Ambonese Malay or simply Ambonese is a Malay-based creole language spoken on Ambon Island in the Maluku Islands of Eastern Indonesia. It was first brought by traders from Western Indonesia, then developed when the Dutch Empire colonised the Maluku Islands and was used as a tool by missionaries in Eastern Indonesia. Malay has been taught in schools and churches in Ambon, and because of this it has become a lingua franca in Ambon and its surroundings.
Christian speakers use Ambonese Malay as their mother tongue, while Muslims speak it as a second language as they have their own language. Muslims on Ambon Island particularly live in several areas in the city of Ambon, dominant in the Salahutu and Leihitu Peninsulas. While in the Lease Islands, the Christian Ambonese-speaking community is dominant in parts of Haruku, Saparua and Nusa Laut islands. Ambonese Malay has also become lingua franca in Buru, Seram, Geser-Gorom and the south-western Maluku Islands, though with different accents.
While originally derived from Malay, Ambonese Malay has been heavily influenced by European languages (Dutch and Portuguese) as well as the vocabularies or grammatical structures of indigenous languages. Muslims and Christian speakers tend to make different choices in vocabulary. Papuan Malay, a Malay creole spoken in the Indonesian part of New Guinea, is closely related to Ambonese Malay and is said to be a derivative of Ambonese Malay or Manado Malay or a mixture of both. According to Robert B. Allen and Rika Hayami-Allen, the eastern Indonesian forms of Malay have their roots in North Moluccan Malay.
Morpho-syntax
Pronouns and person markers In Ambonese Malay, personal pronouns typically have a full form, as well as another one or more shortened and/or variant forms.Van Minde 1997, p. 68 The pronouns vary in terms of number - singular and plural, as well as clusivity, such as exclusive forms which exclude the addressee and inclusive forms which include the addressee. Such distinction is relatively typical of Austronesian languages. The following table provides a summary of all the pronouns found in Ambonese Malay:
+ Personal pronouns Singular Plural Full (and variant) form Short form Full (and variant) form Short form 1st person Exclusive Beta bet; be Bat'ong (dialectal form recorded at Booi, Saparua Island) Inclusive Kat'ong tong 2nd person OseAle os; seal Dorang dong 3rd person Dia di; de Dorang dong neuter Ontua; Ongtua; Antua; Angtua Akang ont'o; ant'u; ant'o kang; ang
Etymology
A number of observations can be made from the pronouns of Ambonese Malay which demonstrate etymology of certain pronouns:
A number of pronouns are historically compounded. They are: Bat'ong: Derives from beta 'I (1SG) + orang 'people; man' Kat'ong: Derives from *kita 'we (1PL) + orang 'people; man' Dorang: Derives from dia 'he; she; it (3SG) + orang 'people; man' The 2nd person singular form ose is derived from the Portuguese pronoun voce, meaning 'you; thou'. The 2nd person singular form ale is derived from a vernacular language.
Politeness
Similarly to other Austronesian languages, such as Malay and Indonesian, the 2nd person singular and one of the 3rd person singular pronouns in Ambonese Malay vary in their degree of politeness. They are summarised in the following table:
Person Politeness marking Full singular form Short singular form 2nd Markedly impolite Used in familiar and intimate relationships and when no outspoken respect needs to be expressed
Expresses intimacy. Used among peers, or to people of lower status. ose
Ale os se
al 3rd Markedly polite. Used by people of younger age to refer to adults and by adults to refer to people of equal or higher social rank. Ontua; ongtua; antua; angtua
It is also important to note that although in Ambonese the 1st person singular form beta is the standard form, in Classical Malay, it is used only by royal persons speaking to equals of rank.
Syntactic positions As previously mentioned, Ambonese pronouns consist of a full and one or more variant form. Full forms occur in every syntactic position. Variant form have a more restricted distribution and may be functionally different. The following table summarises the set of full personal pronouns plus (in brackets) their variant forms according to context and syntactic function:
+ Personal pronouns and their syntactic function Person One-word sentence Subject Object (of verb or prep.) 1S beta beta (bet; be) beta 2S ose (os; se) ale ose (os; se) ale (al) ose (os; se) ale 3S
3SN dia antua (etc.) ontua (etc.) dia (di; de) antua (etc.) ontua (etc.) akang dia antua (etc.) ontua (etc.) akang (kang; ang) 1P kat'ong kat'ong (tong) kat'ong 2P dorang (dong) dorang (dong) dorang (dong) 3P dorang (dong) dorang (dong) dorang (dong)
From this table it follows that two factors determine whether a personal pronoun can be shortened: syntactic construction and syntactic position:
Except for the first person singular beta, first person plural kat'ong and third person singular dia, all pronouns can be shortened in one-word sentences. Third person singular neuter akang cannot form a one-word sentence altogether. In clauses all personal pronouns in Subject position may be shortened, except for third person singular neutral akang. In clauses all personal pronouns in Object position may be shortened, except for first person singular beta, first person plural kat'ong, second person ale and third person singular dia. Likewise, as preposition object all personal pronouns except for beta, ale, kat'ong and dia may be shortened.
These facts show that se, os 'you', dong 'you', ont'o, ant'o, ant'u 'he; she' and dong 'they' have developed into doublets which are functionally (but not semantically) on a par with their full forms, while other short forms (bet, al, kang, ang) are phonological variants with a more restricted distribution.
