Waruno Mahdi’s List of Presentations on Linguistics and Culture History (see also List of Publications)

2010	return to top

"Renward Brandstetter’s comparative analysis of the Indonesian mind", contribution to the international conference: Revisiting the work of Renward Brandstetter (1860-1942), Swiss linguist and Austronesianist at the University of Lucerne, 28–29 June 2010.
[Powerpoint presentation as pdf, 3.8 Mb for personal use only]

Colonialism led to a specific problem in culture anthropology: not only did colonisers tend to express prejudiced views on intellectual capacities of colonialised ethnicities, the latter themselves began to doubt in their own capabilities. Inspite of this, enlightened anthropologists and linguists of the period maintained their conviction of the equality of all peoples and races. In this, Renward Brandstetter presents us with a particularly remarkable record. The author reaches his conclusions about ‘Indonesian’ (actually Western Malayo-Polynesian) peoples not basing on idealist presumptions, but as the result of a lifelong scientific research. This began with a study of indigenous beliefs and literature (1885–1898), followed by a study of Malayo-Polynesian historical linguistics that advanced beyond a neogrammarian historical phonology and language-tree reconstruction (1902–1917). Finally, this is crowned by a series of comparative works titled “We people of the Indonesian earth” (1920–1937). Building on the author’s preceding studies, it begins with a comparison between ‘Indonesian’ and Indogermanic (i.e. Indoeuropean) and other language phila, and continues with a study of what the author terms the animus, the intellect, the inclination to fine arts, the heart, and creative language spirit of the ‘Indonesians’ and their capacity for abstract thought, altogether a well argumented panegyric to the speech communities of “the Indonesian earth”.

"Bifurcation of indigenous commercial tradition in West Indonesia, 1850–1930, as reflected in contemporaneous Malay print publishing", contribution to the international seminar: Trade and Finance in the Malay World: Historical and Cultural Perspectives at the University of Frankfurt, Germany, 17–18 June 2010.
[Powerpoint presentation as pdf, 17.8 Mb for personal use only! Mind copyright on images]

The presentation is in 4 parts: to establish the branching-off of a novel tradition, part (1) traces the original indigenous commercial tradition since the Malayo-Polynesian dispersal, and precolonial emergence of financial tradition, till the dissolution of the VOC in 1799. Part (2) reviews the continuation of traditional forms of indigenous shipping and trade throughout the 19th and half the 20th centuries. Part (3) follows the parallel development of divergent, industrial-age forms in indigenous trade and finance since c. 1850, particularly as reflected in commercial advertisements; modernist development is found to have been much slower in trade and finance than in indigenous society in general. Part (4) discusses some post-1930 consequences of the belated modernisation in trade and finance, briefly touching on the gradual overcoming of the ambiguous state of development between 1945 and today.

"Malayic Sea-People crews on shipping across the Indian Ocean (approximately 400 BCE – 500 CE)", contribution to: Ancient Indian Ocean Corridors conference at the School of Archaeology, Oxford, 7–8 November 2009.
[Powerpoint presentation as pdf, 17.5 Mb]

Shipping between the Malayan Archipelago and the Near East on ships of Southeast Asian construction apparently persisted since the last half millenium BCE. The shippers appear to have spoken Malay, the crews were of various ethnic origin. One major source of seamen was the Barito area, Southeast Kalimantan, but probably only since the 5th century CE. The present contribution is concerned with the preceding period. Descriptions in early Chinese, Indic, Greek, Mon, and other sources on the one hand, and linguistic evidence, particularly of phonological particularities of loan-words, on the other, suggest that Sea-People (Orang Laut) communities around the Myanmar Coast, Malayan Peninsula, and Riau Islands were a major source of manpower for the shipping.

"Some obscure Austroasiatic borrowings in Indonesian and Old Malay", contribution to: 11th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics (11·ICAL), Aussois, France, 22–26 June 2009.
[Powerpoint presentation as pdf, 8.8 Mb]

Discusses the etymology of some loan-words from Mon-Khmer (specifically also: Old Mon, Old Khmer), Aslian, and other Austroasiatic origin in Malay. Various time levels at which the respective loans took place, and various transmission routes are considered, also further transmission from Malay into other Austronesian languages. Includes etymologies of Old Malay karayan (a high title), and kerbau ‘water buffalo’, elang ‘kite, hawk, eagle’, pérak ‘silver’, emas ‘gold’, dusun ‘village community’, meriam ‘canon’, ketiak and kélék ‘armpit’, ketam ‘crab’, kembar ‘twin’, helai ‘sheet’, a.o.

"Bilingualitas dan Komunikasi Sosial / Bilinguisme et communication sociale", contribution to: L’auteur dépaysé. Ecrivains de double appartenance culturelle, Association franco-indonésienne Pasar Malam, Paris, October 28, 2006.
[available in Indonesian as pdf]

"Yavadvipa and the Merapi volcano in West Sumatra", paper presented at the Workshop: From Distant Tales — Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Highlands of Sumatra, Free University of Berlin, Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie, September 21-23, 2006.

Report to the Lokakarya Terjemahan Naskah Tanjung Tanah, Jakarta, December 13-17, 2004.

"Looks alike, sounds alike, translates differently: Grammaticalization and degrammaticalization, a source of possible pitfalls for the translator", paper presented at the Lokakarya Bahasa dan Sastra Indonesia, Frankfurt am Main, May 7-8, 2004.

"Distinguishing Cognate Homonym Pairs in Indonesian", paper presented at the 7th International Symposium on Malay/ Indonesian Linguistics, Nijmegen, June 27-28, 2003.

