Flores–Lembata languages

Subgroup of the Austronesian language family

The Flores–Lembata languages are a group of related Austronesian languages (geographically Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages) spoken in the Lesser Sundas, on eastern Flores and small islands immediately east of Flores, Indonesia. They are suspected of having a non-Austronesian substratum, with extreme morphological simplification in Sika and secondarily in Alorese, but not to a greater extent than the Central Malayo-Polynesian languages in general.

Languages

The generally accepted defined Flores–Lembata languages are:^[1]

• Kedang
• Sika
• Lamaholot

In addition, the following is often grouped either as a dialect of Lamaholot or its own language:

• Adonara
• Alorese

Lamaholot is a dialect chain. Ethnologue treats ten varieties as distinct languages.

Classification

Elias (2017) proposes the following internal classification of Flores-Lembata.^[2]

• Flores-Lembata
  • Sika-Hewa
    • Sika
    • Hewa
  • Kedang-Lamaholot
    • Kedang
    • Lamaholot
      • Central Lamaholot
      • Eastern-Western Lamaholot
        • Eastern Lamaholot
        • Alorese-Western Lamaholot
          • Alorese
          • Western Lamaholot

Linguistic areas are:^[2]

• East Lembata: Kedan, Eastern Lamaholot
• Sedentary Lembata: Eastern Lamaholot, Alorese, Western Lamaholot, Central Lamaholot

See also

• Central Flores languages

References

1. Fricke, Hanna L. (2019). Traces of language contact: The Flores-Lembata languages in eastern Indonesia (Ph.D. thesis). Leiden University. hdl:1887/80399.
2. Elias, Alexander. 2017. Subgrouping the Flores–Lembata languages using Historical Glottometry. 9th International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference (APLL9), 21–23 June 2017, LACITO, Paris.

Further reading

• Doyle, Matthew (2010). Internal divisions of the Flores-Lembata subgroup of Central Malayo-Polynesian (Master's thesis). Leiden University. hdl:1887/43446.

External links

• LexiRumah (part of the Lesser Sunda linguistic databases)
• Reconstructing the past through languages of the present: the Lesser Sunda Islands