Belait language

Belait
Lemeting
Region Brunei, Sarawak
Native speakers
 unknown (undated figure of 1,000 in Brunei)[1]
700 in 1995
Language codes
ISO 639-3 beg
Glottolog bela1260[2]

Belait, or Lemeting, is a Malayo-Polynesian language of Brunei and neighboring Malaysia. It is spoken in villages in the Belait and Tutong districts. There were estimated to be 700 speakers in 1995.[3]

Classification

Belait is related to the Miri, Kiput and Narum languages of Sarawak. It is considered part of the Lower Baram subgroup of North Sarawak languages.[4]

Dialects

There are four mutually-intelligible dialects of Belait.[5] These are spoken in two main regions:

Two distinct dialects of Belait - Metting and Bong - are spoken within the Mungkom village, Kiudang.[5] There are very few speakers of any of the dialects.

Phonology

General references on Belait phonology include Martin (1990) on Metting Belait[6][5] and Noor Alifah Abdullah (1992) on Labi Belait.[7][5] This sketch is based on the Metting dialect. Other dialects may vary in their phonology and lexicon.

Consonants

Labial Apical Laminal Dorsal Glottal
Oral Stops p b t d c ɟ k g ʔ
Nasal Stops m n ɲ ŋ
Fricatives s ʁ h
Laterals l
Glides w j

Vowels

Metting Belait has five monophthong vowels /i, u, e, o, a/. There is one diphthong /iə/.

The phoneme /e/ is realised as [ə] in non-final syllables, and as [ɛ] and [e] in final syllables.[5]

Syllable Structure

Lexical roots are disyllabic. Final syllables are typically (C)V((C)C). Non-final are typically ((C)C)V(C).[5]

Grammar

Word Classes

The major word classes in Belait are verbs and nouns. The two classes can be distinguished by their distribution, form and function. For example, verbs are negated with the form (e)ndeh and nouns with the form kay':

(1) pra'=yeh nga' salit, ndeh ana' umaw' padi
rain=dist already be.hard, neg able av.make paddy
'The rain has become hard, [we] are not able to grow rice'
(2)kadmacimblabiw,kay'blabiw
tarsierlikeratnegrat
'The tarsier is like a rat, but it is not a rat'

There are also several closed functional classes:

References

  1. ↑ Belait at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Belait". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ Martin, Peter W. 1995. 'Whither the indigenous languages of Brunei Darussalam?' Oceanic Linguistics 34:44-60
  4. ↑ Blust, Robert. 1997. 'Ablaut in Western Borneo'. Diachronica XIV:1-30.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Clynes, Adrian. 2005. 'Belait'. In Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Alexander Adelaar (eds.) The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar. Abingdon: Routledge.
  6. ↑ Martin, Peter W. 1990. Notes on the Phonology of Belait. Unpublished MS.
  7. ↑ Noor Alifah Abdullah. 1992. Struktur bahasa Belait. Unpublished BA Thesis, Department of Malay Language and Linguistics, Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
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