Words in Pairs
Lexical Parallelism in Woirata, Kisar Island, Indonesia
Eastern Indonesia is an area of considerable linguistic diversity and an area in the
world where complex forms of parallelism are particularly prominent (Fox 2014).
While much data is available on parallelism in Austronesian languages in eastern
Indonesia, less is known about this phenomenon in the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages.
This study presents results of ongoing research on parallelism in Woirata, a Papuan
language of Timor-Alor-Pantar spoken on Kisar Island in Southwest Maluku,
Indonesia.
The population of Kisar divides into two distinct speaker groups: those
speaking Meher, an Austronesian, Central Malayo-Polynesian language and those
speaking Woirata, a Papuan, Timor-Alor-Pantar language. Unlike what is the case in
Leti and Fataluku (Van Engelenhoven 1997, 2010), parallelism in Woirata seems not
to be confined to the ritual speech only, but also occurs in conversations. It also
appears to involve lexically borrowed words from Meher and Local Malay. This study
offers preliminary insights into the structure and function of parallelism in yawanin
pai lukluku, traditional wedding ceremony speeches, in East and West Woirata.
The sentences below are examples of lexical parallelism. Usually the
parallelism appears in only one syntactic function, e.g. in sentence 1) the lexical
parallels rumnasin ‘name of household’, moto ‘children’ and rat ‘parent’ all appear
within the same intransitive subject in the sentence. From a semantic point of view,
lexical parallelisms in Woirata are not only build on synonyms (like tdaran //amua
‘headland // promontory’ in sentence 2), but also on metaphors. Some metaphorical
parallels allow for just two members (e.g. ker // lata // tuliya // watiya ‘bond //
relation // tie // married’, or just ker // lata ‘bond // relation’ = ‘marriage’). Others
require the full range of parallels, for example iya lapai // tana lapai //o’o malwara
//uhul lowai ‘big foot // big hand // wide mouth // long tongue’ = ‘buffalo’).
Lexical parallelism, being an intriguingly common Austronesian feature in the
area (Klamer 2002), enables the study of contact between the Papuan TAP, Woirata
language and the Austronesian Meher language and Local Malay on Kisar Island.
References
Fox, James J. 2014. Explorations in Semantic Parallelism. Canberra: ANU Press.
Klamer, Marian, 2002, ‘Typical features of Austronesian languages in Central/Eastern
Indonesia, Oceanic Linguistics 41/2: 363-383.
Van Engelenhoven, Aone, 1997, “Words and Expressions: notes on parallelism in
Leti”, Cakalele Maluku Research Journal 8:1-25.
____________ , 2010, ‘The War of The Words: Lexical Parallelism in Fataluku
Ritual Discourse’, in Clara Sarmento (ed.), From Here to Diversity: Globalization
and Intercultural Dialogues. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, p 241-252.