136 CAKALELE, VOL. 3

REFERENCES

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory ofpractice, trans. by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bowen, Jolm R. 1992. On scriptural essentialism and ritual variation: Muslim sacrifice in Sumatra and Morocco. American Ethnologist 19(4):656-671.

Ellen, Roy F. 1983. Social theory, ethnography, and the understanding of prac­tical Islam in Southeast Asia. In Islam in South-East Asia, ed. by M. B. Hooker, pp. 50-91. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The cerebral savage: On the work of Claude Levi­Strauss. In The inte1pretation of cultures, pp. 343-359. New York: Basic Books.

Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Structuralism and the theory of the subject. In Cen­tral problems in social the01y, pp. 9-48. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hoskins, Janet. 1987. Complementarity in this world and the next: Gender and agency in Kodi mortuary ceremonies. In Dealing with inequality: Ana­lysing gender relations in Melanesia and beyond, ed. by Marilyn Strathem, pp. 174-207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres§.

Kipp, Rita Smith, and Susan Rodgers, eds. 1987. Indonesian religions in tran­sition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

McKinnon, Susan. 1991. From a shattered sun: Hierarchy, alliance, and ex­change in the Tanimbar Islands. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Roff, William R. 1985. Islam obscured? Some reflections on studies of Islam and society in Southeast Asia. Archipel29:7-34.

Russell , Susan D., and Clark E. Curmingham, eds. 1989. Changing lives, changing rites: Ritual and social dynamics in Philippine and Indonesian uplands. Michigan Studies on South and Southeast Asia. Ann Arbor: Uni­versity of Michigan.

Valeri, Valerio. 1990. Both nature and culture: Reflections on female impurity in Huaulu (Seram). In Power and difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia, ed. by Jane Monnig Atkinson and Shelly Errington, pp. 235-272. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Woodward, Mark R. 1988 The Slametan: Textual knowledge and ritual per­fonnance in Central Javanese Islam. Hist01y of Religions 28(1 ):54-89.

---. 1989. Islam in Java: Normative piety and mysticism in the Sultanate ofYogyakarta. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

CA.KALELE, VOL. 3 (1992) ©The authors

REVIEWS

Y. Latue, I. Matital, A. Souhaly, Y. Souhaly, N. Makaruku, Y. Taguchi, J. Perry, and N. Leong. 1991. Mai Ite Lepa Atune. Ambon: Universitas Pattimura and Summer Institute of Linguistics.

MARGARET J. FLOREY NORTHERN TERRITORY UNIVERSITY, DARWIN

Mai Ite Lepa Alune ["Let's speak Alune"] is a collection of some two hundred brief conversations in the Alune language, spoken in approxi­mately ·26 villages in western Seram, Central Maluku. The book has arisen largely througll research undertaken by Yushin and Takako Taguchi, working for the Summer Institute of Linguistics of Maluku, and their Indonesian counterparts from Pattimura University.

The volume is most usefully considered as a potential contribution to the maintenance of the Alune language. It has been well established that the majority of languages spoken in Christian villages in Central Maluku are endangered (cf. Collins 1982, Florey 1990, 1991, 1993). Language shift to Ambonese Malay and Indonesian is occurring in Alunc villages, including including Kamal, Nurue, and Lohiatala, which relocated to the south coast of Seram during the RMS con!lict in the 1950s. The process is reflected in intergenerational syntactic and phonological changes to­gether with extensive code-switcrung and the use of Malay loanwords. Language shift is proceeding more rapidly toward language obsolescence in villages that relocated to the north coast early in this century, such as Mumaten and Nikulukan, and have therefore been subjected to a much longer period of frequent contact with speakers of other languages. Com­munity members under thirty years of age in these villages exhibit a marked reluctance and/or inability to speak (and, in many cases, to com­prehend) Alune.

Although the Alune language is still in daily usc in villages in the inte­rior of west Seram, recent research indicates that the process of language

138 CAKALELE, VOL. 3

shift h.as commenced ( cf. Florey 1992). While the language is still trans.nutte? to some children, other ones reveal a reduced ability to com­mumcate m Alune. The range of Alune speech styles is also contracting, and ~owledge of.Alune .folktales and song styles, as well as specialized tennmology associated w1th avoidance and rituall<l!lguages, is lirillted to a fe~ older speakers. This process is likely to accelerate as econorillc and soc1al d~an~es result in community members spe!1ding more time away from th~1r v1llages for the pmposes of education, employment, and trade.

