Introduction
In spite of the recent resurgence in scholarly interest in eastern Indonesia, the conception of Maluku as a linguistic area remains in its infancy. Though many excellent literature reviews and bibliographies have appeared, none has attempted to specifically address linguistics or language. Polman‘s bibliographies (1981,1983) include chapters on language yet often overlook wordlists and references to language use which are buried in missionary and government publications from the colonial era. Horvatich 1993 makes no reference to linguistics and fails to include publications in languages other than English. Grimes 1991d does include many linguistic references, but the lack of annotations detract from the usefulness of the work. While not claiming to be comprehensive, the present work attempts to address some of the linguistic gaps in the earlier bibliographies.
The geographical scope of this bibliography is essentially limited to the present-day political boundaries of North and Central Maluku, namely Kabupaten Maluku Utara and Kabupaten Maluku Tengah. There are however, two kinds of exceptions to this geographical limitation. First, no attempt is made to exclude languages of Maluku origin which are now spoken outside Maluku, such as the variety of Moluccan Malay now spoken in the Netherlands. Second, the languages of the Raja Ampat Islands and the western Vogelkop have been included in spite of the area‘s political affiliation with the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. This second exception has linguistic and cultural, as well as geographic motivation. The island of Gebe, now politically a part of North Maluku, lies roughly midway between Halmahera and Raja Ampat, a mere 50 km from Waigeo Island. Culturally, the Raja Ampat Islands face west, long dominated by the sultanate of Tidore. Linguistically, the Raja Ampat languages represent a medial point on what was probably once a long dialect chain extending through southern Halmahera. In any case, the close synchronic relationship between the south Halmahera languages and the Raja Ampat languages is so clear that the exclusion of the latter would detract from any linguistic bibliography of the area.
Linguistic subgrouping in this area has been attempted by Van der Veen 1915, Stresemann 1927, Blust 1978 and 1993, Collins 1983, and Voorhoeve 1988, among others. Together with the Oceanic languages, the indigenous Austronesian languages of North and Central Maluku comprise the well-defined Central Eastern Malayo-Polynesian group, coordinate with the Western Malayo-Polynesian group. The non-Austronesian languages spoken in Ternate, Tidore, Makian and north Halmahera also comprise a well-defined subgroup, quite distinct from the surrounding Austronesian languages, though evidence of contact-induced change is readily apparent. The non-Austronesian languages show typological and lexical similarities with some of the languages of the western Vogelkop, though claims regarding more distant genetic relationships with the New Guinea languages are highly speculative. In addition to these two distinct language groups, several unique varieties of Malay have developed, including Ambonese Malay, North Moluccan (Ternate) Malay and Bacan Malay.
An excellent survey of the literature on Maluku can be found in Van Fraassen 1981 and 1983. The linguistic study of Maluku dates back to a Malay wordlist collected by Antonio Pigafetta in North Maluku in 1522. Several wordlists are scattered throughout the nineteenth century Dutch government literature, appended to travel reports and geographic surveys. With the turn of the twentieth century, missionary grammars and dictionaries begin to appear. Though these missionaries were not linguists, their observations were based on years of contact with Maluku languages and were often supplemented with the advice of prominent scholars such as W. Schmidt and H. Kern. At the same time several European expeditions set out to conduct ethnographic surveys of Maluku. Though no linguists were included in these expeditions, the work of German ornithologist Erwin Stresemann has been equaled by few linguists. For many of the languages of Maluku, these early twentieth century works represent the only source of information. Most of the more recent work has been of an anthropological or ethnographic nature, though many of these works are of excellent quality and provide linguistic information. Still, since the colonial era only one reference grammar has appeared (Stresemann 1918 ) and only one serious attempt at small-scale historical classification has been made. However, this situation is about to change, as scholarly interest in the languages of Maluku continues to grow.
It is hoped that the present bibliography will aid this growth in the linguistic study of Maluku. To that end, the annotations have been designed to quickly direct the reader to the specific linguistic content of the literature and are cross-referenced to related works where appropriate. No attempt has been made to provide complete abstracts of aspects of the literature which do not relate to language. The entries are arranged alphabetically by author; entries with multiple authors are cross-referenced under the name of the secondary authors. To aid readers concerned with particular Maluku languages, the index contains entries for language and subgroup names, as well as geographic names. References to unpublished manuscripts are included with the explicit permission of the author.
Many thanks go to Prof. James T. Collins, who inspired this project and granted generous access to his personal library. This project would not have been possible without Jim‘s unceasing support and sage advice. Thanks also go to the patient staff of the Hamilton Inter-Library Loan Office. Funding was provided by a grant from the University of Hawaii Center for Southeast Studies. And a special thanks goes to Wendy, who helped me to decipher all those anthropology tomes.
Source: http://www.faculty.uaf.edu
