Loss of Morphology in Alorese (Austronesian): Simplification in Adult Language Contact

Abstract

This paper discusses historical and ongoing morphological simplification in Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken in eastern Indonesia. From comparative evidence, it is clear that Alorese lost almost all of its morphology over several hundred years as a consequence of language contact (Klamer, 2012, to appear). By providing both linguistic and cultural-historical evidence, this paper shows that Alorese has historically undergone morphological simplification as a result of second language (L2) learning. The first part of the paper presents a case study comparing the use of subject agreement prefixes in Alorese L1 speakers (n=6) and Alorese L2 speakers (n=12). The results show that L2 speakers deviate from the native norm, and tend to use one prefix as default agreement. The variation found among L2 speakers reveals an ongoing change possibly leading to the restructuring of the Alorese agreement system. The second part of the paper applies models of linguistic change (Kusters, 2003; Trudgill, 2011) to the Alorese community and shows that Alorese has been, and still is, spoken in a community with a large number of L2 speakers, where morphological simplification is expected to occur.

The dispersal of Austronesian languages in Island South East Asia: Current findings and debates

“…The almost complete loss of morphology in Alorese is likely due to contacts with Papuan language speakers who used Alorese as a second language. This hypothesis is confirmed in an experimental study by (Moro, In press) investigating the use of subject agreement prefixes in six Alorese first language speakers and 12 Alorese second language speakers. The study shows that the second language speakers make significantly more errors than the first language speakers, and that they have only a single default subject agreement marker.…”

“…In order for the simplified patterns to stabilize, the contact must involve a community of bilinguals with a large number of second language speakers, and the contact must be long‐term, intense, and multi‐purpose (Moro, In press; Kusters, ; Trudgill, ). It may be that the simplifying second language was (originally) used as a trade language or lingua franca, but for any changes to become entrenched in it, it must have been used as a second language (L2) in wider communicative contexts.…”

“…A language that is spoken as an L2 can become a shifted language when the L2 speakers are a minority in the community and die out, while their offspring grows up speaking the community language as L1. However, if the number of L2 speakers in a community is sufficiently large, e.g., constituting half or more of the population, as in the case of Alorese (Moro, In press), and if there is a constant influx of new L2 speakers during many generations, then stable bilingual communities can exist for centuries without shifting to either of the languages. In other words, a community where a simplifying second language is spoken does not automatically shift as a whole to that language, losing the other (first) language(s).…”

“…In known cases where language contact has led to loss of morphological complexity, it typically involves adults as second language learners who simplify non‐native morphological structures, as for instance in Afrikaans (den Besten, ) and in adult second language Dutch (Blom, Polisˇenská, & Weerman, ). Morphological simplification through adult second language learners also happens in small‐scale preindustrial societies in ISEA, though it has not yet been researched much; an example is Alorese (Moro, In press; Klamer, ), discussed below.…”

Chapter 7. From Lamaholot to Alorese

“…Note that these studies typically discuss language change in relatively large speaker groups in industrial, literate societies, which is not the situation we attest for Alorese. However, recent research by Moro (2018Moro ( , 2019 on second language (L2) speakers of Alorese shows that similar factors play a role in the simplification of languages spoken in small, pre-industrial societies such as Alorese. Her work indicates that the very last vestige of Alorese morphology -the subject agreement on a small number of frequent verbs -is currently also eroding.…”