The Position of Mali, Beaye, and Ba’aje in Land Dayak (Austronesian) and What It Means for Proto-Land-Dayak Vowel Reconstruction

Abstract

The internal subgrouping of Land Dayak languages (Sarawak, Malaysia and West Kalimantan, Indonesia) as well as the reconstructability of length distinctions in the vowel system of Proto-Land Dayak, have received recent attention that has resulted in changes to the internal subgrouping and a restriction of the full/reduced distinction in Proto-Land Dayak vowels. Earlier work on the reconstructability of the full/reduced distinction relied on assumptions about the subgrouping of certain languages that needed to be confirmed pending future research. In this paper, documentation of some previously unstudied Land Dayak languages is presented. The data from these languages, which was originally collected for syntactic analysis and description, supports a restriction in full/reduced to Proto-Land Dayak *a but not other vowels, lending support to earlier proposals based on more limited datasets. The documentation of these languages also allows for a more accurate internal subgrouping of Land Dayak and shows the utility of language data beyond initial collection as well as the importance of archiving.