Moro, Francesca R. "Loss of morphology in Alorese (Austronesian): simplification in adult language contact." Journal of Language Contact 12, no. 2 (2019): 378-403.

Abstract

This paper discusses historical and ongoing morphological simplification in Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken in eastern Indonesia. From comparative evidence, it is clear that Alorese lost almost all of its morphology over several hundred years as a consequence of language contact (Klamer, 2012, to appear). By providing both linguistic and cultural-historical evidence, this paper shows that Alorese has historically undergone morphological simplification as a result of second language (L2) learning. The first part of the paper presents a case study comparing the use of subject agreement prefixes in Alorese L1 speakers (n=6) and Alorese L2 speakers (n=12). The results show that L2 speakers deviate from the native norm, and tend to use one prefix as default agreement. The variation found among L2 speakers reveals an ongoing change possibly leading to the restructuring of the Alorese agreement system. The second part of the paper applies models of linguistic change (Kusters, 2003; Trudgill, 2011) to the Alorese community and shows that Alorese has been, and still is, spoken in a community with a large number of L2 speakers, where morphological simplification is expected to occur.

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     () -
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Loss of Morphology in Alorese (Austronesian):
Simplication in Adult Language Contact
Francesca R. Moro
Leiden University
f.r.moro@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Abstract
This paper discusses historical and ongoing morphological simplication in Alorese,
an Austronesian language spoken in eastern Indonesia. From comparative evidence,
it is clear that Alorese lost almost all of its morphology over several hundred years as
a consequence of language contact (Klamer, 2012, to appear). By providing both lin-
guistic and cultural-historical evidence, this paper shows that Alorese has historically
undergone morphological simplication as a result of second language (L2) learning.
The rst part of the paper presents a case study comparing the use of subject agree-
ment prexes in Alorese L1 speakers (n=6) and Alorese L2 speakers (n=12). The results
show that L2 speakers deviate from the native norm, and tend to use one prex as
default agreement. The variation found among L2 speakers reveals an ongoing change
possibly leading to the restructuring of the Alorese agreement system. The second part
of the paper applies models of linguistic change (Kusters, 2003; Trudgill, 2011) to the
Alorese community and shows that Alorese has been, and still is, spoken in a com-
munity with a large number of L2 speakers, where morphological simplication is ex-
pected to occur.
Keywords
austronesian – simplication – L2 speakers – subject agreement – morphology

     ()
     () -
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1 Introduction
This paper discusses historical and ongoing morphological simplication in
Alorese, a language spoken in a small-scale, pre-industrialized, pre-literate so-
ciety in eastern Indonesia. From comparative evidence, it is clear that Alorese
lost almost all of its nominal and verbal morphology in a few hundred years
as a consequence of language contact (Klamer, 2012, to appear). Following a
bottom up approach, this paper uses synchronic language data from Alorese
second language (L2) speakers to reconstruct the diachronic process of mor-
phological simplication. These L2 speakers acquired Alorese during early
adulthood in the context of mixed marriages or shared work practices, and
although some have reached ultimate attainment, their acquisition is imper-
fect. The study of morphological variation among these L2 speakers reveals a
possible language change in progress leading to the restructuring of the verbal
agreement system. Since contact-induced change starts out as contact-induced
variation (see among others Schendl, 2001: 3), I hypothesize that the variation
found among L2 speakers may become a fully-edged change.
By studying morphological variation in Alorese L2 speakers, this study pro-
vides evidence that adult second-language learning typically leads to simpli-
cation (Kusters, 2003; Trudgill, 2011; Ross, 2013). Evidence from synchronic
language data is supported by demographic, social and cultural data surveyed
in the Alorese speaking villages. In doing so, this study is an answer to a call
by Ross (2013: 37) for more synchronically informed variationist studies “if we
are to understand how contact-induced change takes place in small scale so-
cieties”. Furthermore, the study of agreement prexes presented in this paper
gives an insight into restructuring and the matter of morphological stability in
contact situations involving untutored L2 learning.
Alorese is a language spoken in the Alor archipelago, which belongs to the
Province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, eastern Indonesia. It has approximately
25,000 L1 speakers (Simons and Fennig, 2017), and it is spoken in three villages
on Alor island (Alor Besar, Alor Kecil and Dulolong), in a number of villages on
Pantar (the most important being Munaseli, Pandai and Baranusa), and on two
small islands in the Alor-Pantar strait (see Fig1). Alorese is the only indigenous
 This research was supported by the  research project ‘Reconstructing the past through
languages of the present: the Lesser Sunda Islands’ at Leiden University, funded by the
Netherlands Organization for Scientic Research,  project number 277-70-012. I wish to
thank Marian Klamer, Owen Edwards, Hanna Fricke and Henning Schreiber two anonymous
reviewers for their critical comments on an earlier version of this paper. All errors remain
mine.

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Austronesian language on Alor and Pantar, which are predominantly Papuan
speaking.
On the peninsula Alor, Alorese is spoken in close proximity to Adang; in
the northern part of Pantar, it is spoken alongside Blagar, Kroku, Teiwa, Klamu
(also known as Nedebang) and Kaera, and in the central part of Pantar next
to Sar, and West Pantar (Fig.1). These Papuan languages all belong to a single
language family, the Timor-Alor-Pantar family (Holton et al., 2012). Generally
speaking, villages are either predominantly Alorese speaking or Papuan speak-
ing. However, the villages are very close to each other and often two Alorese
speaking villages are separated by at least one non-Alorese speaking village(s).
Furthermore, there are also some mixed communities. For instance, on Alor,
the village Aimoli is predominantly Adang speaking, but the hamlet Wahing is
inhabited by Alorese speakers. One reviewer reports that on Pantar there are
communities where Nedebang speakers and Alorese speakers live alongside
one another.
Genealogically, Alorese is a member of the Flores-Lembata subgroup of
Malayo-Polynesian languages, which also includes Sika, Kedang and Lamaho-
lot (LH) (Fernandez, 1996). Within the Flores-Lembata languages, the closest
genealogical relative of Alorese is Lamaholot, a language that spreads out as a
cluster of dialects in the eastern part of Flores and its ofshore islands (Fig.2).
Cultural and linguistic evidence indicate that the Alorese are descendants of
 The term “Papuan” is used here as a synonym of “non-Austronesian,” indicating that Alorese
and the neighboring languages are not genealogically related. In the literature, “Papuan” is
used to refer to a group of over 700 non-Austronesian languages spoken on Timor, Halmahera
and New Guinea, not all of which are demonstrably related to each other (Foley, 1986).
 Alorese as spoken on Alor and Pantar, and the neighboring Papuan languages.

