Ponosakan: A Dying Language of Northeastern Sulawesi

Ponosakan, a Greater Central Philippine language of the Mongondow-Gorontalo branch, is spoken by only a few elderly residents of the town of Belang in Sulawesi Utara, Indonesia. Unlike its better-described and more widely spoken relatives Mongondow and Gorontalo, it has received virtually no dedicated attention in the literature, outside of being included in historical-comparative studies of the Mongondow-Gorontalo subgroup. This paper presents a sketch of the phonology and functors of Ponosakan, and provides historical and sociolinguistic information about the language and its century-long journey to extinction.