Sama–Bajaw languages


The Sama–Bajaw languages are a well-established group of languages spoken by the Sama-Bajau peoples of the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Languages

Grimes identifies nine Sama–Bajaw languages.
  1. Balangingi
  2. Central Sama
  3. Southern Sama
  4. Pangutaran Sama
  5. Mapun
  6. Yakan
  7. Abaknon
  8. Indonesian Bajau
  9. West Coast Bajau
The first six are spoken in the Sulu region of the southern Philippines. Indonesian Bajau is spoken mainly in Sulawesi and West Coast Bajau in Sabah, Borneo. Several dialects of the languages can be identified.
Blust states that lexical evidence indicates that Sama–Bajaw originated in the Barito region of southeast Borneo, although not from any established group of Barito languages. Ethnologue has followed, calling the resulting group 'Greater Barito'.

Classification

Pallesen classifies the Sama–Bajaw languages as follows.
  • Sama-Bajaw
  • *Abaknon
  • *Yakan: Northern Yakan, Southern Yakan
  • *Sibuguey
  • *Sulu-Borneo
  • **Western Sulu: Sama Pangutaran, Sama Ubian
  • **Inner Sulu
  • ***Northern Sulu: Tagtabun Balangingiq, Tongquil Balangingiq, Linungan, Panigayan Balangingiq, Landang-Guaq, Mati, Sama Daongdong, Kawit Balangingiq, Karundung, Pilas
  • ***Central Sulu: Sama Kaulungan, Sama Dilaut, Sama Kabingan, Sama Musuq, Sama Laminusa, Sama Balimbing, Sama Bannaran, Sama Bangaw-Bangaw, South Ubian
  • ***Southern Sulu: Sama Tanduq-baas, Sama Simunul, Sama Pahut, Sama Sibutuq, Sama Sampulnaq
  • ***Sama Lutangan, Sama Sibukuq
  • **Borneo Coast
  • ***Jama Mapun
  • ***Sabah Land Bajaw: Kota Belud Bajaw, Kawang Bajaw, Papar Bajaw, Banggi Bajaw, Putatan Bajaw
  • ***Indonesian Bajaw: Sulamu, Kajoa, Roti, Jaya Bakti, Poso, Togian 1, Wallace, Togian 2, Minahasa
The Ethnologue divides Sinama into seven languages based on mutual intelligibility. The seven Sinama languages are Northern Sinama, Central Sinama, Southern Sinama, Sinama Pangutaran from the island of Pangutaran off of Jolo island, Mapun, Bajau West Coast of Sabah and Bajau Indonesia. Jama Mapun, a language from the island of Mapun, formerly known as Cagayan de Sulu, is a related language and sometimes also referred to as Sinama. These classifications are rarely recognized by Sama themselves who instead classify their Sinama by the village or island it originates from. The emic classification of a Sama person's language e.g. Silumpak, Laminusa, Tabawan generally form the different dialects of the seven Sinama or Bajau languages.
Together, West Coast Bajau, Indonesian Bajau, and Mapun comprise a Borneo Coast Bajaw branch in Ethnologue.

Dialects

The following is a list of Sama-Bajaw dialects. Locations and demographics are from Palleson and Ethnologue.
Northern SinamaCentral SinamaSouthern SinamaSinama PangutaranSinama MapunBajau West Coast SabahBajau Indonesia
Tagtabun BalangingiSama KaulunganSimunulPangutaranKota BeludTorosiaje
Tonquil BalangingiSama DilautSibutuUbian Tuaran-
LinunganMusuTandubasKudat-
Panigayan BalangingiLaminusaSitangkaiPitas-
Landang-GuaBalimbingUbian ----
Sama DaongdongBannaranLanguyan----
Kawit BalangingiBangaw-BangawSapa-Sapa----
KarundungTabawanBongao/Sanga-Sanga/Pahut----
PilasManubalBerau East Kalimantan----
Silumpak-----
Kabingaan-----

Distribution

West Coast Bajau is distributed in the following locations of Sabah, Malaysia.
  • scattered along the west coast from Papar district to Kudat district, mainly in Tuaran and Kota Belud towns
  • Telutu village, Banggi Island, Kudat district
  • Pitas district: along the west coast and Mengkubau Laut, Mengkapon, Dalima, Mapan-Mapan, Pantai Laut, Layag-Layag, Mausar, Jambangan, Sibayan Laut, and Kanibungan villages
Indonesian Bajau is widely distributed throughout Sulawesi and Nusa Tenggara. It is also located throughout Maluku Utara Province in the Bacan Islands, Obi Islands, Kayoa, and Sula Islands, which are located to the southwest of Halmahera Island.
Mapun is spoken on Cagayan de Sulu island, Tawi-Tawi, Philippines.
Ethnologue provides the following location information for various Sama languages.
Northern Sama is located in western Mindanao, the Sulu archipelago northeast of Jolo, Zamboanga coast peninsula and islands, and Basilan island.
  • Northern Sama dialect: White Beach near Subic Bay, Luzon
  • Lutangan dialect: Olutanga Island. Possibly also in Luzon and Palawan.
Central Sama is located in:
Southern Sama is located in Tawi-Tawi Island Province and East Kalimantan
Pangutaran Sama is spoken on Pangutaran Island, located to the west of Jolo; and in Cagayan de Tawi-Tawi, southern Palawan
Yakan is spoken in Basilan and small surrounding islands; Sakol island; and the eastern coast of Zamboanga. Yakan tends to be concentrated away from the coast.
Inabaknon is spoken on Capul Island, Northern Samar Province. Capul Island is located in the San Bernardino Strait, which separates Samar from the Bicol Peninsula of Luzon.
Bajau West Coast Sabah is spoken in Kota Belud, Kudat, and Tuaran which is on mutual intelligibility with Bajau East Coast of Sabah.

