Page 163 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

In the semantic field of equipment, there are four loanwords. Three of these have to
do with sailing or maritime activity. They are the words: jala ‘net’, jangkar ‘anchor’, and
kapal ‘boat’. The loanword jala is borrowed as jara in the Moi language. The loanword
jangkar becomes jangker in Sarmi, while the word kapal keeps the same form in Sarmi. In
addition, there is a lexeme for a basic tool used in manual labor namely kapak ‘axe’, which
becomes kawpak in Central Uwimerah, Downstream. Axes were among the earliest stone
tools used by early modern humans in Southeast Asia. They evolved during the iron and
bronze ages, and the word for axe was probably borrowed first in coastal regions.

(h) Other
Austronesian Word English Translation Borrowed in Form By Non-Austronesian Languages
LAUT sea [tasik] Moi
NASI rice [nasi] Mappi Digul
PAGAR fence [pagar] Lamma
ELOK good, acceptable [elok] Uwimerah Bipak
SAMA same [sama] Abui
WARUNG shop, kiosk [toko] Abu i

The words in this section, other, come from a number of different semantic fields.
However, a number of them have connections with Austronesian culture. Austronesian
culture is characterized by maritime prowess, agriculture and rice cultivation and by trading.
The related loanwords are laut ‘sea ’, nasi ‘rice’, and warung ‘shop’. laut became tasik in
the Moi Language. The Moi community live on the coast on Salawati Island, near Sorong, in
the west of the Bird’s Head. Rice is a staple food of the Austronesian people. The lexical item
warung ‘shop’, is connected with trade. The other items, elok ‘good’, and sama ‘same’, could
be words used in conversation in trade settings, for example to express appreciation or to say
a product is good or that one item is the same as another. The use of fences would have arisen
in response to attitudes to land ownership which differed with the Non-Austronesian peoples.
The dominant semantic domain is that for numbers. The data includes 42 lexical
variants of Austronesian number lexemes as loanwords in Non-Austronesian languages.
This suggests that Austronesian and Non-Austronesian populations interacted in ways
that required counting and calculating such as trade and barter to meet daily needs. This
would occur when one group had an excess of some resource such as foods that could be
exchanged for some other item. The borrowing primarily occurs in languages which are
relatively accessible near or on the coast.

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