years.


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The Lubuagan Kalinga multilingual education programme emphasizes literacy skills in Kalinga before introducing oral Filipino and English. Decisions about teaching methodology reached by the teachers and others involved in the steering committee for the first language education programme were based on the following premises (Dekker and Dumatog 2003):

r By using the students’ mother tongue in the classroom to teach literacy skills as well as subject content, the students’ cognitive skills would be developed.

r By teaching concepts in the mother tongue, the students would be exposed to comprehensible input and enabled to develop concepts further.

r Separating content learning, language learning, and acquisition of literacy skills would enable students to focus on one discipline at a time. Thus, basic literacy skills and content could be mastered through the mother tongue. Filipino and English were taught as foreign languages, rather than used as a medium to learn subject matter or acquire literacy skills.

r In the Filipino or English language lessons, content already mastered in the mother tongue could be used in order to focus on foreign language acquisition. Emphasis on comprehension driven teaching and learning strategies emphasize oral competence before the introduction of literacy in the second and third languages, English and Filipino. Malone (2007) suggests the model in Figure 14.2 for the phases of a three language multilingual education programme. Dr Edilberto de Jesus, Director of the Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), visited classrooms implementing the First Language Component when he was Secretary of Education in the Philippines. In a videoed interview, he said that, although he could not understand what was going on, ‘what was more important was that the kids know what was going on and they were clearly engaged in the learning process. I have been, since then, a strong advocate of using the mother tongue’ (UNESCO-SIL 2007). SIL International is partnering with the Lubuagan Kalinga community and local Department of Education to assess the impact of first language education on learners and the community. Quantitative measures relating to student achievement are being used as well as classroom observation techniques and analysis of student retention in school. Although this research project is in its early stages, standardized test results indicate an evident impact on learning outcomes for elementary school students (Dekker 2006 pers. comm.). In 2006, Lubuagan district scored number one in the whole Department of Education division in Grade Three reading assessment in Filipino and English. Both teachers and the Division Superintendent state that this significant difference and increase in attainment in comparison with previous years is due to use of structured multilingual education approaches in the early grades of elementary schools in the district.

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Catherine Young Continue building fluency and confidence in using L1, L2,and L3 for everyday communication and for learning new concepts Introduce reading and writing in L3 Continue building oral and written L1 and L2 Introduce oral L3 Continue building oral and written L1 and oral L2 Introduce reading and writing in L2 Continue building oral and written L1 Introduce oral L2 Continue building oral L1 Introduce reading and writing in L1 Build small children’s fluency and confidence in oral L1

Figure 14.2 Model for the phases of a three language multilingual education programme (Malone 2007)

14.4.3 Tagakaulo Kalagan In southern Mindanao, Tagakaulo Kalagan is spoken in the provinces of Sarangani and Davao del Sur. Tagakaulo is related to the Mansaka, Mandaya, and DavawenyoKalagan languages. Among the Tagakaulo Kalagan, non-formal education approaches for children and young people have also successfully used a multilingual approach developing a strong foundation in the mother tongue with structured bridging to both Filipino and English. Dawson (2001) noted that the pupils in one particular experimental class in the village of Lankuas had no experience of a print environment in any language but needed capability in both a second and third language in order to progress to further formal schooling if they so desired. Trilingual readers have also been used among the Tagakaulo Kalagan people, where the materials reflect the cultural context of the lives of the Tagakaulo and the interests of the readers. As in the methodology implemented in the Lubuagan Kalinga education programme above, learners develop fluency in reading and writing in their first language and gain proficiency in oral Filipino before beginning literacy in Filipino and similarly, oral competence in English before the introduction of literacy.


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14.5 Supportive Policy Environment From experiences of proponents of multilingual education in the Philippines, including SIL International, strategic responses to the needs of minority peoples are necessary at all levels. International advocacy and effective grassroots programmes work hand in hand to provide access to effective education for children from minority language communities. The impact of promoting local ownership and leadership in the first language literacy programme is broad-ranging. In addition to literacy as a personal skill set relating to reading and writing being brought to the community, leadership development through participation in community-based education programmes has an implication for other development activities. Leadership skills acquired in the context of language and education development can be modelled and transferred into other community projects. Leaders developed within first language literacy programmes can mentor others in both formal and non-formal educational development interventions. In 1999, UNESCO officially adopted the term ‘multilingual education’ in the General Conference Resolution 12 (UNESCO 2003:17), referring to the use of at least three languages in education—the mother tongue, a regional or national language, and an international language. The resolution recognized that the requirements of global and national participation and the specific needs of ethnic and linguistic minorities can only be addressed by multilingual education. Articles 14 and 17 of the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the 1996 Barcelona Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights, promoted by the International PEN Club’s Translations and Linguistic Rights Committee and the Escarre International Centre for Ethnic Minorities and Nations, with the moral and technical support of UNESCO (Crystal 2000:91) both endorse the desire to foster the capacity for linguistic and cultural self-expression of ethnolinguistic communities and the need to provide educational structures which will help maintain and develop the language spoken by the language community. However, there is a need for policy at national level in the Philippines which provides ‘clear directives for implementation and sustainability’ (Malone 2007) of effective language education programmes which use the mother tongue of the learners. Interagency dialogue is needed, including government, multilateral organizations, NGOs, and communities in order to develop, validate, and share scalable and adaptable models for multilingual education for minority language communities.

14.6 Conclusion Education, as a service to individual children, minority language communities and national development throughout the world espouses quality, inclusion, and integration as important aims—particularly in relation to the goals of Education for All (UNESCO 2000) and the Millennium Development Goals (UN 2006). Nadine Dutcher stresses that ‘Learning first through the local language is the indispensable gateway

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to becoming locally functional and globally competitive. For politicians, educators, and development specialists the course for action is fraught with difficulties. With leadership, political will, community support, and shared experience, many of the difficulties can be overcome’ (2004:48). In order to provide an appropriate educational environment for children from minority language communities, it is crucial that strategies are implemented to provide language education that will contribute to maintenance and revitalization of minority languages allowing members of ethnolinguistic communities to access quality education relevant to their needs, equipping learners to live as full participants in a multicultural and multilingual world. It appears clear, however, that the sustainability of local language literacy programmes depends on ownership of the vision and the skills involved in development of the innovation. Successful language revitalization projects often involve institutes, universities, government agencies, and NGOs working together, facilitating informed choice for planning and developing capacity in local language speakers for sustainable development using local languages and additional languages as necessary. Thus, a principled approach towards community ownership, management and leadership development is an essential component in cooperative planning for multilingual education and other language-based development interventions.

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