Kéo

Abstract

Kéo is an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 40,000 speakers in central Flores in eastern Indonesia. Hitherto, Kéo has been linguistically undescribed. The data for this article comes from linguistic fieldwork undertaken by the author with native Kéo speakers on the islands of Flores and Bali in Indonesia, and in Canberra, Australia. Other, written sources include (Baird 2001) and (Baird 2002). Kéo has been said to belong to the Ende-Lio languages of the Bima-Sumba subgroup of the Central Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family (B. Grimes 1988, C. Grimes et al. 1997). The Central/Eastern Malayo-Polynesian grouping has been proposed by Blust, but this is not strongly supported by the comparative method. Likewise, there is very little evidence to support the notion of a Bima-Sumba subgroup at this stage. Much more linguistic work needs to be undertaken in the region before precise genetic relationships can be established.