At the periphery of the Sinophone world: Language variation in the Hakka varieties of East Timor (Timor-Leste) and West Timor (Indonesia)

• Applicant: Dr. Juliette Huber
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 449959240

The island of Timor is home to two tiny Chinese communities, one in Indonesian West Timor, the other in independent Timor-Leste. At the periphery of Southeast Asia, they are among the most remote and poorly known Chinese minorities in that region. The Hakka varieties spoken by these communities are acutely endangered and remain entirely undescribed. Documentary efforts are therefore timely and indeed urgent. Preliminary data from Timor-Leste Hakka have shown striking inter-speaker variation. This is an unexpected finding, given that small homogeneous communities are commonly thought to correlate with linguistic homogeneity. Focusing on phonology and lexis, this research will chart and account for language variation within both Timor Hakka varieties, and investigate the differences that exist between the varieties. This research will contribute to our understanding of two neglected areas in linguistics, namely a) Overseas Chinese language varieties: despite their potential to inform a diverse range of linguistic subdisciplines, these Sinitic language varieties have received little attention in Western linguistics; and b) sociolinguistic variation in non-Western societies: the established notions and principles of variationist sociolinguistics are based on the observation of Western societies; research on non-Western societies is thus needed in order to test them.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants