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Abstract

This thesis is a description of Bunaq, a Papuan language spoken by approximately

80,000 people living in the central mountainous region of the island of Timor. Bunaq

speakers straddle the border between Indonesian West Timor and independent East

Timor (Timor-Leste). This thesis concentrates on the variety of Bunaq spoken in the

Indonesian kecamatan of Lamaknen.

    The areas of grammar covered in this thesis are phonology (ch. 2), word classes (ch.

3), clause structure (ch. 4), noun phrases (ch. 5), pronouns and person reference (ch. 6),

determiners (ch. 7), locationals (ch. 8), adnominal possession (ch. 9), verbs (ch. 10),

valency changing and deponency (ch. 11), postposition and verbal postpositions (ch.

12), serial verb constructions (ch. 13), adverbs and verbal modifiers (ch. 14).

    Bunaq is a head-marking language with a basic APV/SV word order and

postpositions. Word order shows a significant amount of pragmatic variation, and is also

sensitive to factors such as person and animacy in non-agentive clauses. Whilst Bunaq

is an APV/SV language, it is not strictly verb-final. Many elements follow the verb,

including the theme argument of a trivalent verb, the negative particle and aspect

particles.

    The Bunaq vowel phoneme inventory consists of the five cardinal vowels and three

phonemic diphthongs, while the number of consonant phonemes varying between 12

and 16 depending on the dialect. Consonant clusters are largely prohibited and codas are

restricted. Stress is not phonemic. Morphophonological processes include metathesis

and irregular root mutations.

    The language is isolating with the only morphology being a single set of person

prefixes, occurring on verbs and nouns. On verbs, they mark P and less often S; there is

This chapter gives a preliminary account of the phonology of the Lamaknen dialect of

Bunaq. The chapter begins with a description of the Bunaq Lamaknen segmental

phonology in §2.1. The orthographic conventions according This chapter gives a

preliminary account of the phonology of the Lamaknen dialect of Bunaq. The chapter

begins with a description of the Bunaq Lamaknen segmental phonology in §2.1. The

orthographic conventions according which the segments will be represented throughout

this description are given in §2.2. Bunaq phonotactics are dealt with in §2.3 and stress

in §2.4. Finally, morphophonology is dealt with in §2.5, while irregularities in

morphophonological behaviour are discussed in §2.6.

 

2.1     Phoneme inventory

There are a total of 24 segmental phonemes in the native phoneme inventory of

Lamaknen Bunaq, 16 consonants, 5 vowels and 3 diphthongs. See §2.1.4 on non-native

phonemes.

 

2.1.1    Vowel phonemes

Bunaq has a simple five vowel system, consisting of two front, two back and a single

low non-front, non-back vowel (Table 2.1).

 

                              Table 2.1: Bunaq vowel inventory

                                   Front                     Back

                    High               i                          u

                    Mid                e                          o

                    Low                            a

 

The minimal contrasts between the Bunaq vowel phonemes are given in Table 2.2.

 

                               Table 2.2: Vowel minimal pairs

                            Contrast         Item           Gloss

                     /a/~/e/~/i/~/o/~/u/       a         ‘eat’

                                               e         ‘salt’