It is also important to note a number of syntactic variations within the functions of personal pronouns in Ambonese:
1) The 3rd person single dia 's/he; it' can be shortened to di or de when it is in Subject position, or when it is head of a Noun Phrase (NP) in object position.
2) The 3rd person single antua (and angtua, ontua, ongtua) is also a modifier of head nominals in a phrase, thereby adding an aspect of deference. It adds a feature respect.
3) The third form, akang, is a neater pronoun 'it', which also functions as a determiner. This form links up with the demonstratives ini and itu for deictic reference: it occurs as a single attribute before nouns, and in combination with postnominal tu.
4) The short form of dorang, which is dong, also functions as a modifier in NPs to create collective plurals.
Reduplication
Reduplication with personal pronouns is not frequent. The following examples denote a concept "referent of pronoun plus persons who are alike":
Word Order Ambonese Malay is a SVO (subject-verb-object) language. Its basic word order has the subject in initial position, followed by the verb and then the object, as shown below. 'Subject, verb, object' are labelled 'S, V, O' respectively:
Negation Negation in Ambonese is sentential rather than constituent. Negation is predominantly expressed by five free morphemes that are treated as adverbs, modifying predicates, clauses or parts of the sentence as opposed to specific elements (such as single verbs or nominals). These morphemes are listed below alongside their common variants and English equivalents:
seng ‘no, not’ tar (tra) ‘no, not’ bal’ong (blong) ‘not yet’ bukang ‘no, not’ jangang (jang) ‘don’t’.Van Minde 1997, p. 273
Constituent order
Ambonese negators are typically positioned between the subject and the VO-group. This word order is typical of SVO languages. In the following example, the subject pronoun de precedes the negator seng (represented here as sem), and the verb group headed by the verb bisa follows it.
Summary of distinguishing features
All negators except tar/tra can be used as one-word sentences in response to a Yes-No question.Van Minde 1997, p. 276 All negators except jangang/jang can be used in declarative and interrogative sentence types. Only jangang/jang can be used in an imperative sentence.
These features will be explored in greater detail below.
Seng Seng is the most commonly used negator.
Although Ambonese generally operates on the premise of sentential negation, seng can be used in a marked word order to narrow the scope of negation to single verbs or nominals. Seng moves rightwards in the clause, shifting the focus of negation to the word it immediately precedes. In the first example below, seng occurs in its default position between the subject de and the verb group headed by kar'ja, modifying the verb group kar'ja bat'ul in a general sense. In the second example, seng is integrated into the verb group itself, immediately preceding and placing the emphasis of negation on the verbal modifier bat'ul.
Seng also collocates with modal auxiliary usa to express a lack of necessity:
Seng is also used with the reduplicated interrogative pronoun apa, meaning 'what', in a fixed expression to denote 'nothing', or 'not anything':
Tar/tra Unlike all other Ambonese negators, tar/tra cannot form a one-word sentence. It is typically regarded as a marker of emphatic negation, and can be used alongside seng and with reduplication to achieve even greater emphasis. In the example below, ampas is reduplicated, following both negators seng and tra.
Tar/tra also commonly collocates with:
existential verb ada 'be (somewhere)' bai 'good' modal auxiliary bole 'may, be allowed'
Bal'ong/blong Bal'ong marks both negation and the phasal aspect 'yet', denoting 'not yet'.
Similar to tar/tra it can also be used as a marker of emphatic negation alongside a reduplicated verb, as in the example below where bal'ong co-occurs with the reduplicated verb pulang-pulang:
Bukang According to van Minde's research findings, bukang is the least commonly used negator in Ambonese Malay.Van Minde 1997, p. 278 It expresses a 'contrast which implies an alternative' - bukang X means 'not X (but on the contrary) Y)':
It may also occur in sentences with contrastive stress, combined with the use of 'higher pitch and articulatory strength' to articulate the constituents that are the focus of the negation. In the examples below, these specific constituents are capitalised to demonstrate prosodic emphasis:
Jangang/jang Jangang does not occur in declarative or interrogative sentences but is used to express negative imperatives, as in the example below - 'don't go to China.'
It is also used in several 'short formulaic expressions':Van Minde 1997, p. 280
Negators and common collocations
Lai In the above example, the particle lai is used in sentence-final position as an exclamative marker. However, it can also be used with seng, bal'ong, and jangang in non-exclamative sentences to denote, 'anymore; again', or 'still':
Ka Ka combines with negators seng and bal'ong to form a sentence-final tag for interrogative sentences:
In the above example the tag ka seng has converted a yes–no question "Are you angry?" into an alternative question "Are you angry, or not?"
Phonology Ambonese Malay has phonemic word stress, by which is meant that the position of stress within a word is unforeseeable (van Minde 1997, p. 21) . Van Minde (1997, p. 22) uses the term “lexically reduplicated morphemes” which means that both of the roots that compose the morpheme contain an important (e.g. stressed) syllable. However, in the case of duplicated monosyllables, neither of the roots are perceptible as regards stress. Each accent on the syllables will be marked even if the morpheme is made up of a duplicated monosyllable. The reason being is to differentiate them from morphemes that are monomorphemic (van Minde 1997, p. 22). Examples of this would be (p. 22):