The RoteâÂÂMeto languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian language family spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands. It includes Meto spoken on Timor and the languages of Rote Island.
Meto (also called Dawan, Atoni or Timorese) is a cluster of closely related dialects spoken in the Indonesian part of Timor and in the Oecusse district of East Timor. RoteâÂÂMeto varieties spoken on Rote Island can be divided into two groups, West Rote and Nuclear (or East) Rote:
A close relation between Meto and the languages of Rote was proposed in the 20th century by Jonker (1913) and Mills (1991). Edwards (2018a, 2018b, 2021) studied the phonological history of the RoteâÂÂMeto languages and reconstructed the ancestral proto-language, Proto-RoteâÂÂMeto, based on internal evidence from the RoteâÂÂMeto languages, and also from the top-down by tracing the phonological changes that occurred in RoteâÂÂMeto reflexes of Proto-Austronesian and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian reconstructions.
In spite of being located at the opposite geographical ends of the RoteâÂÂMeto speech area, Meto and West Rote varieties share many common features in their lexicon and historical phonology. This suggests that Proto-RoteâÂÂMeto first split into two branches, West Rote-Meto and Nuclear Rote.
Subsequently, Meto came into close contact with Nuclear Rote varieties and underwent some shared innovations with the latter. Most likely, speakers of an early form of the Meto cluster originally lived on Rote Islands in the vicinity of West Rote speakers, but later in history migrated to Timor, where they only remained in contact with speakers of Nuclear Rote varieties.
On a higher level, the RoteâÂÂMeto languages group with the Austronesian languages spoken to the east. Edwards (2021) includes them in a proposed TimorâÂÂBabar subgroup, that comprises all Austronesian languages languages spoken in an area that ranges from Rote Island across Timor and the Barat Daya Islands to Selaru (one of the Tanimbar Islands).
This comparison table (a small selection from Edwards (2021:88âÂÂ403)) illustrates the correspondences between the RoteâÂÂMeto languages, including inherited vocabulary as well as RoteâÂÂMeto innovations.
One third of the basic lexicon reconstructed for Proto-RoteâÂÂMeto does not go back to a known Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian etymon. Many of these reconstructed words have sounds that did not occur in the ancestral Proto-Malayo-Polynesian and Proto-Austronesian languages, such as prenasalized stops at the beginning of a word. Most likely, these words were borrowed from a non-Austronesian language spoken by earlier inhabitants of the area.