The most numerous and (after Indo-European) the most widely dispersed of the world's great language families; also called Malayo-Polynesian languages. Extending from Taiwan to Madagascar and from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia E through the Pacific Islands, it contains over 700 separate languages.
| Austronesian | ||
|---|---|---|
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Geographic distribution: |
Maritime Southeast Asia, Oceania, Madagascar, Taiwan | |
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Genetic classification: |
one of the world's major language families; although links with other families have been proposed, none of these has received mainstream acceptance | |
| Subdivisions: | Formosan (composed of many branches) Malayo-Polynesian | |
| Map showing the distribution of language families | ||
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. The family is aptly named as the vast majority of Austronesian languages are spoken on islands: only a few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages, are autochthonous to mainland Asia.
There is legitimate debate among linguists as to which language family comprises the largest number of languages. Austronesian is clearly one candidate, with 1268 (according to Ethnologue), or roughly one-fifth of the known languages of the world. The geographical span of the homelands of its languages is also among the widest, ranging from Madagascar to Easter Island. The Formosan languages of Taiwan are grouped into as many as nine first-order subgroups of Austronesian. All Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan (including its offshore Yami language) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch, sometimes called Extra-Formosan. From the standpoint of historical linguistics, the home of the Austronesian languages is Taiwan. On this island the deepest divisions in Austronesian are found, among the families of the native Formosan languages. According to Blust (1999), the Formosan languages form nine of the ten primary branches of the Austronesian language family.
At least since Sapir (1968), 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. 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. 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 (Diamond 2000). The view that linguistic evidence connects Proto-Austronesian languages to the Sino-Tibetan ones, as proposed for example by Sagart (2002), is a minority view.
Linguistic analysis of the Proto-Austronesian language stops at the western shores of Taiwan; 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.
That is, in the classification below Tai-Kadai would be a branch of the Borneo-Philippines languages.
It has also 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 instead influenced by Austronesian languages, perhaps by an Austronesian substratum. There is no genetic evidence for an especially close relationship between speakers of Austronesian languages and speakers of Japonic languages, so if there was any prehistoric interaction between speakers of proto-Austronesian and proto-Japonic languages, it is likely to have been one of simple cultural exchange without significant ethnic intermixture. In fact, genetic analyses consistently show that the Ryūkyūans of the Ryūkyū Islands between Taiwan and the main islands of Japan are genetically more dissimilar to the Taiwanese aborigines than are the Japanese people of the main Japanese islands, which suggests that if there was any interaction between proto-Austronesian and proto-Japonic, it probably occurred somewhere on the East Asian continent prior to the introduction of the Austronesian languages to Taiwan and the Japonic languages to Japan, or at least prior to the hypothetical extinction of Austronesian languages from mainland China and the introduction of Japonic to Japan.
Structure
It is very difficult to make meaningful generalizations about the languages that make up a family as rich and diverse as Austronesian. Speaking very broadly, the Austronesian languages can be divided into three groups of languages: Philippine-type languages, Indonesian-type languages and post-Indonesian type (Ross 2002).
The Austronesian 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.
Major languages
Languages with at least 4 million native speakers Javanese (76 million) Malay (40 million native, 175 million total) Sundanese (27 million) Tagalog (22 million native, ~85 million total) Cebuano (19 million native, ~30 million total) Malagasy (17 million) Madurese (14 million) Ilokano (8 million native, ~10 million total) Hiligaynon (7 million natve, ~11 million total) Minangkabau (7 million) Batak (6 million, all dialects) Bikol (4.6 million, all dialects) Banjar (4.5 million) Balinese (4 million) Official languages Indonesian Malay (23 million native, Indonesia) Tagalog (22 million native, ~85 million total, Philippines) Malaysian Malay (18 million native, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei) Malagasy (17 million, Madagascar) Tetum (800,000 speakers, East Timor) Fijian (350,000 native, 550,000 total, Fiji) Samoan (370,000, Samoa) Tahitian (120,000, French Polynesia) Tongan (108,000, Tonga) Gilbertese (100,000, Kiribati) Maori (100,000, New Zealand) Chamorro language (60,000, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) Marshallese (> 44,000, Marshall Islands) Nauruan (6,000, Nauru) Hawaiian (1000 native, 8000 competent, Hawaii)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 continua, making it difficult to recognize boundaries between branches. 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. Prominent Formosanists (linguists who specialize in Formosan languages) take issue with some of its details. Note that the first nine primary branches of Austronesian are composed entirely of Formosan languages:
Austronesian
Atayalic (Atayal, Seediq) [note alternate names for Seediq:Truku, Taroko, Sediq] East Formosan Northern (Basai-Trobiawan,Kavalan) Central (Amis) Southwest (Siraya) Puyuma Paiwan Rukai Tsouic (Tsou, Saaroa, Kanakanabu) Bunun Western Plains Central Western Plains (Taokas-Babuza, Papora-Hoanya) Thao Northwest Formosan (Saisiyat, Kulon-Pazeh) Malayo Polynesian (see below)Formosan classification II
Austronesian
Atayalic Tsou-Malayo-Polynesian Rukai-Tsouic Paiwan-Malayo-Polynesian Paiwanic linkage: Amic, Bunun, Kulunic, Paiwan, Puyuma, Saisiyat, Thaoic Malayo-Polynesian (see below)Malayo-Polynesian classification
Quotations to Wouk & Ross (2002).
Malayo-Polynesian
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