The Historical Phonology of Hliboi, A Bidayuh Language of Borneo

Abstract:Hliboi Bidayuh is spoken in the West Kalimantan province of Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. It is part of the larger Land Dayak subgroup, with member languages on both sides of the Malaysia–Indonesia border. Hliboi has several phonological features that warrant focused attention. For example, Hliboi contains geminate consonants in word-initial position, but not in other positions and a restriction on geminate voicing that appears to run counter to typological implications; geminates must be voiced, never voiceless. Hliboi also reflects interesting sound changes that it shares with several other languages of Borneo with "busy" historical phonologies, including the destressing and reduction of penultimate syllables, syllable complexification, and vowel breaking processes that have arisen in now-stressed word-final syllables. In this study, the historical and synchronic phonologies of Hliboi are discussed in detail. The preference for voiced over voiceless geminates is hypothesized to be due to their word-initial only restriction, where perceptual pressures favor voiced over voiceless segments. The historical changes that gave rise to Hliboi's phonology are ultimately rooted in stress shift, a feature that it shares with other languages of the Central Bornean Linguistic Area.