Stud1es of endangered languages in other parts of the world have shown that .it is e~tremely difficult to reverse or. arrest the process of language sh1ft leadmg to language obsolescence (borian 1989 Schmidt 1990). While the ability to do so stems primarily from the de;ire of the spe.ech community itsel~, the success of languagc{renewal and language mamtenance programs IS closely associated with cultural awareness as wel.l .as th~ acceptan~e and support by the wider cvmmunity of the socio­poltttcal nghts of mmority groups. A common goal of language mainte­nance or renewal. progr~ms is to raise speakers' se!f-esteem through the reversal of negative attitudes toward the minority1 language and culture ~cf. Wum1. 1991). Aboriginal language maintenance programs established m ~ustralta ~ave. shown that the production of attractive, well-produced wntten matenals m the endangered language is an important step towards achieving this aim (Hudson and McConvell 1984).

The goals of Mai Ite Lef!a Alune, as stated by the authors in its pref­ace, are: (1) to promote an mterest in reading Alune or Indonesian among ~June people, and hence to raise the prestige of Alw1e to equal that en­JO~ed by In~onesian; (2) to assist Alune people in learning to read and wnte th~ natiOnal language, Indonesian; (3) to assist government officials located m or near Alw1e villages in learning to speak Alune, and hence to prot~ote better conununication; and ( 4) to encourage Alune people to learn Engl~sh. In ?rder to pr?mote these goals, the book is trilingual in its pres­entatiOn, With approximate Indonesian and English translations for the Alune conversations. The book also includes pronunciation keys for Alune and English, and a brief granunar of Alune.

. The authors have chosen to write Mai Ite Lepa Alune in the North d1aleet of Alunc. This decision was made for pragmatic reasons because the ~orth dialect is spoken in t?e majority of Al~ne villages, including Buna,. Hu~anakota, Hukukectl, Kamal, Kawa, Laiuwin, Laturake, Lumolt, Munkau, Mumaten, Nikulukan, Niniari, Nume, Patahue, Riring,

REVIEWS 139

Rumasoal, Uwet, Wakolo, and Watui (Collins 1983:40). (The North dialect group incorporates the "Central West," "Central East," and "North Coastal" dialect groups identified by Taguchi [ 1989] on the basis of lexi­costatistics. Unfortunately, Taguclu provides no linguistic evidence for his classification.) Five of the remaining Alune villages, Lohiasapalewa, Lohiata1a, Manusa, Rambatu, and Rumbem, speak the Central dialect (which Taguchi [1989:34] calls the "South" dialect), although Lohia­sapalewa is shlfting to the North dialect. There are very few remaining speakers of the South dialect, which traditionally was spoken in Kairatu (Collins 1983:40) (and which Taguchi calls the "Kairatu" dialect).

The authors point out that the North dialect is "well understood by all the other dialect speakers according to the dialect survey which was done February 1988" (p. vii). Whlle this is undoubtedly tme, such an explana­tion fails to take into account the positive attitude that speakers of the Central dialect retain towards their dialect. Speakers in these villages remain proud of their dialect and of their historically close relationship with speakers in other villages within the Central dialect area. Villagers in Lohiatala and Lohlasapalewa were outspoken in their view that the North dialect is not "their language," and expressed a wish to see written mate­rial produced in the Central dialect (pers. conun.).

A partial solution to this issue would be the incorporation of a short explanation of the principal phonological differences between dialects in the preface to the book. The most salient difference is the retention of *k in the North dialect and the shift to? (glottal stop) in the Central dialect, as in nikwele - m?wele ' coconut', kane - ?ane 'to eat'. Other regular phonological differences between the Central and North dialects include ml- nd, as in mlinu- ndinu 'garden, farm'; and d- r, as in dani- rani 'to cry'. (In the Central dialect, [ d] occurs word-initially and [ r] occurs elsewhere.) A brief description of these differences would acknowledge the existence of other dialects and provide useful information to potential language learners who may be planning to work in villages in the Central dialect area.

