1 Introduction
The primary purpose of this paper is to make Bonggi wordlists more widely available. Section 1.1 provides background information on the language and its speakers, while §1.2 recounts the history of
Bonggi wordlists. Section 2 discusses various features of the wordlists which are found in §3. Section 2.1 provides a
list of phonemes and discusses phonetic and phonological features in the data, while §2.2 discusses the morphological and morphophonemic processes found in the wordlists. Section 2.3 explains the Bonggi
orthographic conventions used, and §4 concludes by answering the question – how many dialects of Bonggi are there?
1.1 The language and its speakers
Bonggi is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by approximately 1,500 people on Banggi and Balambangan islands in the Kudat District of Sabah, Malaysia. Banggi Island is the largest island in
Sabah, and the third largest island in Malaysia. It is separated from Borneo by the Banggi South Channel. Banggi Island is located approximately 44 kilometers north of Kudat. Since the turn of the 21st
century, a daily ferry has been in operation between Kudat on the mainland and Karakit on the southeastern end of Banggi. Banggi is separated from Balabac, the southernmost island of the Philippine
Archipelago, by the 69 km wide Balabac Strait. Balambangan Island is separated from Banggi by a strait 4.8 km wide.
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In July 1764, the Sultan of Sulu gave the British East India Company the rights to both Banggi and Balambangan Tarling 1978:20. However, it was not until 1773 that the British established a settlement
on Balambangan. In early 1775, their garrison was attacked and they were forced to leave Balambangan. The Bonggi are subsistence farmers and fishers. Bonggi agriculture is based on cassava; other crops
are maize, bananas, coconuts, papaya, sugar cane, tobacco, tuba Derris elliptica, areca palms, and betel vine. Most farming is done on an individual household basis, while fishing is a more social activity.
Many Bonggi live in small villages of dispersed houses with around 100–150 people per village.
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Bonggi is one of six Malayo-Polynesian minority languages spoken on Banggi, Balambangan, and the surrounding islands. The other five language groups are Suluk, who are referred to as Tausug in the
Philippines; Ubian, which is referred to as Sama South Ubihan in Pallesen 1985:3; Kagayan, who migrated from Cagayan de Sulu in the Philippines where they are called Jama Mapun; Balabak, who
migrated from Balabac and Ramos islands where they are called Molbog; and Bajau, who are called Sama Boutin and Boutin 1985:90. The Bonggi refer to their language and themselves as Bonggi. The word
banggi in their language means ‘corpse’. Although outsiders normally refer to them by the term banggi, because this is a derogatory term, we use the term Bonggi to refer to the people and the language and
reserve Banggi to refer to the island.
1.2 History of Bonggi wordlists
The first published Bonggi wordlist appeared in Schneeberger 1937. His wordlist contains 793 items. Although Schneeberger 1937:145 lists 12 Bonggi villages in his paper, he did not state the villages
where he collected his data. Approximately, 200 lexical items from Schneeberger 1937 are available
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Dalrymple 1769:20-35 provides a good description of Balambangan as does Barton 1769. A good description of Balambangan bay can be found in Harrisson 1966:102-103. Wells 1981 describes the geology, flora, and fauna of
Balambangan.
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For a discussion of Bonggi social organization see Boutin 1990.
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electronically in Greenhill, et al. 2008, which is a slight variant of the Swadesh 200-word basic vocabulary list in Blust 1998.
Sometime between October 1978 and November 1979, members of SIL Malaysia collected a wordlist from Lok Agung and Limbuak Darat on Banggi Island Smith 1984:8. They used a 367-item
wordlist which was based on the 372-item wordlist in Reid 1971. For a variety of reasons, the 367-item wordlist was later reduced to a 327-item wordlist for lexicostatical comparison Smith 1984:45. The
wordlists collected by SIL Malaysia members in 1978–1979 were given to the Sabah State Archives, but they have not yet been published.
In September–October 1982, Michael and Alanna Boutin used SIL Malaysia’s 327-item wordlist to collect data from six different languages spoken on Banggi and Balambangan islands. Their data included
wordlists from four Bonggi villages: Pengkalan Darat, Pasir Hitam, and Tambising on Banggi Island and Selamat Darat on Balambangan Island Boutin and Boutin 1985:89. These wordlists were not published.
In 1989 and 1990, Michael Boutin visited all of the Bonggi villages on Banggi and Balambangan islands in order to revise the wordlists collected in 1978–1979 and 1982, and to determine the extent of
language variation among the villages. He collected a 337-item wordlist from the following villages with Bonggi village names in parentheses: Limbuak Darat Pogah Diaa, Mamang Milimbiaa, Palak Darat
Giparak, Tambising Tugutah, Sabur Sabur, Sibumbong Darat Simbukng, Lok Agung Indupapa, Pasir Hitam Pasig Modobm, Kapitangan Pitangan, Kalang Kaman Kalanggaman, and Kuda-kuda
Kudah-Kudah. Four of these wordlists are included in §3.
Blust 2010:62 states that Jason Lobel collected a 1,000 word vocabulary of Bonggi. His wordlist is scheduled to be published as part of a North Borneo sourcebook Lobel, to appear.
Lastly, a working dictionary of over 8,000 Bonggi lexemes is available online Boutin 2014.
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2 Description of the data
2.1 Overview of Bonggi phonetics and phonology