     ()
     () -
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groups migrating eastwards from the Lamaholot speaking area (Stokhof, 1975:
8; Klamer, 2011: 8–15; Wellfelt, 2016: 248–249). These groups settled on Pantar
at the beginning the 14 century and afterwards, in the 16 century, a group
of Alorese speakers moved to the peninsula Alor (see section5.1). Alorese is
reported to have been used as a lingua franca in the area of the Alor-Pantar
strait before Indonesian was introduced in the 1960’s (Stokhof, 1975: 8; DuBois,
1944: 16).
By comparing Alorese to Lamaholot, Klamer (2012, to appear) is able to
show that the inectional and derivational morphology once present in Proto-
Lamaholot, the shared ancestor of Alorese and Lamaholot, was completely lost
in Alorese some time after it split from Lamaholot in the 14 century.
The rst evidence comes from inectional morphology. Lamaholot (the
Lewoingu variety) marks subject agreement on verbs (Table1). There are two
diferent subject paradigms: a set of prexes marking transitive subjects (A),
and a set of suxes marking intransitive subjects (S), as well as nominal agree-
ment on adjectives and numerals (Klamer, 2012, to appear). These axes were
inherited from Proto-Lamaholot, as they are also found in other Lamaholot
varieties (Nagaya, 2011: 103), as well as in Kedang (Samely, 1991: 70) and Hewa, a
variety of Sika (Fricke, 2014: 29).
In Lewoingu Lamaholot, the A prexes are obligatory for about 20 verbs
(Nishiyama and Kelen, 2007: 32), while the S suxes are optional but occur
on a broader number of verbs. The condition for the use of the A prexes is
phonological: only vowel initial verbs can take these prexes (Nishiyama and
Kelen, 2007: 98). The same holds for Hewa, where these prexes only occur on
 Alorese in its regional context

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vowel initial verbs (Fricke, 2014: 29, but cf. Nagaya, 2011: 105–106). In Lewoingu
Lamaholot and in Lewotobi Lamaholot, some verbs hosting the A prexes can
appear with the default agreement prex n- ‘3’ when they function as ad-
verbial expressions or as prepositions (Nishiyama and Kelen, 2007: 103; Nagaya,
2011: 290). Additionally, in Lewoingu Lamaholot, some adverbialsand numer-
als can occur with the default agreement sux -ka ‘3’ (Nishiyama andKelen,
2007: 105). Thus, there is evidence that some forms have fossilized and have
acquired a more grammatical meaning.
Alorese has almost entirely lost the subject agreement axes: it has entirely
lost the S suxes, and the A prexes are used only on about eight vowel initial
verbs (for a description of the Alorese A prexes, see section2). Table1 con-
trasts the agreement paradigms of Lewoingu Lamaholot and of Alorese.
The second evidence contrasts the set of derivational axes found in La-
maholot to the total absence of any derivational ax in Alorese (Klamer, 2012:
89–90, to appear). Lewoingu Lamaholot has seven derivational axes, which
are inherited from Proto-Austronesianor from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. As
shown in Table2, Alorese has lost all these derivational axes; the only pro-
ductive derivational process is reduplication.
 One example is the verb -o’on ‘accompany, be with’, which in the form no’on functions as a
conjunction meaning ‘and, with’. When used in this way, the verb does not agree with the
subject, but hosts the default 3 n- agreement.
 One example is the adverbial aya’ka ‘too-3’ in the sentence mo pana bera aya’-ka (you walk
fast too-3 ‘you walk too fast’).
 Subject axes in Lamaholot and Alorese
Lamaholot (Lewoingu) Alorese
A prex (on 20 verbs) S Sux A prex (on 8 verbs)
 k- -kən k-
 m- -ko, -no m-
 n- -na, -nən n-
. m- -kən m-
. t- -te t-
 m- -ke/-ne m-
 r- -ka r-

     ()
     () -
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 Derivational axes in Lamaholot and Alorese (adapted from Table2 in
Klamer,toappear)
Lamaholot
(Lewoingu)
Alorese
– Consonant replacement: it derives nouns
denoting result, location, or tool
yes no
– Prex be(C)- : it derives nouns denoting actor,
action, or tool, and stative verbs
yes no
– Prex pə- : it derives verbs meaning ‘to be like
the base N’, and actor/activity nouns
yes no
– Prex kə- : it derives nouns denoting result, or tool yes no
– Inx -ən- : it derives nouns denoting an actor, action,
state, result, or tool
yes no
– Prex mən- : it derives stative verbs, or nouns (actor,
action, result)
yes no
– Prex gə(C)- : it derives action, actor or result noun yes no
– Reduplication: it indicates iterative or intensive activity
(on verbs); it denotes plural diversity (on nouns)
yes yes
On the basis of this evidence, Klamer (2012: 72, to appear) concludes that Pro-
to-Lamaholot had a rich set of morphology, and hypothesizes that Alorese lost
almost all its morphology as a consequence of going through a stage where
adult speakers acquired it as a second language.
This paper provides linguistic and cultural-historical evidence from the
Alorese community on Alor supporting this stage of second language learning
proposed by Klamer (2012, to appear). In the rst part of this paper, I focus on
the last vestige of Alorese productive morphology, namely subject agreement
prexes on vowel initial verbs (see Table1). This domain of investigation is
particularly suitable because (i) it is the only inectional morphology left in
Alorese, and (ii) inectional morphology is vulnerable in terms of linguistic
stability in language contact situations, such as in adult L2 learning (see sec-
tion2). To investigate whether subject agreement is eroding, I compare the
production of subject prexes on vowel initial verbs in a group of Alorese L1
speakers (n=6) and a group of Alorese L2 speakers (n=12).
In the second part of this paper, I apply the models of linguistic change
proposed by Kusters (2003) and Trudgill (2011) to the history of the Alorese

