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Journal : Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

The languages and peoples of the Müller Mountains; A contribution to the study of the origins of Borneo's nomads and their languages Sellato, Bernard; Soriente, Antonia
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 16, No. 2
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Abstract

The M ller and northern Schwaner mountain ranges are home to a handful of tiny, isolated groups (Aoheng, Hovongan, Kereho, Semukung, Seputan), altogether totaling about 5,000 persons, which are believed to have been forest hunter-gatherers in a distant or recent past. Linguistic data were collected among these groups and other neighbouring groups between 1975 and 2010, leading to the delineation of two distinct clusters of languages of nomadic or formerly nomadic groups, which are called MSP (M ller-Schwaner Punan) and BBL (Bukat-Beketan-Lisum) clusters. These languages also display lexical affinity to the languages of various major Bornean settled farming groups (Kayan, Ot Danum). Following brief regional and particular historical sketches, their phonological systems and some key features are described and compared within the wider local linguistic setting, which is expected to contribute to an elucidation of the ultimate origins of these people and their languages.
Language development of bilingual children; The acquisition of tense and aspect in an Italian-Indonesian child: A case study Soriente, Antonia
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 15, No. 1
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Abstract

This paper describes the development of temporal expressions in a bilingual child acquiring two typologically distinct languages: Italian and Indonesian. These languages differ from one another in the way tense and aspect are encoded and it is interesting to observe what kind of cross-linguistic influence one language system has on the other. Italian verbs are heavily inflected for person, number as well as for tense, aspect and mood, whereas, in Indonesian, the encoding of tense and aspect is lexical rather than morphological; moreover encoding is optional when the context is sufficiently clear. This means that tense and aspect in Indonesian is often marked pragmatically rather than grammatically. This paper considers the interference effects that result from simultaneously acquiring these two typologically distinct systems.
Cross-cultural encounters of Italian travellers in the Malay world; A perspective on the languages spoken by the local populations Soriente, Antonia
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 25, No. 2
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This paper describes the encounters that Italian travellers, explorers, and traders had with the peoples of the Malay world at the turn of the century. In particular, it focuses on the linguistic descriptions and observations made by Italian explorers of the languages spoken in the places they visited and included in their travel writings. In addition to the pioneering work of Pigafetta, the Italian scribe who followed Magellan on his voyage around the world and produced the first “Italian-Malay vocabulary” in 1521, other linguistic descriptions and observations were made by Giovanni Gaggino, a merchant who compiled an Italian-Malay dictionary in Singapore, Odoardo Beccari, a naturalist who offered reflections on the Malay spoken in Borneo, and Celso Cesare Moreno, a ship captain and adventurer. Elio Modigliani, in his travels to Nias, Enggano, Mentawai, and the Batak country, provided detailed information on the local languages spoken in these islands in North and West Sumatra, while Giovanni Battista Cerruti, an explorer and ship captain who visited Singapore, Batavia, and the Malay Peninsula, commented on the languages, as did Emilio Cerruti, who travelled to the Moluccas and Papua. This paper focuses on how these languages were described and perceived by these nineteenth-century Italian travellers. It concludes that these explorers were all united by a common necessity, namely the importance of speaking local languages in order to be able to interact with the people they met on their travels. Malay, in particular, was always viewed positively as an international language, a powerful tool for communicating, learning, and interacting with others, and a beautiful language. Conversely, the other minority languages were seen as poor and simple, but still a powerful tool to overcome barriers and lay the foundations for intercultural communication.