The dialogues in Mai Jte Lepa Atune have been organized into thirteen sections according to topics such as daily life, flora and fauna, work, sickness, and the family. This style is very similar to an Alune language­learning book produced early this century by a Dutch military officer (Sierevelt 1919), who based his conversations on the topics of house­building, times of the day and night, on patrol, at the doctor, and the

140 CAKALELE, VOL. 3

human body. A major difference between the two books is the absence in Ma.i Ite Lepa Alune of a short glossary at the end of each dialogue to asstst ~eaders both in learning lexical items and in understanding the syntactic structure of Alune. The Indonesian and English translations are insufficient for these purposes since, as the authors state, they are "a natural rendering of equivalent meanings" (p. ix) and not a literal transla­tion of the Alune conversations. However, difficulties for readers and language learners arise as a result of this fonnat. For example, in dialogue 72 (p. 62), the Alune sentence Yake le ale sike tekwa mo eleki lakwai is gi~en the English translation "Don't do that because you are not very skilled yet and you will cut your finger." A translation that more closely reflects the Alw1e would be "Don't do that because you don't know how to peel (fruit or vegetables) and will wound yourself." The translation misleads readers and language learners into assuming that the Alune sentence contains the lexical items for 'finger' and 'to cut', and also m~kes no mention of the verb 'to peel'. A simple glossary would rectify thts problem and allow the current translations to be retained.

Mai Ite Lepa Alune is also marred by the constant and unnecessary ~se oflnd~nes.ian lexical items. To cite just three examples from the many mstances, m dtalogue 162 (p. 146), Indonesian hari 'day' is used in place o.f the Alune petu; in dialogue 166 (p. I 50), the Indonesian first person smgular pronoun saya is used in place of the Alune au; in dialogue 18 (p. 16), the Indonesian loan ename (enam 'six' modified to conform to Alune phonological rules) is used in place of the Alune ne. The authors also frequently refer to the Alune language with the Indonesian bahasa 'language'. Alune speakers however, refer to their language as somtoline ( < sou 'speech', -m- conjoiner, toli 'true, straight'), the ' true language'. The unnecessary mixing of Indonesian with Alune detracts from the authors' stated goal of supporting the maintenance of Alune.

Difficulties for readers in understanding Alune syntax arise from the lack of an adequate syntactic description, inconsistent usage throughout the book, and the absence of either a glossary or morpheme-by-morpheme glosses of the dialogues. This issue is exemplified through an examination of the authors' use of genitive marking. In the brief grammatical descrip­tion appended to the dialogues (pp. 185-199), the authors list the afftxed genitive markers without describing the critical difference between alien­able and inalienable possession. There is also no description or explana­tion of the phonological processes that arise through affixation and con-

REVIEWS 141

joining of lexical items. For example, elision results from prefixation of the first person singular alienable genitive marker ku- to ebe 'friend': yielding ku-ebe 'my friend', which is frequently wtitten throughout the text as kwebe (cf. dialogue 7, p. 6). While kwebe accurately represents the phonetic pronunciation of the word, the use of this fonn neither gives the language learner an insight into the genitive system nor provides an oppor­tunity to learn the root ebe. This problem is exacerbated by inconsisten­cies in usage. For example, in dialogue 180 (p. 160), the morphemes are separated and the system of affixation changed so that the alienable marker is suffixed to the first person singular free pronoun au, resulting in auku ebe. In dialogue 181 (p. 162), the word is written kuebe. Similar problems arise with other lexical items. For example ku-anare 'my child' is first written kwanare and inaccurately translated in English as 'my son' (p. 2), but later written auku anare (dialogue 53, p. 46). This lack of consistency is very confusing for speakers and will make it difficult for language learners to generalize the quite straightforward rules of genitive marking for use with other lexical items.

Incomistencies in usage are not limited to affixation, but frequently occur with compounds. For example, in dialogue 15 (p. 12) 'baby' is written kwetotone (kwete 'child' + tone 'small'), although this usage is rectified in later dialogues (ef. dialogue 133). More adequate proofreading of the text could have emended these problems. It might also have enabled the authors to correct more of the spelling errors that are present on most pages. These errors range from the irritating (nifo.vle for nikwele 'coconut', utambanai rather than utanbanai 'mushroom') to the amusing, for example, the metathesis of syllables in dialogue 132 (p. 116), which results in marele 'cuscus' replacing the intended malere 'sympathy, pity'.

The authors have spent a number of years researching the Alune language and culture, and their depth of ethnographic knowledge is appar­ent from the range of topics covered in the dialogues. However Mai Ite Lepa Alune does not do credit to its authors. While the goals of the book are laudable, its style and the many errors that it contains renders it less than useful to speakers and language learners and weakens its potential contribution to the maintenance of the Alune language.

142 CAKALELE, VOL. 3

REFERENCES

Collins, James ~- 1982. Linguistic research in Ma1uku: a report of recent field work. Oceanzc Linguistics 21:73-146.