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
community to investigate which socio-historical patterns of multilingualism
led to the restructuring of Alorese. Cultural, historical and demographic evi-
dence (Wellfelt, 2016; my eldwork notes) shows that Alorese has been, and
still is, spoken in a community with a large amount of L2 speakers, where mor-
phological simplication is expected to occur (see section4 and section5).
The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 describes the Alorese
subject agreement prexes. Section3 presents the case study on subject agree-
ment morphology by comparing the use of prexes in Alorese L1 and L2 speak-
ers. Section4 illustrates models of linguistic change, while Section5 presents
past (section5.1) and present (section5.2) cultural and demographic data on
the Alorese community. Section6 brings together the ndings of the previous
sections and explains why and how Alorese lost its morphology.
2 Alorese Subject Agreement Prexes
Alorese has a set of prexes marking the A subject in a small set of high-
frequency verbs. The verbs that can take the A prexes are: -ala ‘to pass’, -ang
‘to eat’, -ang ‘to use, to make’, -ate ‘to carry, -ei ‘to go’, -enung ‘to drink’, -oing ‘to
know’, -ong ‘to be with’. All these verbs are clearly transitive except -ei ‘to go’.
As for Lamaholot, the condition for the use of the subject agreement prexes
is probably phonological, as only vowel-initial verbs can host the subject pre-
xes. The prexes can be used in combination with free subject pronouns. An
illustration is given in (1) with the verb ‘to drink’, ‘to carry’ and the suppletive
forms of the verb ‘to eat’.
(1) pronoun -ate ‘to carry’ -enung ‘to drink’ -ang ‘to eat’
 (go) k-ate k-enung k-ang
 (mo) m-ate m-enung g-ong
 (no) n-ate n-enung g-ang
. (kame) m-ate m-enung g-eng
. (ite) t-ate t-enung t-aka
 (mi) m-ate m-enung g-eng
 (fe) r-ate r-enung r-aka
Note that the inectional paradigm contains three m- homophonous prexes:
the 2, 1. and 2. These prexes are not homophonous due to mor-
phological simplication, but because they reect Proto-Malayo-Polynesian
CV forms that each began with *m- and lost their vowels on account of the
vowel-initial stems with which they occur.

     ()
     () -
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3 Case Study: Agreement Morphology in Alorese L1 and L2 Speakers
The present case study investigates subject agreement, of the type described
in (1), in a group of Alorese L1 speakers and a group of Alorese L2 speakers.
The L1 sample consists of six female speakers, with ages ranging from 27 to 64
years, recorded in the villages of Alor Besar, Alor Kecil, and Dulolong. The L2
sample consists of 12 female speakers, with ages ranging from 25 to 46 years,
recorded in the villages of Alor Besar, Alor Kecil, and Dulolong. The L2 speak-
ers all have Adang as their L1, a language that is genealogically unrelated to
Alorese, and has no subject agreement prexes. The L2 speakers originated
from the Adang speaking villages of Oamate, Aimoli, Ampera, and Bampalola,
on Alor. They each learned Alorese in early adulthood, after marrying Alorese
men. The length of residence in the Alorese villages and the consequent length
of bilingualism varies from seven months to 27 years.
Each speaker performed four production tasks: (i) a free narrative (a fai-
rytale or a personal experience); (ii) the Frog Story; (iii) the Surrey elicita-
tion list (42 video clips); (iv) the Event and Position elicitation list (46 video
clips). The free narrative and the description of the Frog Story elicit (semi-)
free speech, while the two elicitation lists constrain the speaker to tell what she
sees in the video clips. The video clips depict human characters performing
various actions (e.g. washing dishes, cutting carrots, eating a banana), or depict
objects (e.g. a house burning, a ball under a chair, a coconut palm blowing in
the wind).
In order to investigate the use of agreement prexes in L1 and L2 speakers,
I examined all inected verbs, and in each case, I coded whether the inected
verb was appropriate, given the overt (or understood) subject. Accurate agree-
ment was labeled ‘correct match’ (example 2), inaccurate agreement (for in-
stance a third person singular subject followed by a verb inected for second
person singular) was labeled ‘agreement mismatch’ (example 3), while a few
cases were labeled ‘ambiguous match’ (example 4). The ambiguous matches
 In Adang, it is the object that is prexed to the verb (Haan, 2001: 46).
 For a complete description of the video clips in the Surrey list see Fedden and Brown (2014:
447–451).
 The Event and Position list is an elicitation list compiled by Hanna Fricke and Francesca
Moro in the  Vici Grant Research Project Reconstructing the past through languages of
the present: The Lesser Sunda Islands (2014–2019). The list contains a selection of video clips
and pictures developed by the Language and Cognition Department of the Max Planck Insti-
tute for Psycholinguistics (see http://eldmanuals.mpi.nl/). It includes stimuli to elicit spa-
tial relations, placement events, cut and break events and reciprocals. The list contains eight
additional video clips shot by the authors to elicit give events.

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include those cases where the subject is absent, it is not understood from the
context, or it can have a singular or plural reading. In (4) the noun tapo ‘coco-
nut’ could mean both coconut palm (singular) or coconut fruits (plural), but
it is not clear whether it is the coconut palm that is swinging, or the coconut
fruits hanging from it.
() Correct match:
Ina kafae kali n-ate bunga mene
mother girl . -carry ower come
‘That young woman brings some owers.’ (L speaker)
() Agreement mismatch:
Ina kafae m-ate bunga beta
mother girl /./-carry ower arrive
‘A young woman brings some owers.’ (L speaker)
() Ambiguous match:
Angi te pui tapo te lalu tapo
wind . blow coconut . then() coconut
te apa ha ojang r-ei beta r-ei…
. what() . sway -go arrive -go
‘The wind blows the coconut(s) (tree?), what, (it/they) sway back and forth…’
(L speaker)
After coding each inected verb as correct, mismatch or ambiguous, I analyzed
the proportion of mismatched prex and subject in the L1 and in the L2 groups.
Subsequently, I analyzed the proportion of mismatches into three sub-groups
of L2 speakers, divided according to length of exposure: the rst with a length
of exposure () to Alorese of 17–27 years; the second group with a  of
ve to eight years; the third group with a  of seven months to two years.
Finally, I investigated the frequency of mismatches and the incidence of mis-
matches for each specic verb. The results are presented in the next section.
While the small sample size does not allow for robust statistical analysis, a
qualitative observation of the results shows an interesting pattern.
3.1 Results
A total of 659 inected verbs are attested: 315 in the L1 speaker dataset and 344
in the L2 speaker dataset. The data are summarized in Table3.
Agreement restructuring seems to be present in both L1 and L2 speakers,
however the variation is more pronounced in the case of L2 speakers (27.3 %).

