Estudos lingüísticos sobre Timor Leste

As publicações de natureza lingüística sobre Timor Leste como um todo, ou sobre alguma língua específica, ou estudos comparativos etc. são poucos, ou quase nulos, em língua portuguesa. Podemos dividir em duas grandes partes: uma primeira que é uma basicamente estudos de origem lexicográfica da tradição portuguesa - que data da segunda metade do século XIX e início do XX - e a segunda que consiste em alguns estudos lingüísticos mais recentes realizados por lingüistas portugueses e brasileiros.

O pioneiro foi Sebastião da Silva, que era um padre português, que publicou um dicionário Português-Tétum (Silva, 1889). Outro padre português, o padre Manuel da Silva, publicou uma gramática do Galolen (Silva, 1900) e um dicionário Português-Galolen (Silva, 1905). Ainda, Raphael das Dores continuou o trabalho do padre Sebastião da Silva e publicou um dicionário Tétum-Português no ano de 1907.

Já o início do século XX foi marcado pelo forte presença portuguesa nos estudos sobre a língua Tétum. O padre Manuel Mendes Laranjeira publicou sua Cartilha Tétum, em 1916 (Lranjeira, 1916); Júlio Garcêz de Lencastre publicou um trabalho intitulado Algumas regras gramaticais da língua tétum e vocabulário, em 1929 (Lencastre, 1929); e outro padre, chamado Abílio Fernandes, publicou outra obra didática sobre o tétum o Método prático para aprender o tétum, em 1937 (Fernandes, 1964).

Atualmente, destaca-se os trabalhos do lingüista português João Paulo Esperança e da lingüista brasileira Regina H. P. Brito. Esperança em sua obra Estudos de Lingüística Timosense (Esperança, 2001) possui uma coletânea de artigos sobre análise da língua Tétum, sobre o Português Crioulo de Bidau, sobre questões de política lingüistica em Timor Leste e sobre a língua portuguesa em Timor Leste. Outro destaque que esse trabalho merece é por ter sido disponibilizado pelo autor no seguinte endereço http://www.freewebs.com/jpesperanca/.

Brito possui diversos artigos espalhados em periódicos, mas que vários são de acesso aberto e podem ser encontrados na internet. Entre eles merecem destaque os seguintes artigos: Brito (2002, 2004) analisa algumas questões sobre o português em Timor Leste; Brito e Bastos (2007)  avaliam algumas questões de política lingüística em Timor Leste, disponível em

http://www.acoalfaplp.net/0003acoalfaplp/0003acoalfaplp_textos/5cultgepalops/18he_m_o_b_b_tar_des_ex_ling_timor_leste.pdf ; Brito e Corte-Real (2002) realizam uma análise fonológica da variedade do Português de Timor Leste.

Eu, o autor deste blog sobre lingüística de Timor Leste, venho recentemente me interessando por questões de lingüística timorense após passar os anos de 2008-2009 como professor de Língua Portuguesa na UNTL (Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa'e) em Díli, capital de Timor Leste. Estou realizando as seguintes pesquisas: lingüística histórica e classificação interna das línguas timorenses de origem austronésica, descrição de algumas das línguas austronésicas, e o contato de línguas na ilha de Timor.

Em breve disponibilizarei meus artigos que já estão publicados em alguns periódicos de acesso aberto, colocarei seus respectivos links e farei também um breve resumo deles.

 

Referências:

 

BRITO, R. H. P. “Reflexões sobre o português em Timor-Leste”. Revista Mackenzie Educação, Arte e História da Cultura, São Paulo, v. 2, p. 87-95, 2002.

________. “A língua adormecida: o caso Timor-Leste”. In: BASTOS, N. M. (Org.) Língua Portuguesa em calidoscópio. São Paulo: Educ/Fapesp. p. 319-329. 2004.

BRITO, R. H. P. & BASTOS, N. M. B. “"Hello, mister", "Obrigadu barak" e "boa tarde": desafios da expressão lingüística em Timor-Leste”. Revista ACOALFAplp: Acolhendo a Alfabetização nos Países de Língua portuguesa, São Paulo, ano 2, n. 3, 2007.

