In 1706, the Dutch scholarAdriaan Reland first observed similarities between the languages spoken in the South East Asia Archipelago and by peoples on islands in the Pacific Ocean.[7] In the 19th century, researchers (e.g.Wilhelm von Humboldt,Herman van der Tuuk) started to apply thecomparative method to the Austronesian languages. The first extensive study on the history of thephonology was made by the German linguistOtto Dempwolff.[8] It included a reconstruction of theProto-Austronesian lexicon. The termAustronesian was coined (as Germanaustronesisch) byWilhelm Schmidt, deriving it fromLatinauster "south" andAncient Greekνῆσος (nêsos "island"), meaning the "Southern Island languages".[9]
Most Austronesian languages are spoken by the people ofInsular Southeast Asia andOceania. Only a few languages, such asUrak Lawoiʼ and theChamic languages (exceptAcehnese), areindigenous to mainland Asia, orMalagasy which is the only Austronesian language indigenous to Insular East Africa. There are few Austronesian languages which have populations exceeding a few thousand, but a handful have speaking populations in the millions; Indonesian, the most widely spoken, has around 252 million speakers, making it the tenthmost-spoken language in the world.[10] Approximately twenty Austronesian languages areofficial in theirrespective countries.
By the number of languages they include, Austronesian andNiger–Congo are the two largest language families in the world. They each contain roughly one-fifth of the world's languages. The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family in the first half of the second millennium CE, before the spread ofIndo-European languages in thecolonial period. It ranges from Madagascar toEaster Island in the eastern Pacific.
According toRobert Blust (1999), Austronesian is divided into several primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively in Taiwan. TheFormosan languages of Taiwan are grouped into as many as nine first-order subgroups of Austronesian. All Austronesian languages spoken outside the Taiwan mainland (including its offshoreYami language) belong to theMalayo-Polynesian (sometimes calledExtra-Formosan) branch.
The Austronesian languages overall possessphoneme inventories which are smaller than the world average. Around 90% of the Austronesian languages have inventories of 19–25 sounds (15–20 consonants and 4–5 vowels), thus lying at the lower end of the global typical range of 20–37 sounds. However, extreme inventories are also found, such asNemi (New Caledonia) with 43 consonants.[11]
The canonical root type inProto-Austronesian is disyllabic with the shape CV(C)CVC (C = consonant; V = vowel), and is still found in many Austronesian languages.[12] In most languages, consonant clusters are only allowed in medial position, and often, there are restrictions for the first element of the cluster.[13] There is a commondrift to reduce the number of consonants which can appear in final position, e.g.Buginese, which only allows the two consonants /ŋ/ and /ʔ/ as finals, out of a total number of 18 consonants. Complete absence of final consonants is observed e.g. inNias,Malagasy and manyOceanic languages.[14]
Most Austronesian languages areagglutinative languages with a relatively high number ofaffixes, and clear morpheme boundaries.[17] Most affixes areprefixes (Malayber-jalan 'walk' <jalan 'road'), with a smaller number ofsuffixes (Tagalogtitis-án 'ashtray' <títis 'ash') andinfixes (Rovianat<in>avete 'work (noun)' <tavete 'work (verb)').[18]
Reduplication is commonly employed in Austronesian languages. This includes full reduplication (Malayanak-anak 'children' <anak 'child';Karo Bataknipe-nipe 'caterpillar' <nipe 'snake') or partial reduplication (Agtataktakki 'legs' <takki 'leg',at-atu 'puppy' <atu 'dog').[19]
It is difficult to make generalizations about the languages that make up a family as diverse as Austronesian. Very broadly, one can divide the Austronesian languages into three groups based upon their grammatical typologies: Philippine-type languages, Indonesian-type languages and post-Indonesian type languages:[20]
The first group, thePhilippine-type languages include, besides the languages of thePhilippines, the Austronesian languages of Taiwan, Sabah, North Sulawesi and Madagascar. It is primarily characterized by the retention of the original system ofPhilippine-type voice alternations, where typically three or four verb voices determine whichsemantic role the "subject"/"topic" expresses (it may express either the actor, the patient, the location and the beneficiary, or various other circumstantial roles such as instrument and concomitant). The phenomenon has frequently been referred to asfocus (not to be confused with theusual sense of that term in linguistics). Furthermore, the choice of voice is influenced by thedefiniteness of the participants. The word order has a strong tendency to be verb-initial.