     ()
     () -
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There is a statistically signicant diference between the two groups using the
non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test (U = 72.0, p < 001, two tailed).
Table4 shows the variation in the three subgroups of L2 speakers. The pro-
portion of mismatches in Group 1 (: 17 to 27 years) and Group 2 (: ve
to eight years) is almost identical, while it is higher in Group 3 (: seven
months to two years). Although this data should be taken with caution due to
the small sample size, it seems that the individual proportion of mismatches
tends to stabilize at around 20% from ve years of exposure onward (and pos-
sibly from earlier).
The analysis of the variation in the use of the prexes reveals that the inac-
curate production of agreement morphology is not random, but it follows the
same pattern in both L1 and L2 speakers. In the L1 group, the 3 prex r- is used
with other subjects 5/7 times, and the homophonous prex m- (2/2/1.
.) is used the other two times, meaning that r- and m- occur where other
(correct) prexes would be expected. The L2 speakers follow a very similar
pattern, the 3 prex r- is used with other subjects 45/94 times (47.8%), fol-
lowed by m- (2/2/1..), which is used 41/94 times (43.6%). There-
fore, together the 3 prex r- and the homophonous prex m- account for
approximately 91% of all inaccurate agreement in L2 speakers. These data are
summarized in Table5 and examples are presented below.
Two examples of mismatches in L1 speakers are given in (5) and (6). In (5)
the verb r-ei ‘3-go’ is inected for third person plural, despite the subject be-
ing a third singular.
 Following Field (2005: 522), I used the nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test because there
are two conditions (agreement match and agreement mismatch) and diferent subjects in
each condition, and the data are not normally distributed.
 Inected verbs in Alorese L1 and L2 speakers
L1 speakers L2 speakers
Correct match 
.%

.%
Agreement mismatch 
.%

.%
Ambiguous match 
.%

%
Total inected verbs  

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
 Agreement mismatches in three subgroups of Alorese L2 speakers
L2 speaker Group 1 (: 17–27 years) Tokens %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Group average %
Group  (: – years)
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( years) / %
Group average %
Group  (:  months-  years)
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( year) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( year) / %
Speaker  bilingual Adang-Alor ( months) / %
Group average %
 The prex mismatch column reports the prexes that were used
by L1 and L2 speakers instead of another (correct) prex
L1 speakers Prex mismatch Tokens %
r- ‘’ / .%
m- ‘//..’ / .%
L speakers Prex mismatch Tokens %
r- ‘’ / .%
m- ‘//..’ / .%
n- ‘’ / .%
k- ‘’ / .%

     ()
     () -
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In (6) the verb m-ate ‘bring’ is inected for 2/2/1., despite the
subject being a third person singular.
() L S:
Beka te goka r-ei bana onong mung…
child . fall -go forest inside 
‘The child falls into the forest and…’
() L S:
Gambe tou ha m-ate peda mene
old.man one . //.-carry machete come
‘A man brings a machete.’
() L S:
Aho te palae palae palae r-ei oro sampe bana onong
dog . run run run -go  until() forest inside
‘The dog runs, runs, runs into the forest.’
() L S:
Kafae te r-ate kajo tou te
girl . -carry wood one .
‘The woman brings a stick.’
() L S:
Gambe tou m-ate sapada dei mu
old.man one //.-carry machete upward 
‘A man brings a machete and…’
() L S:
Fe n-ei nangge
 -go swim
‘They go swimming.’
L2 speakers also extend the use of the 3 prex r- and the homophonous m-,
following the same pattern of L1 speakers, as shown in examples (7)-(9). In
(7)-(8) the verbs host the 3 prex r-, despite the subject being a third person
singular. In (9) the verb is inected for 2/2/1., but the subject is a
third person singular.
Additionally, the L2 dataset contains instances of overextension of the 3
prex n- and of the 1 prex k-. In (10) the verb n-ei ‘3-go’ hosts the 3
prex n-, despite the subject being third person plural; in (11) the verb -kei ‘1-
go’ is inected for 1, but the subject is third person singular.

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
The quantitative and qualitative data show that the 3 prex r- and the
homophonous 2/2/1. prex m- occur with other subjects and
replace the expected prexes. Although these two prexes seem to be in com-
petition, their selection is, at least partially, lexically driven. As shown in Ta-
ble6, for the verbs -ate ‘to carry’ and -enung ‘to drink’, the L2 speakers prefer
the form with the prex m-. For instance, the verb ‘to carry’ tends to occur in
the form mate, regardless of the subject. For the verb ‘to eat’, L2 speakers prefer
the form hosting the prex r-, the suppletive form raka ‘. The verb -ei ‘to go’
does not show a clear preference, the forms rei and mei are used equally often.
To summarize, Alorese L2 speakers display considerable variation in the use
agreement prexes, despite having been immersed in a L2 speaking environ-
ment for more than ve years. Following a pattern also observed among L1
speakers, L2 speakers extend the use of the homophonous prex m- and of the
3 prex r- to replace the expected prexes. The choice between the prex
m- or the prex r- is lexically driven.
 Inaccurate verb forms among Alorese L2 speakers
Verb Meaning Inaccurate verb form Tokens %
-ate ‘to carry’ m-ate / %
r-ate / %
-enung ‘to drink’ m-enung / %
r-enung / %
n-enung / %
-ang ‘to eat’ r-aka / %
g-ang / %
-ei ‘to go’ r-ei / %
m-ei / %
n-ei / %
k-ei / %
() L S:
Atou te palae daka k-ei te
person one . run upward -go .
‘A person runs going upward.

