Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages make up a linguistic family made up of more than 1,250 languages that are distributed among the island of Madagascar, the Malay Archipelago, and Oceania. The name of the family derives from the Greek term austronesia, 'southern islands'.

The peoples who speak these languages are often called Austronesian peoples. The Urheimat of this great family is considered to be in Taiwan, an island that was invaded by Chinese groups who imposed themselves on the native peoples, so that most of the Formosan languages are currently in serious condition. Danger of extinction. On the contrary, there are other of these languages that enjoy excellent health and are among those with the largest number of speakers in the world, such is the case of Malay, Indonesian, Javanese and Tagalog.

Distribution and history

Discovery

The discovery of the family is ancient and predates that of the Indo-European languages (clearly stated only in the late 18th century and scientifically established from the 19th century). Since 1706, the linguist Hadrian Reland had already underlined the similarity between the language spoken in Futuna, Malay and Malagasy, from the glossary collected by Jacob Le Maire in Futuna. The existence of a family of languages, which with successive extensions and clarifications is currently called Austronesian, is definitively recognized in Catalogo delle Lingue by Lorenzo Hervás and Panduro in 1784. In 1834, the family, extended to the Easter Island is named Malayo-Polynesia by Wilhelm von Humboldt in Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java (1836-1839). They were also called Oceanic languages, recognizing since 1896 a common origin and a relationship even with the Formosan languages, classifying them traditionally in Indonesian, Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian languages.

In other works, the Melanesian languages were treated separately for a long time, probably because of racial prejudice, despite the work of the linguist Otto Dempwolff (1920).

Geographic distribution

The Austronesian family is one of the most geographically extensive, covering three continents: Asia, Oceania and Africa. It has more than 1000 languages, most of them in the Pacific islands. The last territories to be reached by Austronesian expansion were probably Hawaii, Easter Island in the 5th century, and New Zealand around the 9th century.

Origin and expansion

Comparative linguistics, supported by archaeological findings, locates the origin of the family's linguistic ancestors in southeastern present-day China, from where they migrated to Taiwan.

The origin is related to the early settlement of Taiwan during the ice age, which was attached to the mainland. As the sea level rose about 10,000 years ago, it emerged as an island, resulting in the isolation of the aboriginal population of Taiwan.

The Austronesian languages are the only family whose main feature has been maritime expansion. For about 5,000 years their speakers have spread according to the following simplified scheme:

Classification

The internal structure of the Austronesian family is complex, as it is made up of a large number of closely related languages with a large number of dialect continuums, which makes it difficult to establish the boundaries between each group that makes up the family. Despite this, it is clear that the greatest phylogenetic diversity is found among the Formosan languages and is less among the languages spoken in the Pacific islands. This situation supports the hypothesis that the origin of this family is on the island of Formosa or China.

The seminal work on the classification of Formosan languages and the macrostructure of the Austronesian family is that of Blust (1999). Some specialists in the Formosan languages take this work with some reservations about the details, but it is usually held as a reference for linguistic analysis. Malayo-Polynesian languages are frequently placed within the eastern sane Formo group in Blust's work, due to the retention of the Proto-Austronesian phonemes /*t/ and /*n/, the change of /*s/ to /h/, and some lexical issues, such as the use of *lima 'five' which is not found in other Formosan languages.

It is likely that there were two large migrations of Austronesian-speaking peoples that covered a large area in a relatively short time, resulting in a diversification of multiple local groups with a small large-scale structure. The first of these migrations would correspond to the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which took place over the Philippines, Indonesia and Polynesia. The other would correspond to the oceanic languages, scattered over Melanesia and Micronesia (Greenhill, Blust and Gray, 2008).

In addition to the Malayo-Polynesian group, there is a broad consensus on the existence of thirty Formosan families. The academic debate is focused above all on the relationships between these groups.

Classification

Geographical distribution of Austrian languages.

The classification of the Austronesian language family, made up of more than a thousand languages, is extremely complex. Below is a very general overview, of the main branches, of the classification offered in the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database (University of Auckland).

Austronesian languages

I.Foreign languages

II. Malaysian and Polynesian languages

1. Philippine languages

2. Bornean languages

3. Malay-nuclear languages

a. Malay-sumbawan languages

b. Celebo-polysy languages

I. Celebrities (Célebes)

ii. Malay-Central Polynesian Languages

Halmahera-Cenderawasih languages

Ocean languages

Micronnesian languages

Polynesian languages

Relationship with other families

Some linguists believe that the Tai-Kadai family should be placed within an expanded version of the Austronesian family, particularly the similarities to the Kra languages. Others favor a relationship with the Sino-Tibetan family. And finally others have proposed a relationship with the Austroasiatic languages, forming an Austrian superfamily. None of these proposals has gained acceptance from the scientific community.

Linguistic description

The Malayo-Polynesian languages use reduplication (a morphological procedure consisting of the repetition of all or part of a word) to express the plural, and all Austronesian languages have a low first-order entropy, that is, the texts are quite repetitive in terms of the frequency of sounds. Most do not have consonant clusters (like [str] or [mpl]) and have a small number of vowels, five being most common.