. 19~3. The _histor_ical relationships of the languages of Central Maluku1

Indonesza. Pac1fic Lmguistics D-47. Canberra: The Austral· N t' 1 U . . 1an a 1ona

ruvers1ty.

Dorian, Na~cy. 19~ I. La~zguaf!e death: The life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dia­lect. PhJiadelphm: Umvers1ty of Pennsylvania Press.

Flore_y, Ma~garet J. 1990. Language ~hift: C~anging patterns of language alle­giances m west_e~ Seram. Ph.D. dissertatiOn, University ofHawai'i .

. _1991. Sl11fbng patterns _of language allegiance: A generational per­spective from e~stern Indonesia. In Papers in Austronesian Linguistics No. 1, ed. b~ H. St~mhauer, pp. 39-47. Pacific Linguistics A-81. Canberra: The Austrahan NatiOnal University.

--.-. 1992. Dialect-switching, language attitudes, & language obsolescence 111 an Alune-speaking village. Paper presented at the 2nd International Maluku Research Conference, University of Hawai'i July 29-August 1 1992. ' '

. 1993. The reinterpretation of knowledge and its role in the process of language obsolescence. Oceanic Linguistics 32.

Hudson, Jo~ce, and P. McConvell. 1984. Keeping language strong. Halls Creek: Kimberley Language Resource Centre.

Schmidt, Annette. ! ~90. The loss of Australia's Aboriginal language heritage. Canberra: Abongmal Studies Press.

Sierevelt, A . M. 1920. Woordenlijst van de omgangstaal in West-Seran ten behoeve van ambtenaren en oj]icieren. Weltevreden: Encyclopaedisch Bureau.

Taguchi, Yushin. I 989. A lexicostatistic survey of the languages indigenous to west Seram. In Workpapers in Indonesian languages and cultures vol. 6 Maluku, ed. by Wyn D. Laidig, pp. 15-63. Ambon: Pattimura U~iversi~ and the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Wurm, Stephen A. 1991. Language death and disappearance: Causes and cir­cumstances. In Endangered languages, ed. by Robert H. Robins and E M Uhlenbeck, pp. 1- 18. Oxford: Berg. · ·

REVIEWS 143

Willard A. Hanna and Des Alwi. 1990. Turbulent times past in Ternate and Tidore: Early East-West encounters in the Clove Islands. Banda Naira, Moluccas, Indonesia: Yayasan Warisan dan Budaya Banda Naira. x.ii + 290 pp., illustrations, photographs, ap­pendix, bibliography. Rp. 25,000, paper.

KAREN FROJEN CUNY GRADUATE CENTER, CITY UNNERSITY OF NEW YORK

Turbulent Times is aptly named, focusing on the most colorful characters and dramatic moments in the centuries-long story of struggle over control of the spice trade in North Maluku. Admirers of Hanna's Indonesian Banda (1978) will recognize, in this collaboration with Des Alwi, Hanna's dramatic evocation ofMaluku history and his critical assessment of the power struggles that accompanied Europe's violent entrance into the snice trade. When I found the book in the Rumah Budaya Banda NairdMuseum in January 1991 (when it was just off the presses), I was taking a vacation from a study of Tidorean oral history traditions. Since these traditions offer few details on the actual personalities and goings-on of each successive regime (often little more than a list of the names of rulers), this book's more descriptive accounts were especially welcome.

Indeed, each chapter can be read as a self-contained tale in a series of power struggles, accompanied by judicious sifting through the rumors that accompanied them. As in a good mystery novel, we are even treated to creative accounts of the possible motivations of the main actors in these dramas, and to the flaws of character that almost inevitably bring about their ruin. This is reflected in such chapter titles as "The Freakish Regime of Good Governor Galvao," "The Peregrinations and Perils of Hairun," "Francis Drake's Curious Visit," "Baab's Mysterious Death," "The Despicable Sultan Madarsjah," "The Abominable Admiral de V1aming," and "M. Pierre Poivre and the Purloined Spice Trees." This gives you a flavor of the sometimes quaint but appealing style that the authors may have retained from their reading of early source materials. (1l1e captions to the twenty photographs included in the text also have a whimsical feel to them.) Another chapter title, "Moluccan Peccadillos, Iberian Fiascos," sums up the authors' generally cynical assessment of the self-interest and greed of all parties to these processes. At times the reader's head spins at the ultimately almost comic repetition of disasters that befell successive