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Part of
Austronesian Undressed: How and why languages become isolating
Edited by David Gil and Antoinette Schapper
[Typological Studies in Language 129] 2020
► pp. 369–390

Chapter 8
Double agent, double cross?

Or how a suffix changes nature in an isolating language: dór in Tetun Dili

| Dili Institute of Technology
| University of Melbourne

In East Timor, there have been centuries of contact between the strongly isolating Austronesian language Tetun Dili and the morphologically-rich Romance language Portuguese. In all this time, only one derivational morpheme has been borrowed into Tetun Dili for use with native lexicon. This is -dor, a transparent agentive suffix which neatly fits the word order and stress patterns of existing Tetun Dili agentive compounds. Tetun Dili has borrowed numerous nouns with this suffix. However when in combination with native roots, it has shifted in terms of its semantics, word class of the root and derivation, and even word status, bringing it more in line with pre-existing native agentive morphemes. In other words, Tetun’s strongly isolating nature has won, at least for now.

Keywords: language contact, isolating language, Tetun Dili, Portuguese, Austronesian contact, morphological borrowing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical background
  • 3.Portuguese nominal loans with dór
  • 4. Door with single Tetun roots
  • 5.Three-unit sequences
  • 6.Use and creativity
  • 7.Alternative strategies for agentive terms
  • 8.Word class
  • 9.Word status
    • Phonology
    • Spelling
    • A lexeme door?
  • 10.Borrowability of door
  • 11.The double life of Portuguese dor in Tetun
  • 12.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.129.08kli
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