Phonology

The first reconstruction of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian was attempted by Dempwolf in 1934 although his work ignores the Formosan languages which appear to retain archaisms and phonological distinctions that have been lost in the rest of the family. Dyen's work (1965) considers the Formosan languages and adds some phonemic distinctions by introducing the phonemes /C, Z, D, T, L, R/ whose exact phonetic value remained difficult to reconstruct and has been the source of not a few revisions. More recently, Malcolm Ross examines the various post-Dyen attempts and proposes the following phonological inventory:

	bilabial	dental/alveolar	back	palatal	ensure that	uvular	glotal
Nose	♪	♪			*
oclusive	*p, *b	♪t, d1	*D3	♪	♪k, ♪	♪	*
African		♪ C, d2
cold		♪	*S		*j [ ]		♪
approximate	♪			♪
liquid		♪	♪			♪

Capitalized signs are justified on the basis of regular phonetic correspondences between cognates, although their phonetic interpretation is somewhat insecure. Ross proposes as probable the following interpretations for those sounds:

• /*C/ takes place in some foreign languages /č/ (Atayal), a /¢/ (Tsou, Rukai, Paiwan) or /t/ (Bunun, Amis); although in proto-malayo-polinesio it systematically gives /*t/as in that branch the original contrast between /*C/ and /*t/. Phonetically Ross conjecture that /*C/ would have as the most likely alophone [ ¢ ] (AFI=[]]or []].
• /*D₁/ gives in formosane various results /d/ (Atayal, Bunun, Tsou) /// (Tsou, Rukai, Paiwan) and even /s// (Thao), in proto-malayo-polinesio regularly /*d/ or /*r/ (depending on position). Fonetically Ross conjectures that this fonema could have as the main alophone [d].
• /*D₂/ in most of the formosan gets confused with /*D₁/, although they remain differentiated in tsou and rukai. In proto-malayo-polinesio da /*d/ so the difference stays alone in some positions. Fonetically Ross conjectures that this fonema could have as the main alophone []] or []].
• /*D₃/ part of the formosan gets confused with /*D₂/ (atayal, bunun, tsou), although they remain differentiated in thao and paiwan. In proto-malayo-polinesio converges with the /*D result₂♪ and da /*d/. Fonetically Ross conjectures that this fonema could have as the main alophone []].
• /*Z/ much of the formosan gets confused with /*D₁/, although they remain differentiated in tsou, rukai, puyuma and paiwan. In proto-malayo-polinesio regularly /*// as in Pakistan. Fonetically Ross conjectures that this fonema could have as the main alophone []].
• /*S/ in most of the formosan is distinguished from /*S/-/*s/, the opposition takes place in each group in different ways (/š/-/h/ (atalyal) /š/-/t// (thao), /s/-/č/ (bunun), /s/-/ (amis), /s/-/θ/ (rukai), /s/-/t/ (paiwan)). In proto-malayo-polinesio da /*h/. Fonetically Ross attributes him as probable alophones []] or [CHUCKLES].
• /*L/ in most of the formosan differs from /*l/ having in some french allophone languages. In proto-malayo-polinesio generally /*l/ initial and /*n/ Inside. Ross conjecture like allophones [l] or []], while the rebuilt protoaustronomy fonema /*l/ Could be. []] or []].
• /*R/ presents as a result rhotic consonants and occasionally watches, for that reason it is interpreted as a later rhotic. Ross conjecture that could be the uvular []].
• /*j/ interpreted earlier as a postalveolar or coronal consonant, has some results suggesting that it is to watch or have coarticulation to watch, so Ross conjecture that could be articulated [ or [^(y)].

The reconstructed vowel inventory is:

	previous	central	post
closed	i		u
average		♫
open		a

The phoneme /ə/ appears in many reconstructions simply as e.

Lexical comparison

The reconstructed numerals for different branches of Austronesian languages are:

GLOSA	PROTO- PUYUMA	PROTO- RUKAI	PROTO- TSOU	Nuclear Austrones				PROTO-AUSTRONESIO
				PROTO- ATALY	PROTO- BUNUM	PROTO- KAVALÁNICO	PROTO-MALAYO-POLINESIO
1	*sa	♪	♪ Canni ♪		*tas.	*issa-	♪ ♪	♪ ♪
2	♪	♪	*řúśa	*dusa	♪	*	*duha	*duśa
3	♪	♪too ♪	♪	*těru	♪	♪ you	♪	*tambiuu
4	*pat	*s	*ś/2009/	*sambipat	*paat	*sambipat	♪	*ś/2009/pat
5	♪	♪	♪ Lyma	*rima bomb	*hima army	♪	*	*
6	* ISSNm	* ISSN	* ISSN	*ma-tŭru	*(coina)noom	* Apostles	* ISSNm	* ISSNm
7	♪	♪	♪	*ma-pitu Lodge	*pitu army	♪	♪	♪
8	♪wauu	♪	♪	*ma-sambipat	*vautical	♪wauu	♪walu	♪walu
9	♪ iwa	*baḥat	*θíwa		*siva	♪ Siwa	♪ Siwa	*śiwa
10	*pu *u coin	♪ pooko	*morea *		*machine		*-puluq	*sa-puluq

In the table above, /s/-/ś/ has been used to transcribe the pair of sibilants that other authors transcribe as /s/-/S/.