Strives to disprove the erronous reputation of Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) as a language in which homonym (and homograph) cognate pairs that complicate automatic text processing are almost non-existant, by calling attention to the main groups of homonym cognate pairs. Particular attention is directed to pairs consisting of a fixed expression or a compound word, and the corresponding free word group or phrase. Inspects composites of the type verbal-stem + noun, and noun + noun, and proposes distinguishing criteria based on the morphology.

"Malayan Words and Malayan things: Earliest lexical souvenirs of European travelers from an exotic archipelago", paper presented at the ATMA-Goethe Universität Colloquium German-speaking scholarship and the Malay world: Exploring an empirical tradition, Bangi, Selangor, 11–12 March 2002.

Inspects the special lexical aspect in the communication of exotic experiences of European visitors of the Malayan world in 17th-century works of German scholars and contemporary memoirs of German employees of the Dutch East India Company.

"The first standard grammar of Malay: George Werndly's 1736 Maleische Spraakkunst", paper presented at the ATMA-Goethe Universität Colloquium German-speaking scholarship and the Malay world: Exploring an empirical tradition, Bangi, Selangor, 11–12 March 2002.

The language policy in Dutch missionary publication in Malay underwent a fundamental transition at the turn of the 17th to 18th century, that was completed with the publication of the Malay Bible of 1731 (NT) and 1733 (OT). George Werndly played a leading role in the final phase, particularly in formulating the new standard of Malay that was to be used. Upon a 1732 spelling guide followed the standard grammar of 1736 to be inspected here. The paper provides a synopsis of Werndly's grammar against the background of contemporary linguistic scholarship in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands.

"The Internet Factor in Indonesia: Was that All?", paper presented at the 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Washington D.C., April 4–7, 2002. Panel 87: Apakabar 1990–2002: Pluralism on the Internet.
[available as pdf]

Follows the beginnings of computer sciences and development of internet communication facilities in Indonesia, the role this played in the political events of the 1990-s, particularly as means of dissipating and gaining access to information under conditions of censorship.

"Linguistic Variety in Later 19th-Century Dutch-Edited Malay Publications", paper presented at the 5th International Symposium on Malay / Indonesian Linguistics, Leipzig, 16-17 June 2001.

Malay-language publishing in colonial Indonesia (Netherlands East Indies) can be divided into three periods. The first, from the early 17th century till the mid 19th, of Dutch-edited almost exclusively Christian missionary publications. The third and last period, from 1900 till 1942, characterized by secular publications of a wide range of genres and topics, mainly by indigenous editors (beside some Dutch, Sino- and Arabo-Indonesian). This paper inspects the intervening second period, characterized by a secular thematic and editorial diversification of mainly Dutch edited publications, but doe not go into contemporary Sino-Indonesian-edited publishing. 
     The editorial language situation in this period reveals a lack of either authority or coordination of language expertise, leading to a high degree of linguistic variety, in the spelling as well as in the dialect of Malay employed. This is illustrated by a wide scope of texts, including official instructions and legal texts, public reading books, as well as publicistic or journalistic texts. Attention is directed to Dutch renderings of various forms of Low Malay (specifically Javanese and Jakartan Bazaar Malay), or of a more scholarly version of Malay exhibiting variously significant influence of the former. Also inspected are reflections of Ambon Malay influence, possibly mediated by Service Malay (Dienst-Maleisch), and of the Dutch native speech of the editors or writers on their Malay. 
     Possible connections are drawn to incorporation of the same features into the Bazaar Malay of indigenous-edited publishing and public or political discourse of the subsequent period. A table with the various spelling systems in use is appended.

"The Acquisition and Implementation of Borrowed Traditions in Indonesian Malay", paper presented at the 3rd Symposium on Malay / Indonesian Linguistics, Amsterdam, 24-25 August 1999.

An examination of the typological acommodation of Indonesian Malay to the transition from the "traditional" to the "modernist" in a confluence of oriental and occidental tradition in Indonesian culture. Acquisition of following novel phonological and grammatical features are inspected:  (a) new consonantal phonemes /f/, /S/, /c/, and /z/;  (b) consonant alternation at suffixation (t/s, k/s);  (c) derivation of adjectives from nouns;  (d) derivation of feminine variants of nouns denoting persons;  (e) calqued constructions involving grammatical words;  (f) nominal phrases with reversed word order. 
One typical pattern seems to to be, that the "imported" feature is already attested in Malay on the eve of European contact (typically through contact with Sankrit and Arabic), which tended to "prepare the grounds" for a proliferation of the feature under influence from Dutch and English in the 20th century. The crucial phase of fundamental reorientation in the typology seems to have taken place in non-standard Indonesian Malay in the first half of this century.

"High and Low Malay in 17th Century Missionary Schooling in Indonesia", paper presented at the 2nd Conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EUROSEAS-2), Hamburg, 2-5 Sept. 1998.

Text citations from 17th century Malay and bilingual Dutch-Malay publications of Dutch authors, as well as excerpts from contemporary Dutch records and correspondence provide insights into circumstances leading to abandonment of Dutch and adoption of Malay as language of tuition in missionary schooling, and into modalities of the controversy existing at that time concerning implementation of either High or Low Malay.

"The First Decade of the Commissie voor de Volkslectuur", paper presented at the 10th European Colloquium on Indonesian and Malay Studies, Berlin.

A Study of the publishing activity of the Commissie before 1920, revealing a different orientation than the that of the better-known subsequent period. The results throws additional light on the nature of the re-orientation of the Commissie around 1919-1920, suggesting some conclusions on the culture and language policy of the colonial administration of that time.

"Reflection of PAN *R as Vowel", paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Leiden.

"Linguistic and Phonological Data towards Dating Austronesian Activity in India and Sri Lanka", paper presented at the World Archaeological Congress--3, New Delhi.

A revised version, split into three individual papers, has meanwhile appeared in Archaeology and Language vols. II-IV (1998 & 1999).