Colours, Sounds, Rivers: Descriptive Terms and Informational Priority in Hobongan

In this report on descriptors in Hobongan, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately two thousand people on the island of Borneo, I provide the available expressions and note that the expressions are rarely used. The study is theoretically backed by Nexus Theory (Perkins, 2019), a linguistic approach to analysing elements of language in context. Sensory descriptors occur primarily to distinguish unique entities from broader categories, emphasising observed phenomena more than the sensory methods of observation. These patterns of description correlate with the predominantly oral nature of Hobongan currently (Ong, 2003) and with the emphasis on locational and navigational information in narrative discourses (Perkins, 2017). I therefore hypothesise that descriptive expressions, including colour expressions, can be indicators of linguistic-cultural priorities.