Abui

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

Abui is spoken in the central portion of Alor island of the Lesser Sunda chain in the Alor regency of Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province. The term Abui /abui/ [ˌʔɑbʊˈjɪ] means “mountain(s)/hill(s)” or “enclosed place.” Speakers refer to themselves as Abui Loku “mountain people” and their language as Abui Tanga “mountain language.” Abui speakers are farmers whose primary crops are corn, cassava and rice. In mountainous areas traditional hunting is practiced, while some along the coast have taken to fishing in the manner of their Alorese neighbors (Kratochvíl 2007: 1-5, q.v. Kratochvíl and Delpada 2008: 21.)

Sources

Nicolspeyer (1940) (unobtained)

du Bois (1944)

Stokhof ed. (1983) Holle comparative vocabulary for Abui after du Bois

Stokhof (1975: 53-54) 117 comparative terms for Abui of Atimelang and Makadai villages

Stokhof (1984) Abui text

Kratochvíl (2007) grammar of Abui

Kratochvíl and Delpada (2008) dictionary of Abui

Kratochvíl (2014) (unobtained)

Klamer and Kratochvíl (n.d.) Abui tripartite verbs

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

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

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

Phonology

Kratochvil (2007: 25-65) gives 19 consonants and 5 vowel qualities distinguished by length for Abui as follows:

m	n		ŋ
p	t	[c]	k	ʔ
b	d	[ɟ]	[g]
f	s			h
	l
w	r	j

ɪ i:		ʊ u:
ɛ e:		ɔ o:
	ɑ a:

Palatal stops /c ɟ/ and voiced velar /g/ occur only in loans.

Any consonant can occur initially or medially. Neither voiced stops nor fricatives occur finally, nor does glottal stop /ʔ/ or bilabial non-stop /w/.

Pronouns

Kratochvil (2007: 76-81) gives Abui free pronouns and three bound case forms as follows. No distinction is drawn between singular and plural third persons:

	free	patient/inal.	loc./alien.	recipient
	-ø	-ø–	-ɛ-	-ɔ- ≈ -u-
1 sg.	nɑ	nɑ-	nɛ-	nɔ-
2 sg.	ɑ	ɑ-	ɛ-	ɔ-
3 sg./pl.	di	dɑ-	dɛ-	dɔ- ≈ du-
3 sg./pl. diff. ref.	—	hɑ-	hɛ-	hɔ-
1 pl. excl.	ni	ni-	ni-	nu-
1 pl. incl.	pi	pi-	pi-	pu- ≈ pɔ-
1 pl. distributive	—	tɑ-	tɛ-	tɔ-
2 pl.	ri	ri-	ri-	ru- ≈ rɔ-

Verbal morphology

[under construction]

The most fundamental distinction in Abui verbs is that between completive, continuative and inceptive aspects, the last of these being the least common. Kratochvíl (2007: 16, 209-225) … divides Abui verbs into three classes and fifteen subclasses according to the phonological alternations which signify these aspects:

…

… auxilliaries /-d-/ “hold” and /-l-/ “give” …

…