Austronesians in linguistic disguise: Fataluku cultural fusion in East Timor

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between language and cultural practice in the Fataluku language community of East Timor. A Papuan language and member of what is referred to as the Trans New Guinea Phylum (TNGP) of languages, Fataluku society nevertheless exhibits many cultural ideas and practices suggesting a long period of engagement and accommodation to Austronesian cosmopolitanism. The idea that Fataluku speakers are ‘Austronesians in disguise’ points to the significance of cultural hybridity on the Austronesian boundary.

Crossing the border Historical and linguistic divides among the Bunaq in central Timor

“…This view has ensured that the Bunaq have remained somewhat apart, but has also led the Bunaq to borrow and adapt heavily from Austronesian language and society. The extensive cross-fertilization of lexicon and linguistic constructions that we witness in the Bunaq language confirms McWilliam's (2007) statement of "the significance of cultural hybridity on the Austronesian boundary".…”

“…The one borrowed female term, nana 'older sister', is also an adoption from Austronesian culture. Age-differentiated sibling kin terms reflect a peculiarly Austronesian interest in precedence, a feature which is not typical of Papuan societies (McWilliam 2007 Swadesh (1955) proposed that all languages, irrespective of cultural differences, had words for 100 or 200 key concepts that were unlikely to be borrowed from other languages. This "core vocabulary" was designed to encompass concepts common to every human language (such as personal pronouns, body parts, heavenly bodies, verbs of basic actions, numerals, etcetera).…”

Lack of gene–language correlation due to reciprocal female but directional male admixture in Austronesians and non-Austronesians of East Timor

“…[25][26][27] Evidence of a slow ongoing tendency to language admixture of AN and NAN languages caused by loan words, language shifts and similar Austronesian cultural behaviour (independent of their speakers' linguistic affiliations) have been noted. 28,29 The NRY and mtDNA data not only clearly show the dual genetic origin of East Timorese in E/SEA and NO, in line with linguistic evidence, they also demonstrate that considerable mixing between members of both major linguistic groups had occurred during the population history of East Timor. However, our results suggest that genetic mixing between members of AN and NAN language groups was not equal for men and women as we see clear differences for the maternal and the paternal genetic ancestry of East Timorese, which sheds light on further details of the admixture history.…”

“…18,31 That we observed the same in East Timor, as well as across East Indonesia previously 7,8 might indicate that NAN speakers arrived in Nusa Tenggara from New Guinea before AN speakers did from Asia (or at the same time), which is in line with views of some 6,25,26 but not all linguistic scholars. 28 Moreover, our observation in East Timor that AN and NAN speakers have similar proportions of E/SEA and NO maternal lineages together with similar proportions of NO paternal lineages, but strongly different proportions of E/SEA paternal lineages (18% in AN and 1% in NAN), suggests reciprocal admixture for women between both linguistic groups, but directional admixture for men, with more NAN men mixing into AN groups but fewer AN men into NAN groups. This restricted admixture behaviour of men but not women implies a higher mobility of women than men in line with the assumed patrilocality of most East Timorese groups today.…”

The dynamics of culture and nature in a ‘protected’ Fataluku landscape

“…Although the antiquity of Papuan languages in Timor and the relationship of Fataluku to the other Papuan languages spoken in Timor-Leste, being Bunaq and Makasai, is still unclear, it is widely agreed that the Papuan languages are unrelated to the Austronesian languages spoken throughout West Timor and most of the western half of Timor-Leste (Figure 1) (McWilliam 2007b;Schapper 2012).…”