The Barito subgroup was first proposed by Hudson (1967),[1] comprising the three branchesEast Barito,West Barito, andMahakam (Barito–Mahakam). It is thought by some to be aSprachbund rather than a genuineclade. For example, Adelaar (2005) rejects Barito as a valid group despite accepting less traditional groups such asNorth Bornean andMalayo-Sumbawan.
The Malagasy language originates from the South East Borneo area (modern-day Indonesia), and it has been linked toMa'anyan within the Southeast Barito group,[2] with Malagasy incorporating numerousIndonesian-Malay andJavanese loanwords.[3][4] It is known thatMa'anyan people were brought as labourers and slaves byMalay andJavanese people in their trading fleets, which reached Madagascar by ca. 50–500 AD.[5][6][7] Based on linguistic evidence, it has been suggested that Malagasy was taken to East Africa between the 7th and 13th centuries.[8][3] It is likely that a separate Malagasy speech community had already formed in Borneo before the early Malagasy migrants settled in Madagascar.[9][10]
Blust (2006) proposes that theSama-Bajaw languages also derive from the Barito lexical region, though not from any established group,[11] andEthnologue has followed, calling the resulting group 'Greater Barito'.
Smith (2017, 2018)[12][13] proposes a Greater Barito linkage with the following branches, and considersBasap to be a sister of the Greater Barito linkage, forming aBasap–Greater Barito group.
The earlier groupingsEast Barito (comprising Smith's Southeast Barito, Central-East Barito and Northeast Barito) andWest Barito (comprising Southwest Barito and Northwest Barito) are rejected by Smith.
^Hudson, Alfred B. 1967.The Barito isolects of Borneo: A classification based on comparative reconstruction and lexicostatistics. Data Paper no. 68, Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University,
^Blust, Robert (2013).The Austronesian languages. Asia-Pacific Linguistics 008 (Revised ed.). Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University. p. 743.hdl:1885/10191.ISBN978-1-922185-07-5.OCLC851066712.
^abAdelaar, K. Alexander (2006). "Borneo as a Cross-Roads for Comparative Austronesian Linguistics". In Bellwood, Peter; Fox, James J.; Tryon, Darrell T. (eds.).The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Canberra: ANU E Press. pp. 81–102.doi:10.22459/A.09.2006.04.ISBN1-920942-85-8.JSTORj.ctt2jbjx1.7.OCLC225298720.
^There are also some Sulawesi loanwords, which Adelaar attributes to contact prior to the migration to Madagascar: See K. Alexander Adelaar, “The Indonesian Migrations to Madagascar: Making Sense of the Multidisciplinary Evidence”, in Truman Simanjuntak, Ingrid Harriet Eileen Pojoh and Muhammad Hisyam (eds.),Austronesian Diaspora and the Ethnogeneses of People in Indonesian Archipelago, (Jakarta: Indonesian Institute of Sciences, 2006), pp. 8–9.
^Dewar, Robert E.; Wright, Henry T. (1993). "The culture history of Madagascar".Journal of World Prehistory.7 (4):417–466.doi:10.1007/bf00997802.hdl:2027.42/45256.
^Kumar, Ann (2012). 'Dominion Over Palm and Pine: Early Indonesia’s Maritime Reach', in Geoff Wade (ed.),Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), 101–122.
^Adelaar, K. Alexander (2017). "Who Were the First Malagasy, and What Did They Speak?". In Acri, Andrea; Blench, Roger; Landmann, Alexandra (eds.).Spirits and Ships: Cultural Transfers in Early Monsoon Asia. Book collections on Project MUSE 28. Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. pp. 441–469.doi:10.1355/9789814762779-012.ISBN978-981-4762-75-5.OCLC1012757769.
^Blust, Robert. 2006. 'The linguistic macrohistory of the Philippines'. In Liao & Rubino, eds,Current Issues in Philippine Linguistics and Anthropology. pp 31–68.
