| Belait | |
|---|---|
| Lemeting, Metteng | |
| Native to | Belait,Tutong (Brunei),Sarawak (Malaysia) |
| Region | Brunei,Malaysia |
| Ethnicity | Belait people |
Native speakers | (undated figure of 1,000 in Brunei)[1] (700 in 1995)[2] |
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | beg |
| Glottolog | bela1260 |
| ELP | Belait |
Belait, orLemeting, is aMalayo-Polynesian language of Brunei and neighbouring Malaysia. It is spoken by theBelait people who mainly reside in the BruneianBelait District. There were estimated to be 700 speakers in 1995.[2]
Belait is related to the Miri,Kiput andNarum languages of Sarawak. It is considered part of the Lower Baram subgroup of North Sarawak languages.[3]
There are four mutually-intelligible dialects of Belait.[4] These are spoken in two main regions:
Two distinct dialects of Belait – Metting and Bong – are spoken within the Mungkom village, Kiudang.[4] There are very few speakers of any of the dialects.
General references on Belait phonology include Martin (1990) on Metteng Belait[4][5] and Noor Alifah Abdullah (1992) on Labi Belait.[4][6] This sketch is based on the Metteng dialect (Clynes 2005). Other dialects may vary in their phonology and lexicon.
| Labial | Apical | Laminal | Dorsal | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Plosives | voiceless | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | g | ||
| Fricatives | s | ʁ | h | |||
| Laterals | l | |||||
| Glides | w | j | ||||
Metteng Belait has fivemonophthong vowels/i,u,e,o,a/. There is onediphthong/iə/.
The phoneme/e/ is realised as[ə] in non-final syllables, and as[ɛ] and[e] in final syllables.[4]
Lexical roots aredisyllabic. Final syllables are typically (C)V((C)C). Non-final are typically ((C)C)V(C).[4]
The major word classes in Belait areverbs andnouns. The two classes can be distinguished by their distribution, form and function. For example, verbs are negated with the form(e)ndeh and nouns with the formkay':
pra'=yeh
rain=DIST
nga'
already
salit,
be.hard,
ndeh
ana'
able
umaw'
padi
paddy
pra'=yeh nga' salit,ndeh ana' umaw' padi
rain=DIST already be.hard, NEG able AV.make paddy
'The rain has become hard, [we] are not able to grow rice'
kad
tarsier
macim
like
blabiw,
rat
kay'
blabiw
rat
kad macim blabiw,kay' blabiw
tarsier like rat NEG rat
'The tarsier is like a rat, but it is not a rat'
There are also severalclosed functional classes:[4]
Belait ishead-initial. This means that head nouns precede possessors and othermodifiers. They also precederelative clauses.[4] Most clauses consist of apredicate and asubject. The subject can either follow or precede the predicate. Hence,word order is flexible.[4]
pading=yeh
sword=DIST
lay'
to
mi'
at
dile'
sea
nengngay'=nyeh pading=yeh lay' mi' dile'
UV.throw=3S sword=DIST to at sea
'He threw the sword into the sea'
Predicates can be Verb Phrases (VP), Noun Phrases (NP) or a Prepositional Phrase (PP). Non-subject arguments of a verbal predicate occur immediately after the verb.[4]
The head of a verbal predicate is theverb. There are two main types of verbs in Belait:intransitive andtransitive. Intransitive verbs only have a single subject argument. They do not have any voice morphology on the verb. In contrast, transitive verbs occur in two different voices: Actor Voice (AV) and Undergoer Voice (UV). The two constructions are illustrated below:[4]
AV:actor voiceUV:undergoer voice
idih
people
unnah
before
kuman
salang
charcoal
idih unnah kuman salang
people before AV.eat charcoal
'The people before [first ancestors of the Belait] ate charcoal'
brejin
durian
abey'
complete
brejin kinan=lew abey'
durian UV.eat=3P complete
'The durian was all eaten up by them'
In the AV construction in (5) the subject is the Actor, i.e.idih unnah 'the people before'. In the UV construction in (6) the subject in the Undergoer, i.e.brejin 'durian'. In both cases, the subject comes before the predicate. The undergoer voice typically hasperfective semantics. The actor voice tends to be used in other contexts.[4]
