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their language. From the description of history put forward by Dutch researchers and oral
histories that have been suggested by elders of Gamkonora speakers, it can be concluded
that there is an attempt to eliminate the traces of history of Tiana speakers for non-
linguistic factors associated with social status as described above.

North Maluku and West Papua
This section show the connection between North Maluku focusing on the island of
Halmahera and West Papua, especially the Bird’s Head area.
Van der Veen was the first to show the similarities between the Halmahera and Bird’s
Head areas. In 1915, Van der Veen’s dissertation showed the same characteristics between
West Papua (or non-Austronesian) family of languages and languages in North Halmahera.
Since then, linguists, who initially studied Halmahera apart from Papua, have begun to pay
attention to the relationship between these two regions where the languages are from the
same family.
Voorhoeve (1984) initially saw any mixing among language groups that occurred at
some point of his research. Lexical and grammatical forms of West Makian languages
differ from the language family in North Halmahera. The languages are non-Austronesian
but has not lost its Austronesian characteristics. Then, the Ternate-Tidore language
group lost its Austronesian characteristics such as the loss of gender marking and so
did the West Makian language and resembles a non-Austronesian language. So as Sahu
language is included in the non-Austronesian languages in North Halmahera, it lost
its non-Austronesian characteristics and seems to be leaning towards the sub-group of
Ternate-Tidore. But in terms of vocabulary, the language is still the same as others in the
Sahu language sub-group (two dialects of Sahu, Gamkonora and Waioli languages) and
the languages in North Halmahera (Galela-Loloda language sub-group, languages around
Kao river, Tobaru language, and Tobelo language sub-group).
Voorhoeve has reviewed research by his predecessors like Van der Veen in 1912 which
stated that the grammar and vocabulary of languages in North Halmahera should be
included in the non-Austronesian family. Another example is the research by Van der Aa in
1872. The research shows that the way of telling numbers and nouns in North Halmahera
(non-Austronesian) is different from the same aspect of languages in South Halmahera
which belong to the Austronesian language family.
Bowden’s (2013) research on Gamkonora language in West Halmahera shows this.
Consider the following table which shows how Gamkonora people say numbers.

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