In contrast, the more innovativeIndonesian-type languages, which are particularly represented in Malaysia and western Indonesia, have reduced the voice system to a contrast between only two voices (actor voice and "undergoer" voice), but these are supplemented byapplicative morphological devices (originally two: the more direct *-i and more oblique *-an/-[a]kən), which serve to modify the semantic role of the "undergoer". They are also characterized by the presence of preposed clitic pronouns. Unlike the Philippine type, these languages mostly tend towards verb-second word-orders. A number of languages, such as theBatak languages,Old Javanese,Balinese,Sasak and several Sulawesi languages seem to represent an intermediate stage between these two types.[21][22]
Finally, in some languages, which Ross calls "post-Indonesian", the original voice system has broken down completely and the voice-marking affixes no longer preserve their functions. Preposed possessor and transitional languages could also fall into this type.
Additional types of Austronesian languages include:
Central Bornean-type languages, like the Indonesian type, have both actor voice and undergoer voice, but the latter are realised by a preverbal particle, and applicative voice are absent in these languages. Also, the nasal prefix does not mark any of aforementioned both voices. This type is represented by many indigenous languages of Borneo, such asLand Dayak,Kenyah, andKayan–Murik branches.[23]
Languages that have neither symmetrical voice nor preposed possessor construction are calledtransitional languages. Many of them haveergative–absolutive alignment and elaborate person marking, but they do not share core features in common. Some languages of Sumatra (e.g.Acehnese,Nias), the southern half of Sulawesi (e.g.Buginese,Makassarese,Muna,Banggai), and East Nusa Tenggara (e.g.Kambera) fall into this category.[21]
The Austronesian language family has been established by the linguistic comparative method on the basis ofcognate sets, sets of words from multiple languages, which are similar in sound and meaning which can be shown to be descended from the same ancestral word inProto-Austronesian according to regular rules. Some cognate sets are very stable. The word foreye in many Austronesian languages ismata (from the most northerly Austronesian languages,Formosan languages such asBunun andAmis all the way south toMāori).[24]
Other words are harder to reconstruct. The word fortwo is also stable, in that it appears over the entire range of the Austronesian family, but the forms (e.g.Bunundusa;Amistusa;Māorirua) require some linguistic expertise to recognise. TheAustronesian Basic Vocabulary Database gives word lists (coded for cognateness) for approximately 1000 Austronesian languages.[24]
The distribution of the Austronesian languages, per Blust (1999). Western Malayo-Polynesian and Central Malayo-Polynesian are no longer accepted.
The internal structure of the Austronesian languages is complex. The family consists of many similar and closely related languages with large numbers ofdialect continua, making it difficult to recognize boundaries between branches. The first major step towards high-order subgrouping was Dempwolff's recognition of theOceanic subgroup (calledMelanesisch by Dempwolff).[8] The special position of the languages of Taiwan was first recognized byAndré-Georges Haudricourt (1965),[25] who divided the Austronesian languages into three subgroups: Northern Austronesian (=Formosan), Eastern Austronesian (=Oceanic), and Western Austronesian (all remaining languages).
In a study that represents the firstlexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages,Isidore Dyen (1965) presented a radically different subgrouping scheme.[26] He posited 40 first-order subgroups, with the highest degree of diversity found in the area ofMelanesia. The Oceanic languages are not recognized, but are distributed over more than 30 of his proposed first-order subgroups. Dyen's classification was widely criticized and for the most part rejected,[27] but several of his lower-order subgroups are still accepted (e.g. theCordilleran languages, theBilic languages or theMurutic languages).
