The Savu languages, Hawu and

Dhao ''Tao'' or ''Dao'' is the natural order of the universe, whose character one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom, as conceived in the context of East Asian philosophy, East Asian religions, or any other philo ...

, are spoken on Savu and Ndao Islands in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.

Classification

Cappell (1975) noted a large amount of non-Austronesian vocabulary and grammatical features in the

Central Malayo-Polynesian languages The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages (CMP) are a proposed branch in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The languages are spoken in the Lesser Sunda and Maluku Islands of the Banda Sea, in an area corresponding ...

of East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku, notably in Hawu. While he generally spoke of a non-Austronesian

substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

, Hawu is so divergent from Austronesian norms that he classified it (and Dhao) as a non-Austronesian language. He says, However, it is now generally accepted that Savu is no more divergent than the other Central Malayo-Polynesian languages, all of which display a non-Austronesian component that defines Melanesian languages.

Phonology

The Savu languages have the same vowels and stress rules. They share implosive (or perhaps pre-glottalized) consonants with the Bima–Sumba languages and with languages of

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and th ...

and

Sulawesi Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Ar ...

further north, such

Wolio Wolio is an Austronesian language spoken in and around Baubau on Buton Island, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. It belongs to the Wotu–Wolio branch of the Celebic subgroup. Also known as Buton, it is a trade language and the former court lang ...

, and languages of Flores such as Ngad'a have rather similar lengthening of consonants after schwa. Dhao has the larger inventory, but even where the languages have the same consonants, there is often not a one-to-one correspondence. Apart from Hawu , Dhao is more conservative. Hawu *s, *c shifted to in historical times. Non-obvious correlations are: For initial in Dhao, there is dialectical variation between and in Hawu. Most other consonants have a one-to-one correspondence, but a few (such as , , and non-initial ) are not well-enough attested to be certain.

Pronouns

Independent personal pronouns are similar. Parenthetical forms in Hawu are dialectical.

Footnotes

References

*Grimes, Charles E. 2006.
Hawu and Dhao in eastern Indonesia: revisiting their relationship
* Capell, Arthur.
The "West Papuan Phylum": General, and Timor and Areas Further West
, §2.10.1 in Wurm 1977 975 ''New Guinea Area Languages and Language Study'', volume 1: ''Papuan Languages and the New Guinea Linguistic Scene''. Canberra. {{Languages of Indonesia Sumba–Hawu languages