Documentation of Rejang
710 Enrichment Project | Spring 2024
This semester we will be working as a class with the Dr. Richard (Dick) McGinn’s (1939-2018) documentation of Rejang [glottocode: reja1240, an Austronesian language of southwest Sumatra (see Coady and McGinn 1982; McGinn 1982, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2009; blust1984history?). Dr. McGinn’s documentation and description goes back to the 1970s and consists primarily of fieldnotes, descriptions of various aspects of the language, as well as readers (see Blust 2018 for an account of Dr. McGinn’s life and work).
I have been given access to the majority of this documentation with the task of preparing a curated collection of Rejang in Kaipuleohone Language Archive. We will work as a class to prepare this documentation for archiving, which includes the following tasks decide on the materials to to be archived, scan field notes, organize and properly name files, convert proprietary and arcane file formats into archival PDFs, provide appropriate metadata with lameta, and where possible input portions of the documentation into FLEx or even ELAN.
Rejang is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by approximately 350,000 people in Bengkulu and South Sumatra provinces. There are five dialects of Rejang, although at least one of these varieties is likely a separate language. Rejang is still actively spoken, but despite its fairly large speaker population, remains under-documented.
References
Blust, Robert. 2018. “In Memoriam: Richard Bernard McGinn, Jr., 1939–2018.” Oceanic Linguistics 57 (2): 496–502. https://doi.org/10.1353/ol.2018.0020.
Coady, James, and Richard McGinn. 1982. “On the so-Called Implosive Nasals of Rejang.” In GAVA: Studies in Austronesian Languages and Cultures, edited by Rainer Carle, 437–49.
McGinn, Richard. 1982. Outline of Rejang Syntax. Vol. 14. NUSA. Jakarta: Badan Penyelenggara Seri Nusa Universitas Katolik Atma Jaya Jakarta.
———. 1997. “Some Irregular Reflexes of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian Vowels in the Rejang Language of Sumatra.” Diachronica 14 (1): 67–107. https://doi.org/fhzcx6.
———. 1998. “Anti-ECP Effects in the Rejang Language of Sumatra.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne de Linguistique 43 (3-4): 359–76. https://doi.org/gdg6xp.
———. 2000. “Where Did the Rejangs Come From?” In Papers from the 10th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistic Society, edited by Marlys Macken, 247–62. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University.
———. 2003. “Raising of PMP *a in Bukar-Sadong Land Dayak and Rejang.” In Issues in Austronesian Historical Phonology, edited by John Lynch, 550:37–54. Pacific Linguistics. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.
———. 2005. “What the Rawas Dialect Reveals about the Linguistic History of Rejang.” Oceanic Linguistics 44 (1): 12–64. https://doi.org/cqtjgs.
———. 2009. “Out-of-Borneo Subgrouping Hypothesis for Rejang: Re-Weighing the Evidence.” In Austronesian Historical Linguistics and Culture History: A Festschrift for Robert Blust, edited by K. Alexander Adelaar and Andrew Pawley, 411–24. Pacific Linguistics 601. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.