Population

Ethnologue lists the following population statistics for Borneo Coast Bajau.

Grammar

Voice

Western Austronesian languages are characterised by symmetrical voice alternations. These differ from asymmetrical voice alternations, such as active and passive, since the voices can be considered equally transitive. Hence, the terms actor voice and undergoer voice are sometimes used. Actor voice refers to the construction in which the actor or agent-like argument is mapped to subject. Undergoer voice refers to the construction in which the undergoer or patient-like argument is mapped to subject.
The voice construction is signalled through morphological marking on the verb.
Western Austronesian languages are typically subdivided into Philippine-type and Indonesian-type languages on the basis of the voice system:
Philippine-typeIndonesian-type
Multiple Undergoer Voices that map different semantic roles to subjectTwo symmetrical voices: Actor Voice and Undergoer Voice
AV has lower transitivityTrue passive construction
Case marking of nominal argumentsApplicative suffixes

The voice alternations in Sama–Bajaw languages have some characteristics of Philippine-type languages and some characteristics of Indonesian-type languages.
Miller says that there are three main voice alternations in Sama-Bajaw:
  • An AV construction marked with a nasal prefix.
  • A transitive non-AV construction with the bare verb.
  • Another non-AV construction with morphological marking on the verb and case marking on the agent.
In many Philippine languages, the UV construction is said to be basic. This has led people to analyse the languages as syntactically ergative. This analysis has been proposed for Sama Southern, Yakan, Sama Bangingi, and Sama Pangutaran. These languages are said to have Philippine-type voice systems.
West Coast Bajau, however, is said to have an Indonesian-type voice system because there are two transitive voices; a true passive construction and an applicative suffix. This makes West Coast Bajau more similar to the languages of Sarawak and Kalimantan than the other languages of Sabah.
Indonesian Bajau also has an Indonesian-type voice system as illustrated below:
In some Sama–Bajau languages there are restrictions on how the non-AV actor is realised. For example, in Sama Bangingi the non-AV actor is typically a pronominal clitic in first or second person.
The voice alternations in Sama–Bajau languages can also be accompanied by a change in the case-marking of pronouns and a change in word-order.

Case marking

Sama–Bajau languages do not have case-marking on nominal arguments.
Nonetheless, pronouns have different forms depending on their grammatical function. Like the languages of Sarawak, West Coast Bajau has two different pronoun sets:Set 1: non-subject actorsSet 2: all other pronouns
In contrast, most of the languages of Sabah have three sets of pronouns:Set 1: non-subject actorsSet 2: subjectsSet 3: non-subject, non-actors
In West Coast Bajau, the non-subject undergoer can be optionally realised using both the Set 1 and the Set 2 pronouns.
Zero anaphora is possible for highly topical arguments, except the UV actor, which cannot be deleted. This is common across Western Austronesian languages.

Word order

Like the languages of the Philippines, the Sama–Bajaw languages in the Sulu tend to be verb-initial. However, in most languages word order is flexible and depends on the voice construction. In the Sulu, SVO is only found in the context of preposed negatives and aspect markers. In West Coast Bajau, on the other hand, SVO word-order is also found in pragmatically neutral contexts. This, again, makes West Coast Bajau more similar to the languages of Sarawak than the other languages of the Sama-Bajaw group.
Verheijen suggests that the Bajau language spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands has no fixed position of the subject but is fixed VO. The language has several properties that are said to correlate with VO word-order:
  • Prepositions
  • Noun‑Genitive
  • Noun-Relative
  • Noun-Adjective
  • Noun-Demonstrative
  • Preverbal negatives
  • Initial subordinators
The preferred word-orders for five Sama–Bajau languages are shown below. The word order is represented in terms of the semantic roles: actor and undergoer.
AV word orderZero UV word orderAffixed non-AV word order
Sama BangingiV A U
Central SamaV A U
V U A 		V A UV U A or V A U
Southern SamaV A U
V U A 		V A UV U A
Pangutaran SamaV A UV A UV A U or V U A
West Coast BajauA V UV A U or U V AU V A

In all Sama–Bajau languages, the position of the actor is fixed, directly following the verb in the zero UV construction. Elsewhere, the order of actor and undergoer depends on the animacy of the arguments. This could be seen to follow the Philippine tendency to place actors first in the clause.
If we rephrase these orders in terms of grammatical function, a number of Sama–Bajau languages could be said to be VOS languages. S is equivalent to the actor in AV and the undergoer in UV. O is equivalent to the non-subject core argument.

