Language contact in North Sulawesi: Preliminary observations.

Categorised as a Pidgin Derived Malay (PDM), Manado Malay (MM) is spoken throughout northern Sulawesi and on islands to the south of the southern Philippines. After originally functioning as regional lingua franca, it is now well established as the first language of up to one million people. This paper examines the language-contact situation between MM and two indigenous languages with a long presence in the region. Despite centuries of continued close contact, an examination of a range of typological features reveals minimal shared features, almost none of which have arisen through borrowing. These results corroborate multiple theories relating to language-contact outcomes, in particular the availability of different structural features for borrowing, the likely direction of any transfer, and the effect of both linguistic and non-linguistic factors on the potential for intense bilingualism.