LWM 268: Urak Lawoi’

Urak Lawoi’

David Hogan

Urak Lawoi’ is a language of the Austronesian family with close linguistic links with Malai. It is similar to the village level of the Malay language, without the refinements introduced in modern Bahasa Malaysia. Most of its vocabulary has cognates in Malay, but it has been influenced by the predominant Thai language of South Thailand. It is spoken by between 3000 and 4000 people who are strand-dwellers living on the islands from Phuket south to the Malaysian border. It has little in the way of inflectional morphology with most morphosyntactic categories expressed at the level of the phrase. Its pronoun system distinguishes singular and plural number and distinguishes between exclusive and inclusive first person.

This sketch of Urak Lawoi’ grammar covers all levels of the language up to the discourse structure, and includes some sample texts showing the application of the syntactic structure. It includes a detailed analysis of the verb phrase and insights into clause and sentence patterns. David Hogan was a retired missionary linguist who has worked in this language for over thirty years. He gained his M.A. degree from William Carey International University, Pasadena, through the Pacific College of Graduate Studies, Melbourne.

ISBN 9783929075946. Languages of the World/ Materials 268. 60 pp. 1999.