Sunday 3 May 2015

The Seko-Badaic languages in the interior highlands of Sulawesi


Seko and Badaic are two compact low-order subgroups in the Austronesian family. The member languages of these subgroups are spoken in the interior highlands in the heart of Sulawesi island. In earlier classifications, which are still cited by the Ethnologue, the Seko languages are included in the South Sulawesi subgroup, whereas the Badaic languages were classified as Kaili-Pamona languages. However, at the turn of the century, several scholars observed a special relation between these two families. In this paper, I will outline the common phonological history of Seko-Badaic as a single family, tracing it back to a common direct ancestor Proto Seko-Badaic. I will further show that the Badaic familiy has to be extended to a forth member, viz. Limola, and that Rampi and a significant stratum of the Northern South Sulawesi languages also belong to Seko-Badaic.

Click below to read the full paper:

https://ezlinguistics.blogspot.de/p/seko-badaic.html.