Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar

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...

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Main Author: Tan, Zhi Xuan
Other Authors: Alexander Coupe
Format: Final Year Project
Language:English
Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138325
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1383252020-05-02T08:13:27Z Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar Tan, Zhi Xuan Alexander Coupe School of Humanities arcoupe@ntu.edu.sg Humanities::Linguistics 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. Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and Multilingual Studies 2020-05-02T08:13:27Z 2020-05-02T08:13:27Z 2020 Final Year Project (FYP) https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138325 en application/pdf Nanyang Technological University
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Humanities::Linguistics
spellingShingle Humanities::Linguistics
Tan, Zhi Xuan
Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar
description 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.
author2 Alexander Coupe
author_facet Alexander Coupe
Tan, Zhi Xuan
format Final Year Project
author Tan, Zhi Xuan
author_sort Tan, Zhi Xuan
title Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar
title_short Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar
title_full Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar
title_fullStr Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar
title_full_unstemmed Some aspects of the language of the Orang Seletar
title_sort some aspects of the language of the orang seletar
publisher Nanyang Technological University
publishDate 2020
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138325
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