Subsequently, the position of the Formosan languages as the most archaic group of Austronesian languages was recognized byOtto Christian Dahl (1973),[28] followed by proposals from other scholars that the Formosan languages actually make up more than one first-order subgroup of Austronesian.Robert Blust (1977) first presented the subgrouping model which is currently accepted by virtually all scholars in the field,[29] with more than one first-order subgroup on Taiwan, and a single first-order branch encompassing all Austronesian languages spoken outside of Taiwan, viz.Malayo-Polynesian. The relationships of the Formosan languages to each other and the internal structure of Malayo-Polynesian continue to be debated.
In addition toMalayo-Polynesian, thirteenFormosan subgroups are broadly accepted. The seminal article in the classification of Formosan—and, by extension, the top-level structure of Austronesian—isBlust (1999). Prominent Formosanists (linguists who specialize in Formosan languages) take issue with some of its details, but it remains the point of reference for current linguistic analyses. Debate centers primarily around the relationships between these families. Of the classifications presented here,Blust (1999) links two families into a Western Plains group, two more in a Northwestern Formosan group, and three into an Eastern Formosan group, whileLi (2008) also links five families into a Northern Formosan group. Harvey (1982), Chang (2006) and Ross (2012) split Tsouic, and Blust (2013) agrees the group is probably not valid.
Other studies have presented phonological evidence for a reduced Paiwanic family ofPaiwanic, Puyuma, Bunun, Amis, and Malayo-Polynesian, but this is not reflected in vocabulary. The Eastern Formosan peoples Basay, Kavalan, and Amis share a homeland motif that has them coming originally from an island calledSinasay orSanasay.[30] The Amis, in particular, maintain that they came from the east, and were treated by the Puyuma, amongst whom they settled, as a subservient group.[31]
Families of Formosan languages before Minnanese colonization, perLi (2008). The three languages in green (Bunun, Puyuma, Paiwan) may form a Southern Formosan branch, but this is uncertain.
This classification retains Blust's East Formosan, and unites the other northern languages.Li (2008) proposes a Proto-Formosan (F0) ancestor and equates it withProto-Austronesian (PAN), following the model in Starosta (1995).[32] Rukai and Tsouic are seen as highly divergent, although the position of Rukai is highly controversial.[33]
Nested branches of Austronesian languages according to Sagart. Languages colored red are outside the other branches but are not subgrouped. Kradai and Malayo-Polynesian would also be purple.
Sagart (2004) proposes that the numerals of the Formosan languages reflect a nested series of innovations, from languages in the northwest (near the putative landfall of the Austronesian migration from the mainland), which share only the numerals 1–4 with proto-Malayo-Polynesian, counter-clockwise to the eastern languages (purple on map), which share all numerals 1–10. Sagart (2021) finds other shared innovations that follow the same pattern. He proposes that pMP *lima 'five' is a lexical replacement (from 'hand'), and that pMP *pitu 'seven', *walu 'eight' and *Siwa 'nine' are contractions of pAN *RaCep 'five', a ligature *a or *i 'and', and *duSa 'two', *telu 'three', *Sepat 'four', an analogical pattern historically attested fromPazeh. The fact that theKradai languages share the numeral system (and other lexical innovations) of pMP suggests that they are a coordinate branch with Malayo-Polynesian, rather than a sister family to Austronesian.[34][35]
Pazeh,Kulon (These four languages are outside Pituish, but Sagart is ambivalent as to any relationship among them, other than retaining Blust's connection between Pazeh and Kulon)
Pituish (pAN *RaCepituSa 'five-and-two' truncated to *pitu 'seven'; *sa-ŋ-aCu 'nine' [lit. one taken away])
Enemish (additive 'five-and-one' or 'twice-three' replaced by reduplicated *Nem-Nem > *emnem [*Nem 'three' is reflected in Basay, Siraya and Makatao]; pAN *kawaS 'year, sky' replaced by *CawiN)
Walu-Siwaish (*walu 'eight' and *Siwa 'nine' from *RaCepat(e)lu 'five-and-three' and *RaCepiSepat 'five-and-four')
West WS:Papora–Hoanya (pAN *Sapuy 'fire' replaced by *[Z]apuR 'cooking fire'; pAN *qudem 'black replaced by *abi[Z]u, found in MP as 'blue')
Central WS (pAN *isa etc. 'one' replaced by *Ca~CiNi (reduplication of 'alone') in the human-counting series; pAN *iCit 'ten' replaced by *ma-sa-N 'one times'.)
