West Damar, or North Damar, is an Austronesian language of Damar Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. In spite of rather low cognacy rates with its neighboring languages,Mark Taber. 1993. Toward a better understanding of the Indigenous Languages of Southwestern Maluku. Oceanic Linguistics 32. 389-441. it can be classified as part of the Babar languages based on shared innovations.Aone van Engelenhoven. 2010. Tentatively locating West-Damar among the languages of Southwest Maluku. In Chlenova, Svetlana and Fedorchuk, Artem (eds.), Studia Anthropologica: a Festschrift in Honor of Michael Chlenov, 297-326. Moscow-Jerusalem: Gesharim.
It is spoken in two villages (Batumerah, Kuai) located in the north-western part of Damar.
Phonology The consonant inventory of West Damar is as follows: LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottalPlosive/Affricatevoicelessptt͡ʃkvoiced(b)d(ɡ)NasalmnɲŋFricativesxhTrillrLaterallApproximantwj
Sounds only occur in loanwords from Indonesian. also mostly, but not exclusively, appears in loanwords.
The vowel inventory of West Damar is simply .
Morphology A few aspects of West Damar morphology are noted as follows.
Verb conjugation Verbs in West Damar are conjugated according to person and number.
+ West Damar verbal prefixes Person/number Prefix Verb -oni "to eat" Other attested verbs1st sg.w-woni2nd sg.m-moni3rd sg.n- Becomes ng- before velar consonants.yonin-poko "explodes", n-woludlo "hunts", n-hakro "boils", n-dekro "is dry", ng-kerso "is thin", 1st pl. inclusivek-, t-tonik-la "we go", k-wadano "we hear", k-hoto "we talk", k-mattuni "we sleep", k-nehi "we run"1st pl. exclusivem-moni2nd pl.m- -y-,The -y- is attached after the initial consonant of a verb stem, so from -lo "go" is born mlyo. ms-msonimlyo "you go", mnyedi "you fall"3rd pl.r-roni
Possession West Damar has a series of possessive suffixes that are attached to nouns. There is no possessive verb. The possessive suffixes are as follows:
+ West Damar possessive suffixes Person/number Suffix1st sg.-cheni2nd sg.-mcheni3rd sg.-eni1st pl. inclusive-toni1st pl. exclusive-moni2nd pl.-mseni3rd pl.-roni
The possessive suffixes are built from a base suffix -ni that also appears as a lexical derivational suffix: ulcho + -ni > ulchuni "husband" deweya + -ni > deweyeni "wife" ullo "month" + -ni > ulloni "moon"
Negation The word for "no" in West Damar is kewe. When split into a circumfix, ke- -we serves as a simple negator for content words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The -we part of the negator comes immediately after the stem it attaches to, but before other clitics. A few examples of negation provided by Chlenova are as follows:
Another negative predicative word krawui "unavailable" is also recorded.
Vocabulary Vocabulary list: West Damar Indonesian English I you (sing.) he, she we (incl.) we (exc.) you (pl.) they one two three four five six seven eight nine ten head hand foot
Sample sentences
- Are you ill?
- Yes, I have a headache.
- The mountain Binaya is the highest at the Seram island.
See also East Damar language
References
Further reading Michael Chlenov & Svetlana Chlenova, 2006. "West Damar language or Damar-Batumerah, an isolate in South-Eastern Indonesia." Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, 17–20 January 2006, Palawan, Philippines.