Adang

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Adang is spoken by 7,000 people (1995) living in two large villages, Adang Buom and Pitungbang, and nine smaller villages in the western portion of Alor penninsula north of Kalabahi bay on Alor island of the Lesser Sunda chain in the Alor regency of Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province. Adang is the central member of a dialect chain including the Kabola language to the east and Hamap across the bay to the south, with 85% lexical similarity between Adang and either language variety. Adang speakers are farmers whose primary crops are corn and rice, alongside banas, coconuts, candlenut, mangoes and oranges which are grown in family gardens away from the villages (Haan 2001: 1-5, Robinson and Haan 2014: 173-175)

Stokhof (1975: 45) 117 comparative terms for Kabola of Pitumbang and Aimoli villages

Haan (2001) grammar of Adang of Kokar village

Robinson and Haan (2014) grammar of Adang of Pitungbang and Kokar

Holton, Klamer, Kratochvíl, Robinson and Schapper (2012) proto-Alor-Pantar includes Adang reflexes

Holton and Robinson (2014) proto-Alor-Pantar includes Adang reflexes

Schapper, Huber and van Engelhoven (2014) proto-Alor-Pantar includes Adang reflexes

Robinson and Haan (2014: 176-182, Haan 2001: 13-36) give 16 to 18 consonants and 7 vowels for Adang as follows:

Fricative /f/ is specified as labiodental.

There are no bilabial or palatal non-stops /w j/ because Alor-Pantar /*w *j/ have been fricated and occluded to fricatives /f s/ respectively. Velar nasal /ŋ/ does not occur initially bccause it reflects Alor-Pantar final nasals /*m *n/. Glottal stop /ʔ/ reflects both Alor-Pantar velar stops /*k *g/. Palatals /ɲ tʃ dʒ/ occur only finally, hence their questionable status in the chart above. Labiodental fricative /f/ does not occur finally, while /s/ occurs finally only in loans. Otherwise, any consonant can occur initially, medially or finally (Robinson and Haan 2014: 178.)

Robinson and Haan (2014: 191-194, 202-208, Haan 2001: 151-184) give Adang free pronouns in six case forms as follows:

(Haan 2001: glosses third person reflexive and non-reflexive forms as proximal and obviative respectively.)

The first person plural distributive form is semantically plural, meaning roughly “each of us,” but phonologically and historically singular; hence its position in the table above. Forms glossed as contrastive possessive are used to contrast one person's possession against someone else's or to assert ownership over something which is disputed. They are presented before alienable possessors because they are historically prior in this function, the latter deriving from the Alor-Pantar dative. It may be seen that that there is generally no difference between third person singulars and plurals, the form /supi/ being obviously secondary, and that forms based upon reflexive /sa/ have replaced those based upon original third person /ʔa/ (< Alor-Pantar /*ga/) in many contexts.

In addition to the free pronouns given above, prefixes are found in four case forms as follows (Robinson and Haan 2015: 191-194, 208-211, Haan 2001: 37-51.) No distinction is drawn between singular and plural third persons:

The first three of these paradigms are clearly relatable, though not synchronically identical, to the free forms given as subject, contrastive possessor and alienable possessor respectively (above.)

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