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Gary Holton

Western Pantar language

The language referred to here as "Western Pantar" (WP) is spoken by approximately 10,804 people on the island of Pantar in southeastern Indonesia, in the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur. WP is one of at least five non-Austronesian languages spoken on the island: the others being Nedebang, Blagar, Teiwa, and Tereweng. An Austronesian language, Alorese (ISO 639-3: aol), is also spoken in some areas of the island.

The information on this site is intended as a preliminary sketch of a previously undocumented language. Field work is ongoing, and these pages will be updated as more information becomes available and as more analyses are developed. Final results of this field work will compiled as A Grammar of Western Pantar, to be completed in mid 2008.

Location

Western Pantar is spoken in the western half of the island of Pantar, the second largest island in the Regency (kabupaten) of Alor, part of the eastern Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur. The island is about 50 km north-to-south, and varies from 11 to 29 km in east-west width. It has an area of 728 km² and is hence the largest island in Indonesia to lack both regular air transport and a fixed wing landing strip.

The Western Pantar region is generally flat, bordered on the southwest by a range of volcanic peaks rising to 900 m, including the active volcano Mt. Sirung. The west coast is separated by a range of smaller hills. These two mountain ranges form the remains of a collapsed vocanic crater, the southern portion of which is now submerged.

Google Earth view of Pantar looking northeast. The Western Pantar speaking region is in the foreground View Puntaru village in Google Earth

Climatically, the region is characterized by distinct dry and rainy seasons. Heaviest rainfall occurs between January and February. However, due to the impermeable volcanic soils and the flat terrain little of this rainfall is retained. Little or no rain fall during the dry season between June and November. Agriculture follows a shifting cultivation system, with fields being rotated every 3-5 years. Clearing and burning of fields occurs in August and September. Staple crops of rice and maize are planted just as the rains begin in December. Harvest occurs in March and April. Virtually no crops are grown during the dry season which follows the main harvest.

Logonym

There is no generally accepted logonym for the language here called Western Pantar. The term Western Pantar itself is a calque of the Indonesian term Pantar Barat, a reference to the former political subdistrict of the same name. This subdistrict (kecamatan) was subdivided in 2005, so that the WP language is now spoken across several subdistricts. The Ethnologue lists the name "Lamma", however, this term more properly refers to just one of three major dialects, the others being Tubbe and Mauta. In Indonesia, the language of wider communication, most speakers use a clan or village name to refer to the language. Thus, for example, "Bahasa Puntaru" (the language of Puntaru) or "Bahasa Tubbe" (the language of the Tubbe clan). The native logonym universally applied is pi habbang birang, literally, 'our village speak'.

Dialects

The three major dialects are distinguished primarily by lexical differences in a relatively few items of basic vocabulary. Some examples are given below.

Phonological features which characterize the dialects are relatively few. Lamma tends to retain final l. And Mauta tends to have full vowels where Tubbe has diphthongs. Thus, Tubbe pia 'descend' and kuang 'moko' correspond to Mauta pi and kong, respectively.

A fourth dialect, Illu, is now remembered by a few elderly speakers in the village of Illu, but was once spoken across a much wider region.

Change history

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation grant BCS-0408448 and an NSF/NEH Documenting Endangered Languages fellowship. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Last modified 25 Jul 2007 in Kupang by gary.holton / gmail.com