DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13859484
title: Lexical comparanda for 14 Austronesian varieties of Raja Ampat, northwest New Guinea

description: This dataset is an Excel spreadsheet containing lexical comparisons for 14 closely related Austronesian varieties spoken in the Raja Ampat archipelago (northwest New Guinea): Metnyo Ambel, Metsam Ambel, As, Batta, Biga, Magey Matbat, Kawe Maˈya, Laganyan Maˈya, Misool Maˈya, Salawati Maˈya, Wauyai Maˈya, Butlih Salawati, Tepin Salawati, Wail Salawati. These varieties all belong to the Raja Ampat-South Halmahera branch of South Halmahera-West New Guinea. All primary data associated with this database is archived here: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/8573

The data in this spreadsheet comes from a combination published and unpublished sources, and primary data collected in Raja Ampat during fieldtrips in 2017, 2019‑20, and 2023. A summary of the sources used is given below:  




Language
Dialect
Glottocode
Source
Notes


Ambel
Metnyo
metn1237
Arnold (2018)
 


Ambel
Metsam
mets1238
Field data (2017)
 


As
n/a
asss1237
Field data (2020, 2023)
As was moribund at the time of data collection, and there is a lot of interspeaker variation in the data. The two primary speakers who supplied data are therefore given their own columns in the dataset: Hamid Mayor (HM) and Nurma Kapitanlaut (NK)


Batta
n/a
bata1295
Field data (2019, 2023)
 


Biga
n/a
biga1238
Field data (2019)
 


Maˈya
Kawe
kawe1240
Field data (2023)
Supplemented by Remijsen (2001)


Maˈya
Laganyan
lege1241
Field data (2023)
Supplemented by Remijsen (2001)


Maˈya
Misool
maya1282
Remijsen (2001)
 


Maˈya
Salawati
maya1282
Remijsen (2001), van der Leeden (nd)
 


Maˈya
Wauyai
wauy1237
Field data (2023)
Supplemented by Remijsen (2001)


Matbat
Magey
matb1237
Remijsen (2015)
 


Salawati
Butlih
butl1236
Field data (2019)
 


Salawati
Tepin
tepi1242
Field data (2023)
 


Salawati
Wail
wail1246
Field data (2023)
 




 

The dataset is split across three worksheets. Throughout all the worksheets, a question mark '?' indicates that data is not available; a double-hyphen '--' indicates that the form is not cognate in that variety; and 'n/a' indicates that the form was not considered in the comparison for the reasons explained in the 'Notes' column. In each worksheet, there are the same 489 individual comparadum sets across 354 different concepts. I use superscript numerals throughout the worksheets to represent phonological tone. Lower numbers mark lower tone, thus: ¹ (Low tone), ¹² (Rise), ³ (High), ⁴ (Extra‑High), and so forth. Stress, which is not predictable in several Maˈya-Salawati varieties and proto-languages, is marked with an accent mark. 

In the first worksheet ('MASTER'), colour marks the word-prosodic specification of the word. These cell colours are not intended as an analysis per se, but provide a visual guide to the word-prosodic correspondences between the varieties. In As and the Maˈya-Salawati languages, cell colour marks the following specifications: blue = final stress, Extra High tone; green = final stress; High tone, orange = final stress, Rise tone; red = final stress, Low tone; yellow = penultimate stress, High tone (regularly corresponding to penultimate stress, Rise tone in Misool Maˈya); grey = toneless. In Ambel, cell colour marks the following specifications: green = High tone on the final syllable; yellow = High tone on the penultimate syllable; grey = toneless. In Matbat, cell colour marks the following specifications: blue = Extra High Fall; green = High; orange = Rise; red = Low; yellow = Rise-Fall; grey = Low Fall or toneless.  

The second worksheet ('Analysis-OceanicLinguistics') contains the analyses and calculations associated with a forthcoming paper: Arnold, Laura. The diachrony of word prosody in the Maˈya-Salawati languages of Raja Ampat. Accepted to Oceanic Linguistics. 

The third worksheet ('Analysis-LanguageSciencePre') contains the analyses and calculations associated with a forthcoming paper: Arnold, Laura. The relative chronology of tone in Raja Ampat: Top-down vs bottom-up approaches. For publication in Florian Wandl, Thomas Olander, & Johannes-Mattis List (eds.), Relative chronology in historical linguistics, Language Science Press.

References

Arnold, Laura. 2018. A grammar of Ambel, an Austronesian language of Raja Ampat, west New Guinea. PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh.

van der Leeden, A.C. n.d. Maˈya dictionary, morphology, and syntax. Unfinished Ms.

Remijsen, Bert. 2001. Word‐prosodic systems of Raja Ampat languages. Utrecht: LOT.

Remijsen, Bert. 2015. Matbat_MageyDialect_2003_Lexicography, 1998–2003 [text], https://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/796 (accessed 2023‐07‐25.)