Notes from the Field: Ponosakan: The Sounds of a Silently Dying Language of Indonesia, with Supporting Audio

Abstract

Ponosakan is a near-extinct Greater Central Philippine language spoken on the large central Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Little has appeared in the literature about the language, which now has only four fully fluent speakers, ranging in age from 70 to 92 years old. The purpose of this paper is to present a brief introduction to the language, including its phoneme system and grammatical subsystems. Accompanying this paper are over 300 audio recordings, to give the world an opportunity to hear a language that is rarely spoken even in its traditional home.