Raising of PMP *a in Bukar-Sadong Land Dayak and Rejang

This paper is a report on field work in progress on two Austronesian language groups: the Rejang, spoken in Bengkulu and South Sumatra Provinces of Indonesia; and h /bidayəh/ [bidayɨh]) spoken in the Serian District, Sarawak, Malaysia.1 Of particular interest is a change raising PMP *-aC > -/əC/ in Bukar-Sadong, but not before a final velar: e.g. *bulan > /burən/ „moon‟ but *anak > /anak/ „child‟ in Tibakang, Mĕntu [məntu] (cf. Court 1967), and neighbouring dialects. This change is typologically interesting because a comparable change occurred in the Rejang language of Sumatra (Blust 1984; McGinn 1997). Other factors inviting comparison include: 30% shared vocabulary in the Swadesh 200-list; some unusual lexical and grammatical items; nasality features (pre-ploded final nasals, contrast between simple and „barred‟ nasals prevocalically); and a few possibly shared phonological innovations such as the following.