Austronesian languages

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The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. Malagasy, spoken on Madagascar, is a geographic outlier. Austronesian has a dozen primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively on Taiwan and nearby islands (the Formosan languages, which are unrelated to Chinese). All Austronesian languages spoken outside of Taiwan, with the exception of Yami, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch, sometimes called Extra-Formosan.

Austronesian is one of the largest language families in the world, both in terms of number of languages (1244 according to Ethnologue) and in terms of the geographical extent of the homelands of its languages (from Madagascar to Easter Island). It is also on par with Indoeuropean and Uralic as one of the best developed and most secure language family proposals.

The name Austronesian comes from the Latin austrālis "southern" plus the Greek nêsos "island".

Comparative reconstruction, confirmed by archaeology and Chinese records, suggests that the homeland of the linguistic ancestors of these languages was in eastern to south-eastern China, from Shandong through to Fujian, from where they migrated to the island of Taiwan several millennia ago. On this island the deepest divisions in Austronesian are found, among the families of the native Formosan languages; none of the mainland languages have survived. (Modern mainland languages such as Cham are more recent migrants.)

Contents

Distant relations

Genealogical links have been proposed between Austronesian and the families of Southeast Asia in what is generally called an Austric phylum. However, the only one of these proposals that conforms to the comparative method is the "Austro-Tai" hypothesis, which links Austronesian to the Tai-Kadai languages.

Roger Blench made the comment,

Ostapirat [in press] assumes a simple model of a primary split [in Austro-Tai] with Daic [Tai-Kadai] being the Austronesians who stayed at home. But this seems unlikely. Daic looks like a branch of proto-Philippines and does not share in the complexities of Formosan. It may be better to think of proto-Daic speakers migrating back across from the northern Philippines to the region of Hainan island; hence the distinctiveness of Hlai and Be, and Daic the result of radical restructuring following contact with Miao-Yao and Sinitic.

However, none of these wider proposals have gained general acceptance in the linguistic community.

It has been proposed that Japanese may be a distant relative of the Austronesian language family. The evidence for this is slight, and many linguists think it is more likely that Japanese was only influenced by Austronesian languages. Those who propose this scenario suggest that the Austronesian family once covered the islands to the north of Formosa as well as to the south.

Structure

The Malayo-Polynesian languages tend to use reduplication (repetition of all or part of a word, such as wiki-wiki), and, like many East and Southeast Asian languages, have highly restrictive phonotactics, with small numbers of phonemes and predominantly consonant-vowel syllables.

Languages

Classification

The internal structure of the Austronesian languages is difficult to work out, as the family consists of many very similar and very closely related languages with large numbers of dialect continuums, making it difficult to recognize boundaries between branches. In even the best classifications available today, many of the groups in the Philippines and Indonesia are geographic conveniences rather than reflections of relatedness. However, it is clear that the greatest genealogical diversity is found among the Formosan languages of Taiwan, and the least diversity among the islands of the Pacific, supporting a dispersal of the family from Taiwan or mainland China. Below is a consensus opinion of Malayo-Polynesian, with the Western Malayo-Polynesian classification based on Wouk & Ross (2002). The Formosan languages are listed both with and without subgrouping.

Formosan classification I

Austronesian

?  Ketagalan (unclassified)

Formosan classification II

Austronesian

  • Atayalic
  • "Tsou-Malayo-Polynesian"
    • Tsouic (includes Rukai)
    • "Paiwan-Malayo-Polynesian"
      • Paiwanic (includes Amis, Bunun)
      • Malayo-Polynesian (see below)

Consensus Malayo-Polynesian classification (Wouk & Ross 2002)

Malayo-Polynesian

References

Fay Wouk and Malcolm Ross (ed.), The history and typology of western Austronesian voice systems, Australian National University, 2002.

External links

Bibliography

  • Peter Bellwood (July 1991). The Austronesian Dispersal and the Origin of Languages. Scientific American 265: 88-93.
  • {{{Author|}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1| (1995)}}{{{{{Year|}}}}}}|show1|.}} {{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|[{{{URL}}}}} The Austronesians: Historical and comparative perspectives{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|]}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|, {{{Pages}}}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|Show1|, Department of Anthropology, Australian National University}}. {{{ID|}}}
  • Peter Bellwood (1998). Taiwan and the Prehistory of the Austronesians-speaking Peoples. Review of Archaeology 18: 39–48.
  • Peter Bellwood & Alicia Sanchez-Mazas (June 2005). Human Migrations in Continental East Asia and Taiwan: Genetic, Linguistic, and Archaeological Evidence. Current Anthropology 46:3: 480-485.
  • David Blundell (). Austronesian Disperal. Newsletter of Chinese Ethnology 35: 1-26.
  • Robert Blust (1985). The Austronesian Homeland: A Linguistic Perspective. Asian Perspectives 20: 46-67.
  • {{{Author|}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1| (2002)}}{{{{{PublishYear|}}}}}}|show1|. }}"Asia Pacific Research".{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1| ({{{Format}}})}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|Reading the Full Picture.}} {{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|Canberra, Australia: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies.}} Accessed on July 28, 2005.
  • "Homepage of linguist Dr. Lawrence Reid." Accessed July 28, 2005.
  • Malcolm Ross & Andrew Pawley (1993). Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history. Annual Review of Anthropology 22: 425-459.
  • John Edward Terrell (Dec. 2004). Introduction: 'Austronesia' and the great Austronesian migration. World Archaeology 36:4: 586-591.
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