Matbat is a heavily Papuan-influenced

Austronesian language The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...

spoken in West Papua,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

, on the island of

Misool Misool, formerly spelled Mysol (Dutch: Misoöl) or Misol, is one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in Southwest Papua, Indonesia. Its area is 2,034 km2. The highest point is 561 m and the main towns are Waigama, located on ...

Raja Ampat islands Raja Ampat (), or the Four Kings, is an archipelago located off of the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula (on the island of New Guinea), Southwest Papua , Southwest Papua province, Indonesia. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and sh ...

. Its dialects are ''Magey'' and ''Tomolol''. Similar to the neighboring Ma'ya language, Matbat is one of a handful of Austronesian languages with true lexical

tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...

rather than a pitch-accent system or complete lack of phonemic tonal contrasts as with most other Austronesian languages.

Distribution

Matbat is spoken in the following locations within Raja Ampat Regency: *Misool Timur District: Tumolol, Lenmalas, Lenmalas Timur Barat, Audam, Foley, and Eduai villages *Misool Utara District: Atkari and Salafen villages *Misool Barat District: Magei village

Phonology

The phonology of the Matbat language is summarized below: can be heard freely as or in word-initial position.

Tones

Matbat has five lexical tones: high falling 41, high 3, low rising 12, low level 1, and low falling 21, which in open syllables has a peaking allophone, 121. Most Matbat words are monosyllabic; additional syllables in polysyllabic words are often weak and toneless, though a few words do have two tonic syllables. Examples of some of the longer monomorphemic words are 'star', 'sea shore', 'round', 'butterfly'.

Evolution

Tonogenesis Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis ...

in Matbat remains unclear. Some Matbat reflexes of

Proto-Malayo-Polynesian Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which is by far the largest branch (by current speakers) of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian is ancestral to all Austronesia ...

(PMP) proto-forms are listed below. * PMP > Mayá 'kill' * PMP > 'full' * PMP > 'error' * PMP (> ) > 'egg' * PMP > 'die' * PMP > 'louse'

Distribution

Phonology

Tones

Evolution

References

Further reading