This landmark publication in comparative linguistics is the first comprehensive work to address the general issue of what kinds of words tend to be borrowed from other languages. The authors have ...assembled a unique database of over 70,000 words from 40 languages from around the world, 18,000 of which are loanwords. This database (http://loanwords.info) allows the authors to make empirically founded generalizations about general tendencies of word exchange among languages.
Onya Darat is a language spoken, with great dialectal variation, in the interior of western Borneo. It is the southernmost member of Land Dayak, a branch of the Austronesian language family. This ...article reports on the development of a writing system for Onya Darat. In addition to five vowels and 19 simple consonants, Onya Darat also exhibits three series of complex oral-nasal segments: prenasalized oral stops, preoralized nasals, and postoralized nasals. An analysis of the Onya Darat sound system reveals that of these three series only postoralized nasals are distinctive and therefore need to be represented in the writing system. The proposed orthography, developed with the aid of native speakers, represents all and only the phonemes of Onya Darat without resorting to diacritics or special characters.
This book is the first work to address the question of what kinds of words get borrowed in a systematic and comparative perspective. It studies lexical borrowing behavior on the basis of a world-wide ...sample of 40 languages, both major languages and minor languages, and both languages with heavy borrowing and languages with little lexical influence from other languages. The book is the result of a five-year project bringing together a unique group of specialists of many different languages and areas. The introductory chapters provide a general up-to-date introduction to language contact at the word level, as well as a presentation of the project's methodology. All the chapters are based on samples of 1000-2000 words, elicited by a uniform meaning list of 1460 meanings. The combined database, comprising over 70, 000 words, is published online at the same time as the book is published. For each word, information about loanword status is given in the database, and the 40 case studies in the book describe the social and historical contact situations in detail. The final chapter draws general conclusions about what kinds of words tend to get borrowed, what kinds of word meanings are particularly resistant to borrowing, and what kinds of social contact situations lead to what kinds of borrowing situations.
Onya Darat is a language spoken, with great dialectal variation, in the interior of western Borneo. It is the southernmost member of Land Dayak, a branch of the Austronesian language family. This ...article reports on the development of a writing system for Onya Darat. In addition to five vowels and 19 simple consonants, Onya Darat also exhibits three series of complex oral-nasal segments: prenasalized oral stops, preoralized nasals, and postoralized nasals. An analysis of the Onya Darat sound system reveals that of these three series only postoralized nasals are distinctive and therefore need to be represented in the writing system. The proposed orthography, developed with the aid of native speakers, represents all and only the phonemes of Onya Darat without resorting to diacritics or special characters.
...war hardships caused the cessation of oral literary activities in the Malay community (see below), which restricted language use and contributed to a change in speakers' attitudes towards their ...language. The government agreed, as long as waqf (mosque-owned) land was used. ...public schools were built on mosque grounds in the Malay villages, modelled after the public schools located in Buddhist temples. Improved transportation conditions, which brought highways to within walking distance and motorboats right into the villages, also decreased the Malays' isolation. ...the proportion of elementary school graduates among Malay villagers was rapidly increasing. ...I.I. grew up bilingual, and his proficiency in Thai was reinforced when he entered elementary school.I.I. was the oldest speaker interviewed for this study who reported having spoken Thai with his parents.
PDF
