SULA: ITS LANGUAGE, LAND, AND PEOPLE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS By Tobias S. Bloyd Dissertation Committee: Robert Blust, Chairperson Lyle Campbell Gary Holton Bradley McDonnell Julio C. Rodriguez Keywords: Sula, Austronesian, documentation, grammar, ethnography, Maluku © 2020 TOBIAS S. BLOYD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For my father, Joseph Neil Bloyd, for his guidance and faith in me. Bo Lea, aku nana fina. A-ngau mon moya da, mai a-ngausu mon betia. fate has fortuned me between you ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To the residents of the Sula community: this document belongs to you. My mentor and chair: Robert Blust is the foremost authority on the Austronesian language family and a walking compendium of world language and historical linguistic knowledge. He is also one of the kindest and most intellectually curious human beings I have ever met. Bob, you are a living treasure. Those who inspired me to enter this business: Steven Bird, Lawrence Kaplan, and Jerold Edmondson for the episode of NPR Science Friday with Ira Flatow they appeared on; Noam Chomsky for graciously communicating with me even though I was well out of my depth; John McWhorter for your fantastic and accessible lecture series. Those I worked with at the Center for Language & Technology: Clayton Chee; David Hiple; Dick Schmidt; Jim Yoshioka; Marta González-Lloret; Richard Medina; Robert Wong; Julio C. Rodriguez, a mentor and a visionary; and Stephen Tschudi, the man who picked me up from the airport on the day I arrived in Honolulu and who was a trusted confidant at every step of my journey. I appreciate the kindness and camaraderie that you and Daniel have shown me over the years. Those who helped me learn Indonesian: Uli Kozok, Arum Agustiningrum, Vika Fitrianasari, Yuni Hariyanti, Erni Yawanti, and so many others... Those who have held my hand through this process: Anh Ly, David Iannucci, Gretchen Alther: your guidance over this past year cannot be overstated. I am in your debt. And most importantly, Yuki Yasaka, you are my rock. Others who have influenced me: A special thanks to friends, family, and colleagues who pushed and encouraged me, read chapters or made these past years eventful, or taught me to overcome obstacles: Alberto Gonzalez Martinez, Alice Ka-Yee Leung, Alisha Bhagat, Anna Belew, Apay Tang, April Labrador, Aya Takeda Dixon, Beth Blevins, Bodo Winter, Carl Polley, Carroll Bloyd, Chae Eun Kim, Cheong Eung Shim, Chris Ellis, Colleen O’Brien, Daniel Tschudi, Darcy Haberl, Diana Stojanovic and Turro Wongkaren, Dionesius Hery Yanto The (thank you for coming to my rescue at the last minute—twice!), Dr. Albert Schütz, Dr. Ann Peters, Elaine Lau, Erenst, Eve Okura, Fazilah Shahren, Frances Blevins Arters, Hana Ransom, Hanbing Feng, Hao Xu, Heeyeon Dennison, Hiroko Sato, Hoemi Oh, Honolulu Friends Meeting members including Dr. Robert Bley-Vroman and Dr. Byron Bender, Hunter Hatfield, Jaclyn Bettis, James Grama, Jesse Gurgel, Jonathan Kuo, Jonny Kim, Kaleb Saum, Katherine Hardeman, Katie Butler, Kevin Baetscher, Kimberly Loo, Kum-Jeong Joo, Mary Walworth, Matthew Shipman, Michael Rollins, Nala Huiying Lee, Neville Katrak (my printer and confidant), Nielson Hul, Nikolai Bloyd, Nozomi Tanaka, Paddy #iv Hsu, Paul Seaman, Peter Bloyd, Peter Schuelke, Randall Parabicoli, Rebecca Clifford, Rebekah Bloyd, Russell Barlow, Sejung Yang, Shaliha Afifa Anistia, Steven Saum, Sunju Kim, Tara Bloyd, Thiago Chacon, Ting Kuo, Wenjie Lu, Xinyun Liu, Zuraida Zadi. I also relied heavily on guidance from experienced fieldworkers and a number of books. Some of the people who shared their valuable experience were: my mentor and chair, Robert Blust; Lyle Campbell, who shared a wealth of information on world languages and his experiences with fieldwork, and whose lectures are simply mesmerizing; Albert Schütz, who more than anyone took a deep interest in my work and academic success, and who shared so much from his decades of experience working in the Pacific; Gary Holton, a person who in between ultramarathons, circumnavigation of remote pacific islands by kayak, and mountain bike races over Alaskan snow, still makes time to tackle colossal academic projects, conduct fieldwork everywhere, and skim volumes (in hours) that others can take weeks to edit; and Katie Drager and Ken Rehg, whose courses on endangered languages and field linguistics provoked many topics I had never considered so that I would not be caught blind. Foremost among the books I referenced were Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists by Thomas Edward Payne and Essentials of Language Documentation edited by Jost Gippert, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Ulrike Mosel. I do not cite either volume heavily in this dissertation, as I do not reference their specific points, but they were instrumental in enabling me to recognize challenging situations (both linguistically and socially) and provide me with frameworks to make plans accordingly. Hands