Sourcebook on Tomini-Tolitoli Languages: General Information and Word Lists (review)

Based on the fieldnotes which Himmelmann collected during two long fieldtrips in 1988–1989 and 1993, this book presents the fullest data available on the Tomini-Tolitoli languages, a group of closely related Western Malayo-Polynesian languages spoken in northern Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. The languages in question are Balaesang, Dampelas, Pendau, Taje, Lauje, Tajio, Tialo, Dondo, Totoli, and Boano. After the customary front matter, which includes a list of H’s consultants for each language, the main part of the book opens with a thirteen-page introduction in Indonesian, outlining the main features of the history of work on the Tomini-Tolitoli languages and the history of what little has previously been done on them. This general information is presented in greater detail in English in the subsequent chapters, which include copious notes about the significant features of the sections into which the wordlists are divided and which also include certain kinds of data on the languages (e.g. tables of personal pronouns and demonstratives) which do not easily fit into the schema within which H has organized the lexical data.

H has followed an old tradition in the description of previously little-known languages by publishing his vocabularies first, although he does provide useful information on the phonology and morphology of the languages, sufficient to enable one to interpret the lexical data provided. In this regard H has been especially astute. The basis for his elicitations has been the Swadesh 100- and 200-word lists, the Sulawesi Umbrella Wordlist used for comparative vocabulary collection on Sulawesi by SIL-Indonesia, and the Holle List (a nineteenth-century Dutch lexical elicitation list with about 1000 entries which was much used in the colonial Dutch East Indies), together with a few other forms which occurred in H’s fieldnotes. These lists have been integrated for maximum coverage of important lexemes. In this way the 200 items used in Robert Blust’s adaptation of the Swadesh lists for Austronesian languages have also been comprehensively covered. The items are conveniently classified semantically according to a 22-category schema based on Darrell Tryon’s Comparative Austronesian dictionary (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995), according to which each entry is represented by a numerical code (English and Indonesian glosses are also provided for each entry). It would be difficult for one to design a better method for collecting optimally enlightening lexical samples in a relatively short period of field-time.

The main part of the book comprises word lists of each language (between 700 and 1,400 entries per language, presented in two columns and including information on lexical variation within dialects where appropriate). The fruits of the later surveys are more copious. The wordlists for each language are indexed alphabetically for each language (including English and Indonesian). These indexes are then followed by cross-references to the Buck-based schema for each entry in the Sulawesi Umbrella Wordlist and other specialist wordlists from which H has drawn inspiration.

H has a great deal of highly useful information on several languages which have hitherto been very sketchily represented in the literature and has thereby enabled them to be integrated and used much more extensively within the picture of comparative Austronesian. His promised Tomini-Tolitoli text collection with structural information will be equally welcome.