Double vowels in Kodi

Kodi is an Austronesian language spoken by about 100,000 people in Sumba, Indonesia. A few years ago, I got to help out at an alphabet workshop for Kodi, and have collaborated with a few colleagues on more analysis of the phonology as a follow-up. We (me, Misriani Balle & Owen Edwards) recently recorded a presentation

Vowel length contrast in stressed syllables only

At a conference last month, I presented on the languages of Sumba. Since there’s not much linguistic description done for these languages (with the exception of Kambera) there’s not much comparison that can be done yet. However, I did notice one interesting phonological pattern. Marian Klamer describes Kambera has having a contrast in vowel length,

How many languages in Sumba?

In February, I plan to present an overview of the languages of Sumba at a conference in Jakarta (InLaLi). One of the open questions for linguists is: how many languages are indigenous to Sumba? The lowest count is at least 7 and the highest count is 11. One reason for this discrepancy is that counting