Muarasipongi and Minangkabau Language Contact in Border of North Sumatera Utara-West Sumatera

Abstract

This study examined language contact between the Muarasipongi language, also referred to in recent documentation as Tanah Ulu, and Minangkabau in the North Sumatra-West Sumatra border area. The study addressed a gap in previous scholarship, which had documented lexical comparison, the creole status of Muarasipongi, phonological structure, and bilingual practices, but had rarely synthesised these findings specifically as a border-contact system. A qualitative secondary-data design was employed. Data were drawn from published linguistic studies, institutional documentation, and repository records concerning Muarasipongi, Tanah Ulu, Minangkabau, and the social interaction of border communities. The data were organised into four analytical domains: lexical contact, phonological adaptation, bilingualism and code choice, and sociocultural domains of language use. The synthesis showed that contact was not limited to isolated loanwords. It was associated with recurrent lexical convergence, phonological adaptation, bilingual repertoires, and functional language selection shaped by mobility, markets, intermarriage, and proximity to Rao and other Minangkabau-speaking areas. At the same time, the available evidence indicated that Muarasipongi/Tanah Ulu retained structural features that distinguished it from standard Minangkabau, so the contact outcome should not be reduced to simple dialect borrowing. The study therefore argued that the border functions as a linguistic contact zone in which local identity and external linguistic resources are negotiated simultaneously. The findings contributed a consolidated sociolinguistic interpretation of Muarasipongi language contact and provided a basis for future field-based corpus, variationist, and language-maintenance research.