K. Alexander Adelaar (with assistance of Pak Virus Kaslem), 2005, Salako or Badamea. Sketch Grammar, Texts and Lexicon of a Kanayatn Dialect in West Borneo.

K. Alexander Adelaar (with assistance of Pak Virus Kaslem), 2005, Salako or Badamea. Sketch Grammar, Texts and Lexicon of a Kanayatn Dialect in West Borneo. K. Alexander Adelaar (with assistance of Pak Virus Kaslem), 2005,Salako or Badamea. Sketch Grammar, Texts and Lexicon of a KanayatnDialect in West Borneo. (Frankfurter Forschungen zu Stidostasien 2).Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, viii, 328 pages, 1 map, bound. ISBN ISBNabbr.International Standard Book NumberISBNInternational Standard Book NumberISBNn abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m3-447-05102-7, Euro 78,-/sFr 132,- West Borneo has emerged in recent years as an area of specialinterest to linguists A linguist in the academic sense is a person who studies linguistics. Ambiguously, the word is sometimes also used to refer to a polyglot (one who knows more than 2 languages), or a grammarian, but these two uses of the word are distinct. . A quick glance at a map of Southeast Asia Southeast Asia,region of Asia (1990 est. pop. 442,500,000), c.1,740,000 sq mi (4,506,600 sq km), bounded roughly by the Indian subcontinent on the west, China on the north, and the Pacific Ocean on the east. helpsexplain why this is so. West Borneo forms the eastern side of a roughlytriangular maritime crossroads, linking eastern Sumatra, Johore and theRiau Archipelago Riau Archipelago(rē`ou, rē`ō), island group (1990 pop. 568,019), 2,280 sq mi (5,905 sq km), Indonesia, at the entrance to the Strait of Malacca, separated from Malaya by the Strait of Singapore. on the west and northwest with Java on the south, aregion comprising, in short, the central heartland of historicalIndon-Malay civilization. What makes West Borneo of particular interest to linguists is thatthe area appears to have been the original homeland of Proto-Malayic,the source from which the modern Malay language Malay language:see Malayo-Polynesian languages. Malay languageAustronesian language with some 33 million first-language speakers in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, and other parts of Indonesia and Malaysia. , in all its diverseforms, derives. Spreading from West Borneo to Sumatra, the MalayPeninsula Malay Peninsula(məlā`, mā`lā), southern extremity (c.70,000 sq mi/181,300 sq km) of the continent of Asia, lying between the Andaman Sea of the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Malacca on the west and the Gulf of Thailand and the , coastal Java and beyond, Malay subsequently became, in thecourse of this dispersal, the great world language and lingua franca lingua franca(lĭng`gwə frăng`kə), an auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking different and mutually unintelligible tongues in order to ofIsland Southeast Asia. Later history has, of course, complicatedmatters. With the development of states and sea-going trade, more recentforms of Malay have spread back to coastal Borneo, here assuminglinguistic hegemony over a number of local languages, some of them, likeMalay itself, similarly derived from Proto-Malayic. As a historical linguist lin��guist?n.1. A person who speaks several languages fluently.2. A specialist in linguistics.[Latin lingua, language; see , K. A. Adelaar, the author of this book,has been a leading figure in the reconstruction of Proto-Malayic and itsearly history, including its West Borneo origins. In the opening pagesof Salako or Badamea, he briefly summarizes this history and the currentstatus of present-day Malayic languages The Malayic languages belong to the Sunda-Sulawesi languages.They include 25 languages dispersed from central Sumatra, including Malay (Malaysian/Indonesian), Minangkabau in central Sumatra, Acehnese in Aceh, the Chamic languages in Vietnam and Cambodia, Moken in Thailand , their internal relations, andplace within the larger Austronesian language Noun 1. Austronesian language - the family of languages spoken in Australia and Formosa and Malaysia and PolynesiaAustronesiannatural language, tongue - a human written or spoken language used by a community; opposed to e.g. family. A major source ofevidence supporting a proposed West Borneo homeland comes from thepresence in the area of a number of indigenous Malayic languages anddialects. Together these form a major regional language group in Borneoof, perhaps, a million speakers. By far the most widely spoken and bestknown of these languages is Iban, spoken by well over 600,000 persons,the vast majority of them living in the East Malaysian state of Sarawak.Iban is among the best-documented languages of Southeast Asia. Much lessis known of other West Borneo Malayic