Documentation of Western Pantar (Lamma) an endangered language of Pantar Island, NTT, Indonesia

Abstract

This research project carried out linguistic documentation of Western Pantar, an endangered Papuan language spoken on Pantar Island, Nusa Tenggara Timur. The primary product of this research is an annotated corpus of audio and video recordings covering a range of genre and speech styles. All field data has been archived digitally following current best practice recommendations. Secondary products include a tri-lingual dictionary and a reference grammar. The use of aligned text and audio and the publication of a media corpus will ensure the future researchers have maximal access to original field data.

The Pantar region remains one of the least documented linguistic areas in Indonesia, and almost no documentary information has previously been available for Western Pantar and many of the other non-Austronesian languages of Pantar. Through the use of best-practice language documentation techniques to create an enduring record of the language, the documentation produced by this project will broadly impact linguistic science, providing crucial typological data from a little-known part of the world’s linguistic landscape. Furthermore, through close collaboration with indigenous language workers and the development of Indonesian language reference materials, this project has contributed to the continued maintenance and appreciation of the Western Pantar language.