     ()
     () -
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3.2 Discussion
The subject prexes are the last vestige of Alorese productive inectional mor-
phology. They have probably resisted so long because they occur on eight high-
frequency vowel-initial verbs. Alorese syllable structure strongly disprefers
vowel initial verbs: in the dataset used for the present study only ve verbs out
of 223 (2.2%) begin with a vowel. Phonotactic restrictions and high frequency
have arguably helped the preservation of this type of verbal agreement over
the centuries and constrained omission. Another fact that might have contrib-
uted to the preservation of these prexes is that the L1 of adult learners also
has verb agreement prexes (although in Alor-Pantar languages the prexes
usually index the P argument and not A or S, see the grammatical descriptions
in Schapper, 2014). Alorese verb prexes, however, are not immune to change,
as witnessed by the variation found among L2 speakers. This variation suggests
that L2 speakers are restructuring the Alorese agreement system in order to
reduce its complexity.
The type of variation found among Alorese L2 speakers consists in the sub-
stitution of one prex in place of another (expected) prex. In order words, L2
speakers extend the use of one prex to the whole paradigm. The prexes that
appear to be the preferred default agreement option are m- and r-. I hypoth-
esize here that since there are three homophonous m- prexes indexing dif-
ferent subjects (2, 1. and 2), L2 speakers may perceive this form
as being underspecied for person and number and therefore, they use it as
default agreement and generalize it to other subjects. Furthermore, the fact
that there are three homophonous m- makes this form quite frequent in the
language. For the 3 prex r-, there is evidence that the third person plural
is used for impersonals. The noun ata ‘person’ functions as a kind of imper-
sonal pronoun and triggers the 3 possessive form, as illustrated in the fol-
lowing sentence, where the informant describes a young man who sits leaning
against someone’s wall (ata r-eing tembok ‘someone 3- wall’). Thus,
the use of the 3 prex r- for impersonal may account for the fact that this
prex has become semantically the default option in the repertoire of some L2
speakers.
The fact that the generalization of the prex r- and m- is attested also in L1
speakers, although to a lesser extent (only seven tokens), may indicate that L1
speakers are afected by the same process of language change as L2 speakers.
Although the data are too scarce to draw a solid conclusion, this may be an
 The possessive linker is related to the possessive verb –(e)ing ‘have’, which occurs either in
the third person singular form n-eing ‘3-’ or in the third person plural form r-eing
‘3-’ (see Klamer, 2011: 53).

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
indication that the restructured variety of L2 speakers has already afected the
language of L1 speakers and this variation may indeed become a fully-edged
change. If the generalization of these prexes stabilizes, the forms m-ate ‘to
carry’, m-enung ‘to drink’, m-ei or r-ei ‘to come’ and r-aka ‘to eat’ might eventu-
ally fossilize and become invariant forms. Unfortunately, it is not possible to
test this prediction by comparing Alorese to Lamaholot. As previously noted,
Lamaholot has a set of approximately 20 verbs hosting an A prex (Nishiyama
and Kelen, 2007: 32), while in Alorese the set is only eight. The 12 verbs that in-
ect in Lamaholot, but not in Alorese, either do not show any correspondence
between the two languages, or they are absent from my dataset. For instance,
the verb ‘to hunt’ is –iu (inected) in Lamaholot, but kori (not inected) in
Alorese, the verb ‘to wait’ is –awan (inected) in Lamaholot, but baing (not in-
ected) in Alorese, the verb ‘to stay’ is –awa (inected) in Lamaholot, but tobo
(not inected) in Alorese. Thus, it is important to point out that the mecha-
nism operating at present (generalization of one prex) might not have been
operative in the past and that Alorese might have lost some of the inected
verbs, not by fossilizing a given prex, but by innovating new lexical items.
In summary, the present case study has shown that the last vestige of pro-
ductive inectional morphology in Alorese is vulnerable to change and is sub-
ject to ongoing simplication. In order to simplify the system, L2 speakers do
not omit the subject prexes, but instead they extend one prex to the entire
paradigm to comply with Alorese syllable structure rules. L2 speakers tend to
generalize the homophonous prex m-, and the 3 prex r-, regardless of the
subject. The next section discusses the socio-historical factors that lead to this
simplication.
4 Theoretical Models of Linguistic Change
This section discusses two models of linguistic change that place special em-
phasis on simplication and are, therefore, extremely relevant for the present
study. The models of Kusters (2003) and Trudgill (2011) individuate a number
of social factors as determinant of linguistic change and show that certain lin-
guistic features are more commonly associated with certain types of societies.
Kusters’ (2003: 41–45) proposes a model involving two communities: Type
1 and Type 2 communities. Type 1 communities are relatively small and share
a common background as people tend to know each other. Usually outsiders
not raised in the community do not learn the language and the number of L1
speakers far outnumbers the number of L2 speakers. Type 2 communities are
generally large and their members do not share much background knowledge.

     ()
     () -
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Most of the members know other languages as well, and therefore the com-
mon language is mostly used for negotiating and exchanging practical infor-
mation. Since the language mainly serves for information transmission, Type 2
communities tend to favor hearer comprehension, meaning that “the highest
amount of information is transmitted to a hearer with the least efort and as
clearly as possible” (Kusters, 2003: 41). In Type 2 communities L2 speakers form
the larger segment of the population. This model is better characterized as a
continuum, whereby Type 1 and Type 2 communities are prototypes falling at
the ends of the continuum.
Languages of Type 1 communities tend to be morphologically more com-
plex than languages of Type 2 communities. However, when a speech commu-
nity changes from Type 1 to Type 2, its language simplies and the “simplicity
of adult L2 language consists, among other things, in the lack of inectional
morphology” (Kusters, 2003: 49). Kusters shows that the loss of inectional cat-
egories due to L2 learning is attested in four groups of languages, namely Que-
chua, Swahili, Arabic and Scandinavian. For instance, within the Scandinavian
family Icelandic (the language within Scandinavia spoken by the a community
most like Type 1) has retained, for the greatest part, the inectional system of
Old Norse, while Norwegian has lost all inectional categories (except tense)
due to contact with traders speaking Low German. The simplication process
from Old Norse (13 century) to Norwegian took place over 700 years.
Trudgill’s (2011) model takes into account ve social factors that inuence
the rate and type of linguistic change: contact, size, social networks, stabil-
ity and the amount of communally shared information. Since stability relates
more to the rate of change than the type of change and communally shared in-
formation correlates with size, Trudgill (2011: 147) operationalizes the remain-
ing three factors in the matrix presented in Table 7.
Simplication occurs in communities characterized by high levels of adult
language contact, large size and loose networks (prototypically Type 6). For
instance, simplication occurred in English as a result of the Anglo-Saxon in-
vasion of Britain and the consequent contact between speakers of Old English
 Six types of societies (Trudgill 2011: 147)
1 2 3 4 5 6
Size small small small small large large
Network tight tight loose loose loose loose
Contact low high low high low high