languages, however, particularlythose of Indonesian West Kalimantan West Kalimantan (Indonesian: Kalimantan Barat often abbreviated to Kalbar) is a province of Indonesia. It is one of four Indonesian provinces in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. Its capital city Pontianak is located right on the Equator line. . The significance of Adelaar'sbook is that it represents the first in-depth publication by aprofessionally trained linguist of any West Kalimantan language and,more particularly, the first work of its kind on a non-Iban, West BorneoMalayic language. Salako or Badamea is divided into four parts: an introduction, asketch grammar, texts, and a Salako-English lexicon. The introduction,at 14 pages, is by far the shortest of these parts. In it, Adelaaridentifies and geographically locates the Salako speech community,describes the West Kalimantan ethnic and linguistic setting, andexplains his use of the terms "Salako" and"Kanayatn" as linguistic labels. Here, very briefly, hedispenses with several notable misconceptions, thereby performing avaluable service, not only to linguists, but also to anthropologists andothers working in western Borneo. Salako (or Badamea, as Adelaar uses the term, refers to a speechvariety, spoken in the westernmost tip of Sarawak and in discontinuous discontinuous/dis��con��tin��u��ous/ (dis?kon-tin��u-us)1. interrupted; intermittent; marked by breaks.2. discrete; separate.3. lacking logical order or coherence. areas of the Sambas and Bengkayang Regencies of West Kalimantan, which,together with a number of others (Ahe, Banana', etc.) make up agroup of mutually intelligible dialects that together constitute, in astrict linguistic sense, one language, which Adelaar calls"Kanayatn" (or, in Malay, "Kendayan"). In Sarawak,the Salako are more commonly known as "Selako." The term"Salako" (or "Selako") is also used as a localethnic label in Sarawak and the Sambas Regency, but not in Bengkayang oraround Singkawang Town, where it is replaced by "Badamea" or"Damea." Adelaar estimates the total Salako speakingpopulation at around 34,000. Confusingly, in Sarawak, the Salako dialect has been mistakenlyidentified in the past as a variety of Bidayuh (or Land Dayak). Whilecertainly living in close contact and culturally influenced by theBidayuh, the dialect spoken by the Salako, as Adelaar makes eminentlyclear, is unmistakably Malayic, not Bidayuh. Present-day Salako speakersgenerally claim an area near Singkawang, in southern Sambas, as theirplace of origin. Like many other ethnic labels, the term originallyreferred to a river, but, also reminiscent of many West Kalimantanethnic terms, today, reflecting past migrations, there are no Salakoliving along the Salako River. In addition to Salako, other Kanayatndialects are spoken over areas of the Bengkayang, Pontianak and LandakRegencies of West Kalimantan. Total numbers are unknown, but mostestimates cited by the author place the total Kanayatn-speakingpopulation, including Salako, at around 300,000, making Kanayatn a majorregional language of West Kalimantan. As Adelaar notes, his use of the term "Kanayatn" departsimportantly from common usage. As he observes, the term"Kanayatn" was first adopted in the scholarly literature bythe Kalimantan scholar Albertus. Here, Adelaar explicitly uses"Kanayatn" to replace his own earlier term "West MalayicDayak." However, as he notes, in popular usage, the term"Kanayatn" is linguistically imprecise and, reversing thesituation in Sarawak, is often applied to neighboring Bidayuh speechcommunities as well. Here, he reserves the term solely for Malayicspeakers, who, like the Salako, speak variants of a "Kanayatnlanguage." An older view in the West Kalimantan ethnographic eth��nog��ra��phy?n.The branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures.eth��nog literature is that the Kanayatn constitute a non-Malayic Dayak groupthat has undergone strong Malay influence. This view, identifiedparticularly with the writings of Jan Ave, was subsequently elaboratedby Victor King in his popular book The Peoples of Borneo. Here, theKanayatn appear as an intermediating category within a theorizedDayak-Malay assimilation continuum composed of Malayized"Dayaks" in the process of "becoming Malay" (masukMelayu). Another consequence of Adelaar's work, and that of otherrecent linguists, is to render this view untenable. Kanayatn speakers inAdelaar's terms belong, instead, to an indigenous Malayic languagestratum stratum/stra��tum/ (strat��um) (stra��tum) pl. stra��ta ? [L.] a layer or lamina.stratum basa��le in Borneo, whose existence long predates the emergence of modernMalay and its present-day linguistic dominance. Part Two of Salako or Badamea is far more comprehensive than itsmodest title, "Sketch