Tetun nudar lian jornalizmu: Mudansa gramátika liuhosi kontaktu língua [Tetun as a language of journalism: Grammatical change as a result of language contact]

Abstract

Tetun Dili is both the primary lingua franca and along with Portuguese co-official language of East Timor. Before the independence referendum of 1999 it was little used in the formal public sphere including in the press. This has radically altered since 1999 and Tetun has had to adapt rapidly to new domains of public use including in the press and other media as well as officialdom. It has also been since that time in renewed vigorous contact with Portuguese, in addition to contact with Indonesian and English. In this study we look at aspects of grammatical change that has occurred in the press register of Tetun. We see that lexical influence is mostly from Portuguese, however a number of gr..