Flores–Lembata languages

Flores–Lembata
Flores–Lembata
Geographic; distribution	Indonesia (Lesser Sunda Islands)
Linguistic classification	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (Central) Bima–Lembata? Flores–Lembata; ; ; ;
Subdivisions	Kedang; Sika–Lamaholot;
Language codes
Glottolog	flor1239

The Flores–Lembata languages are a group of related Austronesian languages (geographically Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages) spoken in the Lesser Sundas, on eastern Flores and small islands immediately east of Flores, Indonesia. They are suspected of having a non-Austronesian substratum, with extreme morphological simplification in Sika and secondarily in Alorese, but not to a greater extent than the Central Malayo-Polynesian languages in general.

Languages

The generally accepted defined Flores–Lembata languages are:^[1]

In addition, the following is often grouped either as a dialect of Lamaholot or its own language:

Lamaholot is a dialect chain. Ethnologue treats ten varieties as distinct languages.

Elias (2017) proposes the following internal classification of Flores-Lembata.^[2]

Flores-Lembata
- Sika-Hewa
  - Sika
  - Hewa
- Kedang-Lamaholot
  - Kedang
  - Lamaholot
    - Central Lamaholot
    - Eastern-Western Lamaholot
      - Eastern Lamaholot
      - Alorese-Western Lamaholot
        Alorese
        
        Western Lamaholot

East Lembata: Kedan, Eastern Lamaholot
Sedentary Lembata: Eastern Lamaholot, Alorese, Western Lamaholot, Central Lamaholot

^ Fricke, Hanna L. (2019). Traces of language contact: The Flores-Lembata languages in eastern Indonesia (Ph.D. thesis). Leiden University. hdl:1887/80399.
^ ^a ^b Elias, Alexander. 2017. Subgrouping the Flores–Lembata languages using Historical Glottometry. 9th International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference (APLL9), 21–23 June 2017, LACITO, Paris.