Grammar," suggests, covering Salakophonology phonology,study of the sound systems of languages. It is distinguished from phonetics, which is the study of the production, perception, and physical properties of speech sounds; phonology attempts to account for how they are combined, organized, and convey meaning , morphophonemics mor��pho��pho��ne��mics?n.1. (used with a pl. verb) The changes in pronunciation undergone by allomorphs of morphemes as they are modified by neighboring sounds, as the plural allomorphs in cat-s, dog-s, box-es, (including orthography), and morphosyntax mor��pho��syn��tax?n.1. The study of grammatical categories or linguistic units that have both morphological and syntactic properties.2. .The account is addressed primarily to linguists, but incorporates someinteresting innovations. Part Three, "Texts," is by far thelongest and most accessible to a general reader. It consists of twentytexts, appearing here, except for Text 1 (which includes an additionalinterlinear in��ter��lin��e��ar?adj.1. Inserted between the lines of a text.2. Written or printed with different languages or versions in alternating lines.Adj. 1. gloss), first in vernacular Salako, and then in Englishtranslation, with numbered paragraphs to facilitate comparison. Thetexts, Adelaar tells us, were recorded in Nyarumkop, in the SingkawangTimur District (Bengkayang), from a single language informant, PakKaslem, whose assistance the author admirably acknowledges on the titlepage. The texts consist of both folktales and accounts of traditionalcustoms. The customs described include wedding rules; customs involvingchildbirth, cremation cremation,disposal of a corpse by fire. It is an ancient and widespread practice, second only to burial. It has been found among the chiefdoms of the Pacific Northwest, among Northern Athapascan bands in Alaska, and among Canadian cultural groups. , killing enemy warriors; and rules for takingfruit from others, keeping gold in jars, farm work, and adultery. Someof the practices described, such as cremation, are no longer observedand in several of the texts the narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. explains how current practiceshave changed. All of the texts are interesting, but, perhaps, specialnote should be taken of that relating the adat prescribed for killing anenemy warrior, as very few vernacular texts referring to indigenousheadhunting headhuntingPractice of removing, displaying, and in some cases preserving human heads. Headhunting arises in some cultures from a belief in the existence of a more or less material soul that resides in the head. have been recorded for Borneo. The rules themselves arestriking and, in context, notably humane. While West Kalimantan, until a decade ago, was one of the mostpoorly studied provinces in Indonesia in terms of language, this was notalways the case. During the Dutch colonial period Colonial Period may generally refer to any period in a country's history when it was subject to administration by a colonial power. Korea under Japanese rule Colonial America See alsoColonialism a number of importanttextual works were produced. For Malayic languages, by far the mostvaluable of these were written by the missionary-ethnographer DonatusDunselman, who recorded and annotated invaluable language texts, notonly for Iban-related groups like the Mualang and Kantu', but alsofor the Kanayatn-speaking Ahe. It is interesting to note, as Adelaarcomments, that versions of several of his Salako folktales, includingText 1, a narrative account of the origins of rice, were previouslyrecorded, almost a century ago, by Dunselman among the Kanayatn-speakingAhe. Similarly, a number of the Salako tales that appear here have closeIban counterparts, for example, "The story of Ne'Sata curing acrocodile." Three of the ten folktales that Adelaar records concernthe Salako comic fool, Pak Aiai, whom Iban audiences will at onceidentify with their own Apai Alui. Finally, Part Four concludes the book with a substantial, 105-page"Lexicon," a major contribution by itself, containing over2,500 entries, many of them including, in addition to the main entry,example sentences (many taken from the texts in Part Three), derivativeforms and idioms. While Professor Adelaar will no doubt remain best known as ahistorical linguist for his work on the origin and history of Malay,with Salako or Badamea, he has made a substantive and lastingcontribution to the study of Borneo languages as well. (Clifford Sather,Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki is not to be confused with the Helsinki University of Technology.The University of Helsinki (Finnish: Helsingin yliopisto, Swedish: Helsingfors universitet. Reprinted herewith permission from Asian Folklore Studies, volume 65, no. 1, 2006.)