Rukai–Tsouic (CV~ reduplication in human-counting series replaced with competing pAN noun-marker *u- [unknown whether Bunun once had the same]; eleven lexical innovations such as *cáni 'one', *kəku 'leg')
East WS (pEWS ca. 4500 BP) (innovations *baCaq-an 'ten'; *nanum 'water' alongside pAN *daNum)
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are—among other things—characterized by certain sound changes, such as the mergers ofProto-Austronesian (PAN) *t/*C toProto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) *t, and PAN *n/*N to PMP *n, and the shift of PAN *S to PMP *h.[37]
There appear to have been two great migrations of Austronesian languages that quickly covered large areas, resulting in multiple local groups with little large-scale structure. The first was Malayo-Polynesian, distributed across theMalay archipelago andMelanesia. The second migration was that of theOceanic languages into Polynesia and Micronesia.[38]
A map of the Austronesian expansion. Periods are based on archeological studies, though the association of the archeological record and linguistic reconstructions is disputed.
According toRobert Blust, the Formosan languages form nine of the ten primary branches of the Austronesian language family.[39]Comrie (2001:28) noted this when he wrote:
... the internal diversity among the... Formosan languages... is greater than that in all the rest of Austronesian put together, so there is a majorgenetic split within Austronesian between Formosan and the rest... Indeed, the genetic diversity within Formosan is so great that it may well consist of several primary branches of the overall Austronesian family.
At least sinceSapir (1968), writing in 1949, linguists have generally accepted that the chronology of the dispersal of languages within a given language family can be traced from the area of greatest linguistic variety to that of the least. For example, English in North America has large numbers of speakers, but relatively low dialectal diversity, while English in Great Britain has much higher diversity; such low linguistic variety by Sapir's thesis suggests a more recent spread of English in North America. While some scholars suspect that the number of principal branches among the Formosan languages may be somewhat less than Blust's estimate of nine (e.g.Li 2006), there is little contention among linguists with this analysis and the resulting view of the origin and direction of the migration. For a recent dissenting analysis, seePeiros (2004).
Theprotohistory of the Austronesian people can be traced farther back through time. To get an idea of the original homeland of the populations ancestral to the Austronesian peoples (as opposed to strictly linguistic arguments), evidence from archaeology andpopulation genetics may be adduced. Studies from the science of genetics have produced conflicting outcomes. Some researchers find evidence for a proto-Austronesian homeland on the Asian mainland (e.g.,Melton et al. 1998), while others mirror the linguistic research, rejecting an East Asian origin in favor of Taiwan (e.g.,Trejaut et al. 2005). Archaeological evidence (e.g.,Bellwood 1997) is more consistent, suggesting that the ancestors of the Austronesians spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago.
Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it is from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to the entire region encompassed by the Austronesian languages.[40] It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years ago.[41] However, evidence from historical linguistics cannot bridge the gap between those two periods. The view that linguistic evidence connects Austronesian languages to the Sino-Tibetan ones, as proposed for example bySagart (2002), is a minority one. AsFox (2004:8) states:
Implied in... discussions of subgrouping [of Austronesian languages] is a broad consensus that the homeland of the Austronesians was in Taiwan. This homeland area may have also included theP'eng-hu (Pescadores) islands between Taiwan and China and possibly even sites on the coast of mainland China, especially if one were to view the early Austronesians as a population of related dialect communities living in scattered coastal settlements.
Linguistic analysis of the Proto-Austronesian language stops at the western shores of Taiwan; any related mainland language(s) have not survived. The only exceptions, theChamic languages, derive from more recent migration to the mainland.[42] However, according to Ostapirat's interpretation of the seriously discussedAustro-Tai hypothesis, theKra–Dai languages (also known as Tai–Kadai) are exactly those related mainland languages.