BRITO, R. H. P. & CORTE-REAL, B. Algumas especificidades fonético-fonológicas da variante do português timorense. VIII SIMPÓSIO INTERNACIONAL DE COMUNICACIÓN SOCIAL, 2002. Santiago de Cuba. Actas, v. 1. p. 147-151.

DORES, R. Diccionario teto-português. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1907.

 

FERNANDES, A. Método prático para aprender o tétum. Macau/Díli: Comando Territorial Independente de Timor, 1964.

 

LARANJEIRA, M. M. Cartilha Tétum. Díli: Imprensa Nacional, 1916.

 

LENCASTRE, J. G. “Algumas regras gramaticais da língua tétum e vocabulário”. In: Boletim da Agência Geral das Colônias 5.54:82-92, 1929.

 

SÁ, A. B. “Notas sobre linguistica timorense: Sistema de representação fonética”. In: Estudos Coloniais 3:39-60, 1952.

 

SILVA, M. M. A. Noções da grammatica galoli, dialecto de Timor. Macau: Typographia do Seminário de São José, 1900.

________. Diccionario portuguez-galoli. Macau: Typographia Mercantil, 1905.

SILVA, S. M. A. Diccionario Portuguêz-Tétum. Macau: Typographia do Seminario, 1889.

On Waima'a dialect

Waima'a is dialect of a dialect chain called Kawaimina, an acronym formed by the following dialects Kairui, Waima'a, Midiki, and Naueti (Hull 2001). It is spoken mainly in Baucau district and it is an Austronesian language.

Recently, some papers have been published dealing mostly with Waima'a phonology. Hajek & Bowden (2002) have show that Waima'a has a complex phonological inventory, where most Austronesian languages do not have. In another paper, Hajek & Steven (2005) analyzed Waima'a ejectives stops. This papaer is avaiable at: http://www.assta.org/sst/2004/proceedings/papers/sst2004-408.pdf

This is a conspicuous trace of Waima'a phonology deal to the fact that others East Timor languages have a simple phonolgy, and East Timor as a linguistic area, as showed by Hull (2001), should share the same typological features.     

The Waimaha language of East Timor is a project with DoBeS support. The website of the project http://rspas.anu.edu.au/linguistics/projects/Waimaha/eng/ has good material, sucha as: texts, alphabet book, and others usefull things. The DoBeS website is http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/projects/waimaa

Himmelmann (in print) has a very important paper dealing with Waima'a intonation structure, available at http://www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/allgemeine_sprachwissenschaft/dozenten-unterlagen/himmelmann/waimaqa_intonation_revised_feb_2008.pdf. The important thing in this paper is that the conclusions about Waima'a intonational system maybe can be applyed to others Timoric languages with presents the same prosodic features, that most of the times are mistaken by a kind of stress pattern.

Another good initiative is from those above mentioned linguists. They have an ongoing project on Waima'a, and others East Timor languages as well. We hope that could help to save those languages, and to bring to scholars some good information about those underdescribed languages.

References

Hajek, J. & J. Bowden (2002). A phonological oddity in the Austronesian area: Ejectives in Waimoa, Oceanic Linguistics 41: 222-224.

Hajek, John & Mary Stevens. 2005 ‘On the acoustic characterization of ejective stops in Waima’a’, INTERSPEECH-2005, 2889-2892.

Himmelmann, Nikolaus. In Print. "Notes on Waima'a intonation", in: Michael Ewing & Marian Klamer (eds), Typological and Areal Analyses: Contributions from East Nusantara, Leiden: KITLV Press

Hull, Geoffrey. 2001. “A Morphological Overview of the Timoric Sprachbund”, Studies in Languages and Cultures of East Timor 4: 98-205.

Homenagem a Timor-Leste na 28a Feira do Livro de Brasília

Sábado, dia 28 de novembro de 2009, na 28a Feira do Livro de Brasília aconteceu uma homenagem a Independência de Timor-Leste.

