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Article published In: Similatives: Semantic sources, pathways, and types of usage
Edited by Anna Kisiel, Hélène Vassiliadou, Valentina Benigni, Beatrice Bernasconi, Lieselotte Brems and Dejan Stosic
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes 48:2] 2025
► pp. 276–298

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Grammaticalization of kidė as a similative marker in Contemporary Enggano

 | University of Oxford
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Oxford.

Published online: 19 February 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/li.00131.hem
Abstract
This paper presents a case study of similatives in Enggano, an Austronesian language spoken in Sumatra, Indonesia. It compares and contrasts the expression of similarity in Old Enggano versus Contemporary Enggano using legacy materials collected in 1930s, and a modern corpus collected since 2018 as part of an ongoing language documentation project. It demonstrates that the Old Enggano verb doo ‘be.similar’ has undergone a number of changes in Contemporary Enggano that are consistent with a process of grammaticalization and argues that this process is facilitated by contact with Indonesian, which provides a template for many of the semantic extensions through its comparison marker seperti. Ultimately, this supports the view that both language internal and language external factors may play a role in the development of similatives.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Background on Enggano
    • 1.1Old Enggano morphosyntax
    • 1.2Contemporary Enggano morphosyntax
  • 2.Similarity in Old Enggano
  • 3.Similarity in Contemporary Enggano
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • The following abbreviations are used in this paper following the Leipzig Glossing Conventions
  • References
References (64)
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