An example of hypothetical Pre-Austronesian migration waves to Taiwan from the mainland. (The Amis migration from the Philippines is controversial.)Path of Migration and Division of Some of the Major Ethnicities with their genetically distinctive markers, adapted from Edmondson and Gregerson (2007:732)[1]. The sketched migration routeM119-Baiyue from Southeast Asia corresponds to the southern origin hypothesis of early Austronesians.
Genealogical links have been proposed between Austronesian and various families of East andSoutheast Asia.
AnAustro-Tai proposal linking Austronesian and theKra-Dai languages of the southeastern continental Asian mainland was first proposed byPaul K. Benedict, and is supported by Weera Ostapirat,Roger Blench, and Laurent Sagart, based on the traditionalcomparative method.Ostapirat (2005) proposes a series of regular correspondences linking the two families and assumes a primary split, with Kra-Dai speakers being the people who stayed behind in their Chinese homeland.Blench (2004) suggests that, if the connection is valid, the relationship is unlikely to be one of two sister families. Rather, he suggests thatproto-Kra-Dai speakers were Austronesians who migrated toHainan Island and back to the mainland from the northern Philippines, and that their distinctiveness results from radical restructuring following contact withHmong–Mien andSinitic. An extended version of Austro-Tai was hypothesized by Benedict who added theJaponic languages to the proposal as well.[43]
A link with theAustroasiatic languages in an 'Austric'phylum is based mostly on typological evidence. However, there is also morphological evidence of a connection between the conservativeNicobarese languages and Austronesian languages of the Philippines.[citation needed] Robert Blust supports the hypothesis which connects the lower Yangtze neolithic Austro-Tai entity with the rice-cultivating Austro-Asiatic cultures, assuming the center of East Asian rice domestication, and putative Austric homeland, to be located in the Yunnan/Burma border area.[44] Under that view, there was an east-west genetic alignment, resulting from a rice-based population expansion, in the southern part of East Asia: Austroasiatic-Kra-Dai-Austronesian, with unrelated Sino-Tibetan occupying a more northerly tier.[44]
French linguist andSinologistLaurent Sagart considers the Austronesian languages to be related to theSino-Tibetan languages, and also groups theKra–Dai languages as more closely related to theMalayo-Polynesian languages.[45] Sagart argues for a north-south genetic relationship between Chinese and Austronesian, based on sound correspondences in the basic vocabulary and morphological parallels.[44] Laurent Sagart (2017) concludes that the possession of the two kinds of millets[a] in Taiwanese Austronesian languages (not just Setaria, as previously thought) places the pre-Austronesians in northeastern China, adjacent to the probable Sino-Tibetan homeland.[44] Ko et al.'s genetic research (2014) appears to support Laurent Sagart's linguistic proposal, pointing out that the exclusively Austronesian mtDNA E-haplogroup and the largely Sino-Tibetan M9a haplogroup are twin sisters, indicative of an intimate connection between the early Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan maternal gene pools, at least.[46][47] Additionally, results from Wei et al. (2017) are also in agreement with Sagart's proposal, in which their analyses show that the predominantly Austronesian Y-DNA haplogroup O3a2b*-P164(xM134) belongs to a newly defined haplogroup O3a2b2-N6 being widely distributed along the eastern coastal regions of Asia, from Korea to Vietnam.[48] Sagart also groups the Austronesian languages in a recursive-like fashion, placing Kra-Dai as a sister branch of Malayo-Polynesian. His methodology has been found to be spurious by his peers.[49][50]
Several linguists have proposed thatJapanese is genetically related to the Austronesian family, cf. Benedict (1990), Matsumoto (1975), Miller (1967).
Some other linguists think it is more plausible that Japanese is not genetically related to the Austronesian languages, but instead was influenced by an Austronesiansubstratum oradstratum.
Those who propose this scenario suggest that the Austronesian family once covered the islands to the north as well as to the south.Martine Robbeets (2017)[51] claims that Japanese genetically belongs to the "Transeurasian" (=Macro-Altaic) languages, but underwent lexical influence from "para-Austronesian", a presumed sister language ofProto-Austronesian.
