Resumen de A Discussion of Two Taman Languages in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Chong Shin

• This paper explores two Taman languages spoken in Western Borneo, Indonesia—the Tamanic Taman and Sekadau Taman. Historically, Tamanic Taman is related to the languages in South Sulawesi, whereas Sekadau Taman is a Malayic variety. These two Taman languages neither have social nor cultural connections with each other, but a comparison study found that Tamanic Taman and Sekadau Taman share a large volume of “Malayic” lexical items. Certain lexical items which are expected to be borrowed from Malayic do not exhibit the phonological innovations of Malayic. This argument is based on the analysis of the loss of Proto Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) *q or Proto Malayic (PM) *h in Tamanic Taman. On the lexical level, words like pu:n (*puqun/*puhun) and da:n (*daqan/*dahan) can be misconceived as Malayic terms. However, because a Makassarese adjectival prefix a- (from PMP *ma-) exists, the reflexed sound identified is PMP *q (not PM *h).