Introduction

 

Tajio is an Austronesian language, one of the ten Tomini-Tolitoli languages located in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. There are between 8,800 (BPS 2000) and 12,000 (Himmelmann 2001) Tajio speakers, with three known dialects. 

I started studying Tajio in 2007. To do this my family lived in the village of Sija in West Sidoan, Parigi-Moutong, Central Sulawesi. Before I was able to move to Sija, I started studying Tajio from the book Sourcebook on Tomini-Tolitoli languages which was compiled by Dr. Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. This book has about 1600 words from Tajio. Later when I was able to live in Sija, I compared all of the words on the list with the northern dialect used in Sija with the help of Ajam Djahandu. The Pendau lexicon compiled by Dr. Phil Quick was also helpful to elicit words. Ajam Djahandu helped me compare that list with Tajio as well. A third list used to elicit words was the Sulawesi Umbrella word list. Toni Lumpet and Alexander Timboko help me record the Tajio words for that list.  Paul Emch worked with Ajam Djahandu and Ruben Aluꞌu for a few days collecting words for the lexicon. Other words used for this research may come from other collected Tajio stories or from words learned while helping the Tajio people translate the Bible into their language.

Derek Harman