The importance of Salako for the reconstruction of Proto-Malayic and for the interpretation of the Old Malay Inscriptions

Abstract

Salako is spoken in the Lundu district of Sarawak's First Division and in three discontinuous areas in Kabupaten Sambas in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Unlike the pesistent belief of some scholars, Salako is a Malayic Dayak (and not a Land Dayak) isolect, as Hudson (1970) already pointed out. It is closely related to Kendayan and to Belangin (both spoken in Kabupaten Pontianak: these three isolects are (with some effort) mutually intelligible, and I call them West Malayic Dayak (WMD). I use the term WMD in opposition to Iban, Mualang and other Ibanic isolects which are spoken east of the Land Dayak linguistic area (see map 42 in Hattori & Wurm's Language Atlas of the Pacific Area). Malayic Dayak isolects are important for the history of the Malayic linguistic subgroup as they have developed in relative isolation from other Malayic isolects. They have to a much less extent undergone the longstanding and intensive influence from lingua franca varieties of Malay, which in turn underwent considerable lexical influence from Indian languages, Arabic, Javanese, Persian and European languages. WMD is of particular interest in respect of the linguistic history of the Malayic subgroup: on the one hand, WMD isolects have a rich and conservative morphology which was reduced in other Malayic isolects (including the Ibanic ones). On the other hand, they underwent some specific phonological changes which makes it possible to distinguish between (not too old) loanwords and other vocabulary. Most of these phonological changes are also found in part of the Land Dayak area and in some Ibanic areas directly adjacent to it: they are areal features crisscrossing the boundaries between Land Dayak and Malayic Dayak. Misinterpretation of these areal features are probably the cause of the fact that some scholars still classify Salako with Land Dayak.