A Sketch Grammar of Matéq: A Land Dayak Language of West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Type of content
Theses / Dissertations
Publisher's DOI/URI
Thesis discipline
Linguistics
Degree name
Master of Arts
Publisher
University of Canterbury. School of Social and Political Sciences
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
Date
2013
Authors
Connell, Timothy M.
Abstract

Matéq is an Austronesian language of the Land Dayak (Bidayuhic) subgroup spoken by around 10,000–20,000 people in West Kalimantan (Borneo), Indonesia. This thesis presents a sketch grammar of the language based on linguistic fieldwork conducted from September 2012 to January 2013. Topics discussed in the sketch grammar include the geographic and social context of the Matéq language, its phonology and elements of its morphosyntax. Major features of Matéq phonology include the presence of both plain and prenasalised plosives, geminate nasals, and nasal vowels that contrast with oral vowels in certain positions. In terms of morphosyntax, this study shows that Matéq has two sets of personal pronouns which encode information about the generational relationships between speech participants or referents. With respect to grammatical voice, findings suggest that Matéq has five distinct voice constructions which can be distinguished on the basis of their morphosyntactic and semantic properties. Each voice construction also tends to have different pragmatic and TAM associations. This study also shows that Matéq has optional subject marking with certain verbs, and has both continuous and discontinuous serial verb constructions.

Description
Citation
Keywords
Linguistics, Matéq, Land Dayak, Bidayuhic, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, Grammatical description
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
Rights
Copyright Timothy M. Connell