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
and native Britons who acquired Old English as a L2 (Trudgill, 2011: 50–55). The
simplied version of English without, for example, case and gender agreement
on adjectives, eventually became the dominant variety (Trudgill, 2011: 55). In-
terestingly, even the last vestige of English agreement morphology, the third
person singular -s, has disappeared in the East Anglian dialect of Norwich (due
to contact with Dutch and French speakers in the 16 and 17 centuries, see
Trudgill, 1997), and in a number of more recent contact varieties, such as Sin-
gaporean English (Kortmann and Schneider, 2004–7).
If social factors, such as adult language contact, provide one explanation
as to why languages simplify, simplication mechanisms can explain how this
comes about. According to Trudgill (2011: 22, 62), the following mechanisms
are responsible for simplication: increase in morphological transparency,
regularization of irregularities, reduction of paradigmatic redundancy (loss of
morphological categories), and reduction in syntagmatic redundancy (loss of
redundant agreement). The disappearance of 3 -s in some contact variet-
ies of English is one example of loss of syntagmatic redundancy.
To sum up, Kusters (2003) and Trudgill (2011) models demonstrate the link
between levels of linguistic simplicity and type of speech community. Reduc-
tion or even loss of morphological categories and grammatical agreement are
more likely to occur in speech communities characterized by large amounts
of adult language contact where L2 speakers form the larger segment of the
population. The next section shows that Alorese is such a type of community
where we expect, and actually nd, considerable simplication.
5 The Alorese Community
This section presents past (section5.1) and contemporary data (section5.2)
on the interaction between the coastal Alorese speaking community and the
inland Adang speaking community on the peninsula Alor. The historical data
are largely based on the work of the historical-anthropologist Emilie Wellfelt
(2016) and the references cited therein. The present data come from Wellfelt
 These mechanisms roughly correspond to the three simplication principles of Kusters
(2003: 21–33): Economy, Transparency and Isomorphy. Economy leads to a reduction in
the number of categories in inectional morphology (similar to reduction of paradig-
matic redundancy); Transparency leads to a one-to-one relationship between form and
meaning (similar to the increase in morphological transparency); and Isomorphy leads
to a semantically based order of morphemes reecting the relevance of morphological
categories to the stem.

     ()
     () -
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(2007) and my own eldwork notes collected in the period May-June 2016. The
evidence shows that contact has been, and still is, relatively intense, and there-
fore the Alorese are characterized as Type 2-like community (see section5.3).
5.1 Historical Evidence on the Interaction between the Alorese
andtheAdang
We know from historical records that the Alorese arrived on Pantar from
the west (from Flores and its ofshore islands) in the rst half of 14 century
(Klamer, 2011, 2012; Wellfelt, 2016). In the 16 century, some of them moved to
the peninsula of Alor and settled in the three coastal villages of Alor Besar, Alor
Kecil and Dulolong (Wellfelt, 2016: 273). On the peninsula of Alor, the Alorese
came into contact with the Adang, although the two groups occupied diferent
niches: the Alorese are coastal, sea-oriented, Muslim people, while the Adang
live in the interior, are land-oriented and are Christians or animists. Wellfelt
(2016: 232) reports that the contact between the coastal (Austronesian) Alorese
and the inland (Papuan) Adang has been so close, that the Adang have actually
become culturally Austronesian; “a simple explanation for the Austronesian
feeling in Adang society is the close interaction with the only Austronesian
language in Alor, Alorese”. There are at least four reasons supporting close
contact: i) exogamy, ii) trade, iii) political alliances and iv) administrative du-
ties during European colonialism. I will explain each of them here, below.
Traditionally, the Alorese exchanged women with the neighboring exoga-
mous Adang community. Exogamy was a necessity, because the Alorese com-
munity only counted small settlements of about 200–300 people (Anonymous,
1914: 89–90). In the patrilineal Adang and Alorese societies, a woman generally
moves to the husband’s village (cf. also DuBois, 1944: 85). Thus, since the 16
century there must have been a continuous and considerable number of Ad-
ang women who married into Alorese families and learned Alorese as an L2.
Besides exchanging women, the Alorese and the Adang also exchanged
goods. The Alorese ofered coastal products, woven cloth and cofee, and in re-
turn they obtained inland products from farming or the forest (Wellfelt, 2007:
6, Klamer, 2011: 9). The Alorese were also involved in a Chinese-Muslim trade
network bringing artifacts and slaves to Alor. The existence of, for instance,
Chinese porcelain plates in the Adang oral histories and royal houses indicates
that the Adang must have obtained these goods through the coastal Alorese
(Wellfelt, 2016: 230, 250). Since the Alorese acted as intermediaries between
 A similar case of cultural inuence is reported by McWilliam (2007), who observes that the
Fataluku (Papuan) society in East Timor exhibits many Austronesian cultural traits sug-
gesting a long period of engagement and accommodation to Austronesian communities.