The linguist Ann Kumar (2009) proposed that some Austronesians might have migrated to Japan, possibly an elite-group fromJava, and created the Japanese-hierarchical society. She also identifies 82 possible cognates between Austronesian and Japanese, however her theory remains very controversial.[52] The linguistAsha Pereltsvaig criticized Kumar's theory on several points.[53] The archaeological problem with that theory is that, contrary to the claim that there was no rice farming in China and Korea inprehistoric times, excavations have indicated that rice farming has been practiced in this area since at least 5000 BC.[53] There are also genetic problems. The pre-Yayoi Japanese lineage was not shared with Southeast Asians, but was shared with Northwest Chinese,Tibetans andCentral Asians.[53] Linguistic problems were also pointed out. Kumar did not claim that Japanese was an Austronesian language derived from proto-Javanese language, but only that it provided a superstratum language forold Japanese, based on 82 plausible Javanese-Japanese cognates, mostly related to rice farming.[53]
In 2001,Stanley Starosta proposed a new language family namedEast Asian, that includes all primary language families in the broaderEast Asia region exceptJaponic andKoreanic. This proposed family consists of two branches, Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan-Yangzian, with theKra-Dai family considered to be a branch of Austronesian, and "Yangzian" to be a new sister branch of Sino-Tibetan consisting of theAustroasiatic andHmong–Mien languages.[54] This proposal was further researched by linguists like Michael D. Larish in 2006, who also included the Japonic and Koreanic languages in the macrofamily. The proposal has since been adopted by linguists such asGeorge van Driem, albeit without the inclusion of Japonic and Koreanic.[55]
Blevins (2007) proposed that the Austronesian and theOngan protolanguage are the descendants of an Austronesian–Ongan protolanguage.[56] This view is not supported by mainstream linguists and remains very controversial. Robert Blust rejects Blevins' proposal as far-fetched and based solely on chance resemblances and methodologically flawed comparisons.[57]
^Sneddon, James Neil (2004).The Indonesian Language: Its History and Role in Modern Society. UNSW Press. p. 14.)
^Gonzalez, Andrew B. (1980).Language and Nationalism: The Philippine Experience Thus Far. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press. p. 76.ISBN9711130009.
^Robert Blust (2016).History of the Austronesian Languages. University of Hawaii at Manoa.
^abDempwolff, Otto.Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes [Comparative phonology of the Austronesian vocabularies] (3 vols). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen (Supplements to the Journal of Native Languages) 15; 17; 19 (in German). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
^Taylor, G. (1888). "A ramble through southern Formosa".The China Review.16:137–161.The Tipuns... are certainly descended from emigrants, and I have not the least doubt but that the Amias are of similar origin; only of later date, and most probably from the Mejaco Simas [that is,Miyako-jima], a group of islands lying 110 miles to the North-east.... By all accounts the old Pilam savages, who merged into the Tipuns, were the first settlers on the plain; then came the Tipuns, and a long time afterwards the Amias. The Tipuns, for some time, acknowledged the Pilam Chief as supreme, but soon absorbed both the chieftainship and the people, in fact the only trace left of them now, is a few words peculiar to the Pilam village, one of which, makan (to eat), is pure Malay. The Amias submitted themselves to the jurisdiction of the Tipuns.
^Starosta, S (1995). "A grammatical subgrouping of Formosan languages". InP. Li; Cheng-hwa Tsang; Ying-kuei Huang;Dah-an Ho & Chiu-yu Tseng (eds.).Austronesian Studies Relating to Taiwan. Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica. pp. 683–726.
^Li (2008), p. 216: "The position of Rukai is the most controversial: Tsuchida... treats it as more closely related to Tsouic languages, based on lexicostatistic evidence, while Ho... believes it to be one of the Paiwanic languages, i.e. part of my Southern group, as based on a comparison of fourteen grammatical features. In fact, Japanese anthropologists did not distinguish between Rukai, Paiwan and Puyuma in the early stage of their studies"
^Laurent Sagart (2004) The Higher Phylogeny of Austronesian and the Position of Tai-Kadai
^Laurent Sagart (2021) A more detailed early Austronesian phylogeny. Plenary talk at the 15th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics.
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