Entre as pessoas que prestaram suas homenagens estavam os embaixadores de Cabo Verde e Moçambique; o jornalista Marcos Linhares, da Revista Fale! Brasília, foi o cerimonialista.

Timor-Leste foi colonizado por Portugal e conseguiu sua indepedência em 28 de Novembro de 1975. No mesmo ano foi invadido e dominado pela Indonésia. Após um longo período de lutas, massacres e "silêncios" - por parte dos timorenses que foram silenciados e por parte de diversas autoridades mundiais que viraram o rosto à situação timorense -, Timor-Leste conquistou sua genuína independência em 1999.

O embaixador de Timor-Leste no Brasil, Domingo Francisco de Jesus de Sousa, pediu um minuto de silêncio aos mortos na guerra e também as mulheres de Timor-Leste que sofreram de forma silenciosa como mártires foram lembradas.

Vale lembrar que a Embaixada de Timor-Leste no Brasil foi montada recentemente, assim como as atividades do Embaixador de Timor-Leste no Brasil começaram em tempos recentes. Isso demonstra, porém, o interesse do governo leste-timorense na política internacional e em estreitar (e manter, é claro!) laços com o Brasil, e outros membros da CPLP.

A Embaixada de Timor-Leste no Brasil fica em Brasília no seguint endereço:

Lago Sul, SHIS, QI 11, Conjunto 10, Casa 19
Tel: +55 - 61 - 3365-1366
embaixada@embaixadatimorleste.org.br

Amanhã, dia 29 de Novembro de 2009, haverá outro evento, também na 28a Fera do Livro de Brasília, intitulado Convergência da Língua Portuguesa: Agostinho da Silva e a CPLP com a presença do Embaixador Domingos Francisco de Jesus de Sousa.

On Fataluku Language

Fataluku language is spoken in Eastern district of East Timor, called Lautem. It has aproximetly 30.000 speakers and is a non-Austronesian language, probably the ancient people that spoken the proto-language had migrated from Papua New Guine, exactly from the Bomberaic peninsula region (Hull, 2004). Fataluku is one of the well studied languages of East Timor, the others are Tetun, Makasae and Waima'a dialect.

The first important paper on Fataluku was writen by Campagnolo (1973) and it is his PhD Thesis that describes the language. Another worthy mention work is a PhD Thesis also, but on Fataluku culture that was written by Gomes (1972), this one is available online at

http://arada.cdu.edu.au/collect/etimor/index/assoc/D0.dir/doc.pdf

Alfonso Nacher's manuscript were published divided in two parts in Estudos de Línguas e Culturas de Timor-Leste (2002;2004). These manuscripts consist in a multilingual dictionary, but mainly are Fataluku and Portuguese dictionary.

Recently, there are two websites with a lot of linguistic data and papers, one is Fataluku Community mainly with a lot of English-Fataluku and Fataluku-English wordlists http://www.fataluku.org/, the another one is

Fataluku Language Project with a Fataluku Online Dictionary, some linguistic papers and usefull links http://www.fataluku.com/.

Stoel (2007) has an important paper analizying Fataluku tone which is available at http://pacling.anu.edu.au/catalogue/E6_SEALS.html

and there are others papers by Stoel about question intonation, prosody, and others, available at Fataluku Language Project.

Engelenhoven has important papers too analizying several grammatical aspects of Fataluku language also at Fataluku Language Project, one of them is about verb serialization. There is one important paper on Fataluku nominalizations (Engelenhoven, 2009) available at

http://lotos.library.uu.nl/publish/articles/000334/bookpart.pdf. Noteworthy, it is the fact that  Prof. Engelenhoven continues his studies on Fataluku language.

The good thing is Fataluku language is relatively stable in its speech community (the bad thing is the number of speaker 30.000 put this language together of several others endangered languages of the world), and there are importants linguistics papers which analyzed and registred this language preventing the lost of it. Thus, we have garantee for a future for this language.

References:

Campagnolo, Henri (1973). La Langue des Fataluku de Lórehe (Timor Portugais), PhD Thesis, Université René Descartes, Paris.