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
the inland Adang population and the foreign merchants, it is likely that the
language used for bartering was Alorese.
Further evidence for the close interaction between the Alorese and the Ad-
ang come from indigenous histories and shared traditions. Both Adang and
Alorese stories tell about an Adang man and an Alorese woman who found-
ed the rst Alorese village, Alor Besar. This story is narrated in a poem that,
quite symbolically, has the rst verse in Adang and the second verse in Alorese
(Wellfelt, 2007: 246). Additionally, the Alorese and the Adang are united since
at least the 17 century, in the so called ‘10-3-7’alliance, representing a league
of ten Adang villages, three Alorese villages and seven villages on the island
of Pura. Soon after this alliance was formed, the ruler of the Adang village
O’a ceded power to the king of Alor Besar, due to the increase in seaborne
trade (Wellfelt, 2016: 301). This alliance functioned as a peace-keeping factor
and forged social relations, which still manifest today in yearly harvesting ritu-
als (Wellfelt, 2007: 237). Every year, after the rice harvest, the king’s house in
Alor Besar hosts the ceremony Makan baru to which all the members of the
‘10-3-7’alliance are invited.
Finally, there is evidence that the Alorese rulers acted as intermediaries be-
tween the inland Adang population and the colonial governments. The ruler of
Alor Besar was rst ocially acknowledged in 1813–1814 by the Portuguese and
again in the early 1900’s by the Dutch (Wellfelt, 2016: 279, 283). Stokhof (1984:
111) reports that “[…] the mountain dwellers did not view them [coastal rulers]
as their leaders, but at least accepted them as intermediaries in their trading
contacts and as interpreters between themselves and the Dutch ocials”. Ac-
cording to DuBois (1944: 16), the Dutch granted control over the interiors to
coastal rulers, because they could communicate with the inland population, as
Malay was not yet widely known in the area. Although Stokhof and DuBois do
not specically refer to the Adang, it is plausible that the Alorese coastal rulers
were intermediaries for them as well.
To conclude, the coastal Alorese and the Adang interacted in a number of
ways: they exchanged women and goods; they made alliances, handed over
political power to each other and created shared stories and traditions. Con-
sidering their role as intermediaries with foreign traders and the colonial gov-
ernment, it is very likely that the language of the Alorese was learned by (at
least) a part of the Adang population to carry out these interactions and thus
functioned as a sort of lingua franca in the area.
 The seven villages on Pura Island are also linguistically and culturally Papuan.

     ()
     () -
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5.2 Present Evidence on the Interaction between the Alorese
andtheAdang
Nowadays Alorese and Adang speakers interact and cooperate quite inten-
sively. Many Adang speakers have moved to the coast, and it is possible to nd
hamlets of Adang villages next to the Alorese speaking villages. As in other
parts of Indonesia, they engage in collective work to prepare elds, construct
houses, and build mosques and/or churches. Wellfelt (2007: 17) reports that in
the Alor regency “it is regarded as compulsory (wajib), for a Christian to help
their neighbors in building a mosque; likewise it is a duty, and an honor, for a
Muslim to help a Christian community with church construction”. Alorese and
Adang speakers come together to celebrate religious and traditional festivals,
such as the harvest feast Makan Baru (see section5.1). Furthermore, they often
meet in the markets that are held by the coast, which function as exchange
points for coastal and inland products (Wellfelt, 2007: 6).
This information does tell us that Alorese and Adang are in contact with
each other, but it says nothing about the language(s) they speak. Kusters (2003:
38) warns that it is very dicult to measure the proportion of L2 speakers in
a given community because often “the available data are not precise enough,
neither for the ratio of L1/L2 learners, nor for the rst language of the L2 learn-
ers”. In order to partially solve this problem, I visited the village oce (kantor
desa) of the three Alorese villages and of 11 Adang villages, and I asked the
village chief (kepala desa) or his secretaries about the main language spoken
in the village, about the number of speakers of other languages and about the
market place. Additionally, I consulted the Buku Induk Penduduk (), which
is the census book issued every few years by the Indonesian government.
The total number of inhabitants in the three Alorese speaking villages is
5,084. The data about the three Alorese villages are summarized in Table8.
The number of inhabitants in the three Alroese villages (5,084) roughly cor-
responds to the number of Alorese L1 speakers. I say roughly because there
 Number of inhabitants of the three Alorese speaking villages
Alorese speaking villages on Alor Island Inhabitants
Alor Besar ( ) 
Alor Kecil ( ) 
Dulolong ( ) 
Total 

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
are also L2 speakers of Alorese living in the villages. This number, however, is
not very high. The secretary of Alor Kecil reports of 22 women coming from
outside (13 from the mountains who are Adang speakers and nine from other
areas of Indonesia such as Flores, Macassar etc.).
There are 17 Adang villages in the peninsula Alor. It was only possible to
gather data in 11 of them, so data from six villages are lacking (marked with a
question mark in Table9). The data about the Adang villages are summarized
 Number of inhabitants of the Adang speaking villages and estimated number of
Alorese L2 speakers
Adang speaking
village
Inhabitants Percentage of Alorese L2
speakers
Alorese L2
speakers
Alila ( )  one hamlet, I estimate % 
Kokar ( )  % -%, I estimate
.%

Alaang ( )  % 
Aimoli ( )  % of half of the
inhabitants

Oamate ( )  % 
Ampera ( )  almost all inhabitants, I
estimate %.

Lewalu ( )  almost all inhabitants, I
estimate %.

Dulolong Barat ( )  almost all inhabitants, % 
Teluk Kenari ( )  % 
Kelurahan Kalabahi Barat
( )
 % 
Adang Buom ( )  –%, I estimate %. 
Bampalola ? ? ?
Hulnani ? ? ?
Lefokisu ? ? ?
Otvai ? ? ?
Adang ? ? ?
Alila Selatan ? ? ?
Total  

