Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar

• Main Author: Tan, Zhi Xuan
• Other Authors: Alexander Coupe
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Humanities::Linguistics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138325
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper presents an analysis on some aspects of Seletar, the language of the Orang Seletar, namely the phonology, lexicon and polysemy. The Orang Seletar are one of Singapore’s indigenous sea peoples (Orang Laut) and one of the many groups of Orang Asli (‘indigenous people’) of Malaysia. Seletar is considered a dialect of Malay. Although some research has been done on the Orang Seletar, they often lack linguistic documentation and detailed analysis. Some interesting observations of Seletar were made in this study, for example neutralization of /p/ and /m/ in p-initial verbal roots, sesquisyllabic structure, various vowel-sequences, frequent contractions of Standard Malay lexical items, and polysemy unseen in Standard Malay. Seletar has some non-Malay lexical items which might indicate borrowings from Aslian and Borneo languages. However, many words seem uniquely Seletar. The paper concludes with a transcribed word list of 345 items based on the recordings of two speakers. Much further research is needed to analyse Seletar in detail. More than anything, this paper serves as an introduction to Seletar, which many overlooked as they deemed it ‘very similar to Malay’. The paper hopes to be a starting point to more detailed studies regarding the Orang Seletar, linguistic or otherwise.