Bunak language

The Bunak language (also known as Bunaq, Buna', Bunake, pronounced [bunaʔ]) is the language of the Bunak people of the mountainous region of central Timor, split between the political boundary between West Timor, Indonesia, particularly in Lamaknen District and East Timor. It is one of the few on Timor which is not an Austronesian language, but rather a Papuan language, presumably belonging to the Trans–New Guinea language family. The language is surrounded by Malayo-Polynesian languages, like Uab Meto and Tetum.

Bunak
Native toIndonesia, East Timor
Regioncentral Timor
EthnicityBunak
Native speakers
76,000 (2010)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3bfn
Glottologbuna1278[3]
Distribution of Bunak in East Timor (West Timor not shown)

Bunak distinguishes between animate and inanimate noun classes.[4]

Pronouns

Pronouns seem to tie Bunak more closely to the Alor–Pantar languages, in a group Ross (2005) calls "West Timor", than with the Papuan East Timor languages. The independent pronouns and object prefixes, which appear to retain the proto-Trans–New Guinea dual suffix *-li, are as follows:

sgdupl
1excl ne-to
n-		ne-li
n-		ne-i
n-
1incl i-li
∅-		i
∅-
2 e-to
∅-		e-li
∅-		e-i
∅-
3an himo
g-		–hala'i
g-
3inan homo
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References
  1. Bunak at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. New Guinea World, West Bomberai
  3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Bunak". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. Holton, Gary; Klamer, Marian (2018). "The Papuan languages of East Nusantara and the Bird's Head". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 569–640. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
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