Engelenhoven, Aone van (2009). On Derivationl processes in Fataluku, a non-Austronesian language in East-Timor, in: Wetzels, L. (org.). The Linguistics of Endangered Languages: Contributions to Morphology and Morpho-Syntax. LOT Occasional Series, 13.

Fataluku Community. Fataluku and English wordlists, retrievable at http://www.fataluku.org/.

Fataluku Language Project. Fataluku Online Dictionary, retrievable at http://www.fataluku.com/.

Gomes, Francisco de Azevedo (1972). Os Fataluku, PhD Thesis at Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Política Ultramarina.

Hull, Geoffrey (2004). The Papuan Languages of Timor. Estudos de Línguas e Culturas de Timor-Leste 6: 23-99.

Nacher, Alfonso Maria, (2002). Léxico Fataluco-Português (primeira parte). Estudos de Línguas e Culturas de Timor-Leste 5: 135-196.

Nacher, Alfonso Maria, (2004). Léxico Fataluco-Português (segunda parte). Estudos de Línguas e Culturas de Timor-Leste 6: 119-177.

Stoel, Ruben (2007). The prosody of Fataluku. Paper presented at theWorkshop on the Languages of Papua, August 8-10 Universitas Negeri Papua, Manokwari.

Some good papers available on web

The number of linguistics papers dealing with East Timor languages is low and is very hard to find available on web as well. Today, I will post talking about good papers that can be found on web.


I start with Hull’s paper The Languages of East Timor. Some Basic Facts. that is available on:
http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/default/CommunityGovernanceDocuments/The_Languages_of_East_Timor_Some_Basic_Facts.pdf.
I already cited this paper on a previous post (Preliminaries Notes 2: Number of Languages). On this publication, Hull (2002) presents a review of the results of his research with a lot of information about linguistic contact, historical linguistics, and notorious facts about each language.

Two others are available on:
http://webzoom.freewebs.com/jpesperanca/Timor%20e%20cultura/crioulo_Timor.pdf
and http://webzoom.freewebs.com/jpesperanca/ling_timor.pdf. Both are Esperança authorship, a Portuguese linguist (for a complete list of Esperanças’s works visit: http://www.freewebs.com/jpesperanca/). Actually, they are chapters of his book called Estudos de Lingüística Timorense (Esperança 2001). This book contains in each chapter Esperança’s paper about East Timor linguistic situation during the 90s.

The first one is an important paper in which the author has a hypothesis that the Bidau Creole Portuguese (BCP) influenced Tetum language. This is exactly the contrary that Baxter (1990), as others previous authors that written about BCP, attested, because there are indeed a lot of linguistic data that show the influence that BCP suffer from Tetum. Esperança does not deny this Tetum influence on BCP, but show that BCP influenced Tetum as well. In others words, the influence it was on both ways BCP>Tetum, and Tetum> BCP. I recently have finished a paper (Albuquerque 2009) analyzing these influences and the importance of BCP to Portuguese language spoken in East Timor at the present time.

The second one is a miscellaneous with several chapters of the book. There is a long chapter with an introductory phonological description of Tetum called Inventário de fonemas do tétum, um olhar sobre a sílaba e algumas questões sobre a reduplicação. In this chapter there is a segmental inventory of Tetum, an analysis of syllable structure and reduplication. The others chapters are brief observations about linguistic policy for native languages and Portuguese language.

So, if you are looking for introductory papers on Tetum, and others East Timor native languages, those are good links for you check it out!!!

References:

Albuquerque, D. B. 2009. Revisitando o português crioulo de Bidau: contato e influências lingüísticas. Unpublished Manuscript.

Baxter, A. 1990. “Notes on the Creole Portuguese of Bidau, East Timor”. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 5: 1-38.

Esperança, J. P. T. 2001. Estudos de Lingüística Timorense. SUL, Aveiro.

