Subject and Object Agreement in Dhao: Contact-Induced Change from Hawu and Rote

Abstract

This paper deals with the language contact situation and its impact to the grammatical features of Dhao, as well as the role of language documentation in a multilingual community, like Ndao. This paper focuses on the agreement system in Dhao, a language spoken by about 3000 speakers on the tiny island of Ndao in East Nusa Tenggara Province. Ndao Island is relatively isolated. People of Ndao tend to abandon the island and move to the neighboring islands, Rote and Timor, for the sake of better education and economy. People of Ndao are multilingual. They speak at least their mother tongue, Dhao, the neighboring languages, such as Rotenese, Uab Meto, Hawu, and, Kupang Malay, as well as Indonesian as the national language. Genetically, Dhao language is Sumba-Hawu subgroup of Austronesian family. However, instead of Hawu, Dhao has intense contact with Rotenese, which is Nuclear Timor subgroup of Austronesian. Language contact as such results in changes of grammatical features from Hawu-like to Rotenese-like grammatical typology. In terms of agreement, Dhao applies two different systems: (1) Hawu-like object-verb agreement, where the final vowel of verbs change according to the semantics and plurality of the objects and (2) Rotenese-like subject-verb agreement where the vowel-initial verbs obligatory require prefixes to agree with the subject in person and number. In order to explore such kind of “mixing typology”, a comprehensive documentation and in detail description of the language play a significant role.