     ()
     () -
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in Table9. In each of the 11 villages that I surveyed, I asked how many people
were able to speak Alorese as a second language. When I asked about how Ad-
ang people learned Alorese I obtained a very consistent answer, namely that
they learnt it by spending time with Alorese speakers (pergaulan), or by going
to the market in Alor Kecil, or at parties. Notably, the Alorese village of Alor
Kecil hosts the biggest market in the area, every Tuesday and Friday. These an-
swers are congruent with the interaction scenario discussed above.
The total number of inhabitants of the Adang villages is 15,246; of these
about a third (5,315) speak Alorese as an L2. The number of L2 speakers is ei-
ther based on the percentage provided by the village chief or it is estimated
on the basis of other information. For instance, the village Alila is formed by
two hamlets (dusun). The village chief reported that inhabitants of one hamlet
could also speak Alorese, so I estimated that roughly 50% of Alila inhabitants
could speak Alorese as an L2.
Interestingly, the data from Table 8 and Table9 show that the number of
Alorese L2 speakers (5,315) is higher than the number of Alorese L1 speakers
(5,084). A possible over-estimation of L2 speakers is evened out by the missing
data for Alorese L2 speakers from the six Adang villages, which was unavail-
able to me. If, on the contrary, the number of L2 speakers is under-estimated,
a higher number will only strengthen the claim that Alorese L2 speakers out-
number L1 speakers.
To summarize, considering the geographical proximity of Alorese and Ad-
ang villages presently, and the many opportunities to come together and in-
teract (markets, feasts, building churches and mosques), it is reasonable to
assume that the Alorese and the Adang needed a language to communicate
and that this language is (or has been until recently) Alorese. The situation is
changing, because Indonesian and the local variety of Malay are slowly but
surely replacing Alorese as a lingua franca in the region.
5.3 Summary: Alorese, a Type-2-Like Community
Given the amount of adult language contact, the Alorese community is charac-
terized as a Type 2-like community in Kusters (2003) typology. We nd a large
amount of adult language contact, as the language is commonly acquired by
Adang L1 speakers and it is (mostly) used for negotiating and exchanging prac-
tical information. In the past, the Alorese communities were smaller (200–300
individuals, Anonymous, 1914: 89–90), and with tighter networks, although
contact with the Adang was already intense (see section5.1). Both Trudgill and
Kusters models predict that languages of Type 2-like communities, such as the
Alorese, undergo simplication (see section4). This is exactly what we nd
(see section3).

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
6 General Discussion and Conclusions
This paper describes the contact-induced variation attested in Alorese by tak-
ing into account the sociolinguist setting in which Alorese is spoken. Historical,
cultural and demographic data are used to classify the Alorese as a Type 2 com-
munity, where the Alorese language was learned by a large amount of L2 speak-
ers. For about four centuries (from the 16 to 20 century), the Alorese and the
Adang intermarried, bartered local products and foreign goods, created alli-
ances, participated in harvesting feasts, and carried out political negotiations.
In Type 2 communities, such as the Alorese, L1 speakers tend to accommodate
and assimilate the speech of L2 speakers. For the sake of eciency and ease of
communication, Alorese L1 speakers adopted the simplied variety of L2 speak-
ers, one without morphology, and passed it on to their children. Thus, there are
reasons to believe that the simplied variety, which eventually became domi-
nant, was not only used by Adang speakers, but also by the Alorese speakers
themselves. One example comes from the synchronic data presented in the
case study in section3, where we observe that the generalization of the prex
r- and m- is also present in some L1 speakers. This may be an indication that the
restructured variety of L2 speakers has been adopted by the L1 speakers and is
becoming the norm.
Nowadays, Alorese is still learned by many Adang speakers as an L2, and
some of them even use it to communicate to each other. When Adang women
living in the Alorese villages interact, they use Adang only if there is no one else
involved in the conversation; otherwise they speak Alorese. The use of Alorese
among L2 speakers reinforces and accelerates linguistic change. This is known
as the ‘vicious circle of language change’, where the linguistic input from other
L2 speakers is taken as corroborating evidence by other bilinguals who, in turn,
expose other speakers to the patterns of simplication, thus perpetuating the
circle (Eneld, 2003: 366; Schmid, 2011: 170). In addition to this, it must be noted
than in pre-literate societies, like the Alorese, linguistic normativity does not
play an important role (see Backus and Spotti 2012, for a discussion on norma-
tivity and language change). It is, therefore, very likely that L2 speakers do not
receive corrective feedback from L1 speakers when they deviate from the L1
norm. This may also explain why even speakers with a long exposure to Alorese
(more than ve years) still display considerable variation in their use of sub-
ject prexes. After all, the goal for L2 speakers is to reach a level that is “good
enough” for communication.
The study of agreement prexes presented in section3 addresses the is-
sue of morphological stability in contact situations involving untutored L2
learning. Morphology and especially inectional morphology, is not stable in

     ()
     () -
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contact situations involving adult L2 learning, because adult L2 acquisition is
primarily driven by the principle of Economy, which demands that as few se-
mantic categories as possible should be expressed morphologically (Kusters,
2003; Trudgill, 2011). Hence, inectional morphology is the rst aspect that
tends to be simplied in L2 grammars. In light of this, it is not surprising that
the way in which Alorese simplied was by losing its morphology. First, it re-
duced its paradigmatic redundancy (semantic categories of A and S) and to-
day it is on its way to losing syntagmatic redundancy (subject agreement). The
loss of the morphological categories A/S is a change that has reached comple-
tion, whereas the variation in the use of subject prexes is a case of ongoing
simplication.
In section3.3, I have discussed in more detail, the variation attested among
L2 speakers. The way L2 speakers are restructuring the system is by extend-
ing one prex to the entire paradigm to comply with syllable structure rules.
The most common strategy is the generalization of the homophonous prex
m-, and of the 3 prex r-, regardless of the subject. The prex m- may be
perceived by L2 speakers as being underspecied for person and number and
therefore is suitable to be used as default agreement. If this ongoing change
eventually reaches completion, and the verb forms such as mate ‘to carry’, or
menung ‘to drink’, fossilize, then Alorese will have lost all its inectional mor-
phology and will become even simpler than it already is. However, it is im-
portant to point out that this simplication mechanism might not have been
operative in the past, as there is no evidence of fossilized verbs with an m- or
r- prex in Alorese when compared to Lamaholot. So, it is likely that diferent
simplication mechanisms operate at diferent times.
To conclude, this paper has shown that Alorese has lost almost all its mor-
phology due to adult language contact. The interactions between the Alorese
(Austronesian) and the neighboring Adang (Papuan) have been and still are
relatively intense, supporting a scenario typical of a Type 2 community, where
L2 speakers form a large segment of the population. In other words, I believe
that the simplication from Proto-Lamaholot to Alorese was fundamentally
no diferent from the simplication from Old English and English, or from Old-
Norse to Norwegian, which all took place in Type 2-like communities across
several centuries.
7 Abbreviations
The abbreviations used in this paper are: 1, 2, 3= rst, second, third person,
A= agent-like argument of transitive verb, = demonstrative, = distal,

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
=exclusive, = inclusive, L2= second language, = medial, =
Malay, PL=plural, = proximal, S= single argument of intransitive verb,
= sequential, SG= singular.
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