Word order and information structure

Variant word-orders are permitted in Sama–Bajau languages. The different word-orders have different information structure interpretations. This differs depending on the voice of the clause.
Miller suggests that verb-initial order in West Coast Bajau UV clauses strongly correlates with foregrounding. He argues that this is the basic word order given that the undergoer in final position does not have a specific pragmatic status. In contrast, fronted undergoers are highly active and accessible. Both SVO and VOS orders occur with equal frequency in narrative texts, though VOS is highly preferred in foregrounded clauses.
AV clauses are predominantly subject-initial regardless of grounding. In fact, SVO is the only word-order permitted in subordinate clauses. Where verb-initial clauses in AV do occur, however, they typically represent key sequences of action in the storyline.
There are also specificity effects in AV verb-initial word order. VOS is acceptable when the non-subject undergoer is non-specific, but sometimes considered unacceptable if the undergoer is specific. The same is true for definite undergoers. However, the effects are not found when the word-order is VSO and the undergoer is in final position. In this case, the structure is grammatical regardless of whether the undergoer is definite/specific or not.

Topic and focus

In West Coast Bajau, it is possible for subjects, obliques and adjuncts to appear pre-verbally. Only non-subject arguments cannot appear in this position. Miller suggests that there are two positions pre-verbally: topic and focus. Topic represents presupposed information whilst focus represents new information. In both AV and UV clauses, the preverbal subjects can be either topic or focus. Obliques, on the other hand, are always focus.
Consequently, Miller analyses the clause structure of West Coast Bajau as follows:
Pragmatic structure of West Coast Bajau
The preverbal focus position can be followed by focus particles such as ''no.''

Phonology

Sinama

Sinama languages have 21 to 24 phonemes. All Sinama languages have 17 consonants. Each language has from five to seven vowels.

Consonants

The consonants of the Sinama languages are represented by the letters b, d, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, ng, p, r, s, t, w, y and '.
Representation of the glottal stop in Sinama has not yet reached a consensus among Sinama speakers. Linguists have suggested the use of an apostrophe-like character for word final glottal stops. Central Sinama has adopted this for glottal stops in between vowels as well. Other Sinama languages have chosen to follow Tagalog orthography and to leave this vowel medial glottal stop ambiguous. Sinama speakers often spell the word final glottal stop with an h at the end. Sinama speakers in Malaysia may also spell it with a following the vowel softening patterns of Bahasa Melayu.
In certain dialects of Sinama becomes and becomes when found between two vowels. Allophones of are heard as .

Vowels

The vowels a, e, i, o, and u are found in all Sinama languages and dialects. In addition to these five vowels, ə and ɤ are found in one or more Sinama language.
aeiouəɤ
Northernaeiou
Centralaeiou
Southernaeiou
Pangutaranaeiouō
Jama Mapunaeiou

Allophones of are heard as.
Many of the Sinama languages have contrastive vowel lengthening. This is represented by a macron over the vowel.

Stress

Sinama pronunciation is quite distinct from other nearby languages such as Tausug and Tagalog in that all of the Sinama languages primary stress occurs on the penultimate syllable of the word. Stress will remain on the penultimate syllable even with the addition of suffixes including enclitic pronouns. In Northern Sinama the stress will shift to the ultima when the penult is the mid central vowel.

Enclitic pronouns

The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd singular pronouns -ku, -nu and -na respectively, the 1st plural inclusive pronouns -ta and -tam, as well as the 2nd plural pronoun -bi are all enclitics. These enclitic pronouns change the pronunciation by shifting the stress of a word through the addition of a syllable; a verb or noun combined with a suffixed one syllable enclitic pronoun. Some Sinama orthographies represent this by writing both noun/verb and pronoun as one word e.g. luma for 'our house' in Central Sinama. Other orthographies represent this with a hypen e.g. luma for 'our house' in Southern Sinama. Still others write this keeping the noun/verb separate from the prounoun e.g. luma ta for 'our house' in Northern Sinama.

West Coast Bajau

Consonants

The following are the sounds of West Coast Bajau:
  • Stop sounds when in word-final position are heard as unreleased, as is the case with the voiced stop sounds as.
  • can be heard as a retroflex lateral in word-final position.
  • can be heard as a flap when in intervocalic position.

Vowels

The vowel sounds are heard as within closed syllables.

Reconstruction

Proto-Sama-Bajaw is reconstructed in Pallesen. Pallesen considers the homeland of Proto-Sama-Bajaw to be in the Basilan Strait area, around 800 AD.

Cultural references

The lyrics of the song called Kiriring Pakiriring were written in the Simunul dialect of the Southern Sinama language.
Central Sinama and Southern Sinama are two of six languages used in the 2012 Filipino drama film Thy Womb.
Sinama is featured on the 1991 edition of the Philippine one thousand peso bill. Langgal is written under a picture of a Sama place of worship. Langgal is the Sinama for that place of worship.