The Indonesian language situation and linguistics Steinhauer英文电子书.pdfVIP

H. Steinhauer The Indonesian language situation and linguistics; Prospects and possibilities In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 150 Volumes of Bijdragen; A Backward Glimpse and a Forward Glimpse 150 (1994), no: 4, Leiden, 755-784 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl HEENf STEINHAUE R The Indonesian language situation and linguistics Prospects and possibilities Nobody knows how many languages are spoken in the world today, but it is estimated that one-tenth of them are spoken in Indonesia . Wurm and Hattori (1981 , 1983) distinguish just under 500 languages within the borders of Indonesia, but the information on which their findings are based is heterogeneous, and for some areas nearly nonexistent . The criteria they use to distinguish dialects from languages are not always explicit and in some respects problematic . Particularly for varieties of Malay that are spoken in pockets throughout eastern Indonesia and in discontinuous chains of dialects throughout Sumatra, mainland Malaysia and Kalimantan, it is difficult to ascertain whether they represent different languages, and if so, to establish their boundaries . If different criteria than those of Wurm and Hattori are used for defining a language, the number of languages may increase dramatically. 1 Whereas Wurm and Hattori (1983:map 40) classify Lamaholot as one language, spoken in eastern Flores and on the islands east of Flores, Keraf (1978:299) concludes on lexicostatistical grounds that the 33 varieties of Lamaholot he investigated (he did not