Hull, G. 2002. The Languages of East Timor. Some basic facts. Available on: http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/default/CommunityGovernanceDocuments/The_Languages_of_East_Timor_Some_Basic_Facts.pdf

Preliminary note 3: Number of Languages

The exactly number of native languages spoken in East Timor until nowadays remain uncertain. Besides Government, UN, and others agencies census and/or reports (which do not have the linguistic accuracy necessary), the only significant works dealing with the number of languages that exists in East Timor territory are the Ethnologue (Lewis 2009) and Hull’s papers (1998, 2001, 2002).

The newest Ethnologue edition, the sixteenth, released this year, has brought conspicuous information. Firstly, it mentions a Papuasic language called Adabe which is supposedly spoken in Atauro Island, but the time I lived in East Timor I do not find anybody who knew or spoken this language. I do not find any linguistic material and/or paper on this language as well. Secondly, the acronym Kawaimina (Kairui, Waimaha, Midiki, and Naueti) and Idalaka (Idate, Lakalei, and Isni) were forged by Hull, that classified the above mentioned in brackets as different dialects of the same language, appears separately as distinct languages as follow: Kairui-Midiki, Nauete, and Waima’a, for Kawaimina, and Idaté, and Lakalei for Idalaka (the names are just as appears in Ethnologue). Thirdly, the genetic affiliation, as others linguistics information, miss scientific accuracy: only thing that mentions are some terminology and some bibliographical references (As you can see on: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=tl).

Hull made a research on East Timor native languages during the 90s and the beginning of the 21 century. He published a lot of papers dealing on descriptive and historical linguistics of those languages. His first attempt of classification was based in a vast lexical comparison amongst the Austronesian languages (Hull 1998), further studies were published, but a brief review of the results of these studies can be found in Hull (2001). An introductory text to the East Timor native languages is available on:
http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/default/CommunityGovernanceDocuments/The_Languages_of_East_Timor_Some_Basic_Facts.pdf.
Hull’s research reveal that some languages has great dialectal variety (as Kawaimina, and Idalaka already mentioned, but others as Mambae, Makasae, and Fataluku), but the exactly number of native languages are sixteen.

Thus, with the lack of information and studies that could solve this problem a linguist has to adopt a theoretical position. So, mine is to consider the number of languages spoken in East Timor as sixteen, as Hull’s papers, due to the fact of these studies of his have a scientific foundation.

References:

Hull, G., 1998. “The Basic Lexical Affinities of Timor’s Austronesian Languages: A Preliminary Investigaion”. Studies in Languages and Cultures of East Timor 1: 97-202.
2001. “O Mapa Lingüístico de Timor Leste: Uma Orientação Dialectológica”. Studies in Languages and Cultures of East Timor 4: 1-19.
2002. The Languages of East Timor. Some basic facts. Available on: http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/default/CommunityGovernanceDocuments/The_Languages_of_East_Timor_Some_Basic_Facts.pdf

Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/

Preliminary note 2: Choice of Language

I will talk about only the choice of the major language to be used on this blog.


I have chosen English language due to the main objective of mine which is to enable a large number of researches and people interested on East Timor Languages to present, to discuss, and to enable on web any kind of material.Thus, English language (as a world language) in my point of view is the best choice for this purpose.

Although English is the major language of this blog to make easier the communication process between people of different countries, sometimes I will post on Portuguese and Tetum as well, whenever I think it is necessary. Comments could be in any of those three languages (English, Portuguese, and Tetum) of course!


The following posts will discuss some problematic issues, such as: orthography, East Timor linguistic policy, bibliography available on web, and ongoing researches. But these issues will be only briefly presented as a set of parameter for the blog and to present some theoretical observations of mine.

Preliminary note 1: Basic information

As the first post, I will start only writing about the structure of future posts.

Future posts are going: to present some results of my ongoing research, to discuss about important linguistics issues on East Timor languages, to give good links which contain papers, projects, and other useful information, current projects, and any kind of news related to East Timor languages.

The following posts will continue with the blog strucuture talking about my theoretical point of view, basic information on East Timor, and current problems to be analyzed.

So, I give everybody welcome, and see you next post!