down though, the most useful volume I had for the early stages of approaching an undocumented language is one that was not specifically written for that purpose: The Syntax Files is a document under perpetual revision and improvement in William O'Grady's endless pursuit of perfection and his passion for pedagogy. The volume is a course book for the second most difficult course I have ever taken1. This volume is a collection of tests and proofs to identify syntactic patterns in languages, and it is arranged in an order that comprises a template for a syntactic grammar. As a beginning linguist with only one year of study under my belt when I first visited Sula, and with no Sula language learning materials to reference, this book and O'Grady's course gave me the skills to break apart the foreign utterances I was hearing, find the units of meaning, and then begin to decode their arrangement. In short: Robert Blust helped me choose Sula as my research focus, and he gave me skills to analyze it within its language family. Yuko Otsuka taught me to find its words, and William O'Grady taught me to figure out how they go together to form sentences. Patricia Donegan and David Stampe gave me the skills to discern how Sula's sounds are grouped, and Victoria Anderson taught me to find those sounds in the first place. Katie Drager introduced many of the challenges facing endangered language communities and she showed me how to see language variation in terms of society. Ken Rehg made me think a lot about ethical topics surrounding fieldwork. Derek Bickerton gave me ways to think about language origin. And finally, Bob, Lyle, Gary, and Brad all showed me how to organize and compile my findings. 1 The most difficult was also taught by William O'Grady. #v ABSTRACT This dissertation is a documentation of Sula [ISO-639-3 szn, mqc; Glottocode sula1245, mang1408]. Sula is a critically to severely endangered language of North Maluku in Indonesia. This dissertation includes: demographic and ethnographic information about the community, the first description of the language’s primary dialect division, a sizable lexicon, and the only available substantial grammatical sketch of a language native to the Sula archipelago (which includes a large dialect continuum spanning Taliabo island, the Sula dialects on Mangole and Sanana islands, and a still undocumented Sama–Bajau language/dialect on Sanana). Although imperfect, the grammatical sketch covers commonly- expected categories of the core areas of linguistics, and the lexicon gathers the language’s basic vocabulary and additional vocabulary pertaining to travel in the archipelago. Sula is spoken by up to 47,000 residents spread out across the Sula archipelago. The community has undergone a 40 year period of language attrition—particularly in the main population center, Sanana city. While language use remains strong in some remote communities, these areas are rapidly being connected to urban centers for the first time, both physically #vi via newly constructed coastal roads, and virtually, via efforts to expand cellular data coverage across the archipelago. The Sula community consists of four tribes: Facei, Fagud (Fagudu), Faahu (Falahu, Fahahu), and Mangon (Mangoli, Mangole). Villages settled by the first three tribes speak a number of similar dialects that I identify as Sanana type, while villages settled by the fourth tribe speak a significantly different group of dialects that I identify as Mangon type. Data for this dissertation was collected over a span of ten years (2010–2019), during which I made three, three month field trips to Indonesia along with several trips of three to six weeks to both Indonesia and Sweden (where my principal collaborator lives). Additionally, my principle collaborator made two trips to the US, and I maintained continual virtual contact with language consultants throughout the course of my research. #vii ABSTRAK Disertasi ini merupakan dokumentasi bahasa Sula [ISO-639-3 szn, mqc; Glottocode sula1245, mang1408]. Sula adalah bahasa yang terancam punah di Maluku Utara di Indonesia. Disertasi ini mencakup informasi mengenai komunitas, deskripsi mengenai dua dialek utama bahasa Sula, leksikon besar, dan sketsa tata bahasa paling penting dari bahasa asli kepulauan Sula. Sketsa tata bahasa ini tidak sempurna, tetapi sudah mencakup bidang inti linguistik. Daftar istilah yang disajikan sudah mencantumkan kosakata dasar dari bahasa Sula. Daftar istilah ini juga menambahkan kosakata yang berhubungan dengan wisata di kepulauan ini. Hanya sekitar 47.000 orang yang bisa berbicara dalam bahasa Sula sekarang. Orang-orang ini tinggal secara menyebar di berbagai tempat di kepulauan Sula. Persentase penutur bahasa Sula telah mengalami penurunan jumlah selama 40 tahun. Penurunan jumlah ini terutama terjadi di kota Sanana yang merupakan wilayah pemukiman dengan penduduk paling besar. Penggunaan bahasa Sula masih sangat kuat di beberapa komunitas terpencil. Namun, komunitas ini juga terhubungan dengan pusat-pusat kota.