Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages overall possess phoneme 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 as Nemi (New Caledonia) with 43 consonants.[6]

The canonical root type in Proto-Austronesian is disyllabic with the shape CV(C)CVC (C = consonant; V = vowel), and is still found in many Austronesian languages.[7] In most languages, consonant clusters are only allowed in medial position, and often, there are restrictions for the first element of the cluster.[8] There is a common drift 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. in Nias, Malagasy and many Oceanic languages.[9]

Unlike in the languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, tonal contrasts are extremely rare in Austronesian languages.[10] Exceptional cases of tonal languages are Moklen and a few languages of the Chamic, South Halmahera–West New Guinea and New Caledonian subgroups.[11]

Most Austronesian languages are agglutinative languages with a relatively high number of affixes, and clear morpheme boundaries.[12] Most affixes are prefixes (Malay and Indonesian ber-jalan 'walk' < jalan 'road'), with a smaller number of suffixes (Tagalog titis-án 'ashtray' < títis 'ash') and infixes (Roviana t<in>avete 'work (noun)' < tavete 'work (verb)').[13]

Reduplication is commonly employed in Austronesian languages. This includes full reduplication (Malay and Indonesian anak-anak 'children' < anak 'child'; Karo Batak nipe-nipe 'caterpillar' < nipe 'snake') or partial reduplication (Agta taktakki 'legs' < takki 'leg', at-atu 'puppy' < atu 'dog').[14]

A 5 dollar banknote, Hawaii, c. 1839, using Hawaiian language

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: Philippine-type languages, Indonesian-type languages and post-Indonesian type languages:[15]

• The first group includes, besides the languages of the Philippines, the Austronesian languages of Taiwan, Sabah, North Sulawesi and Madagascar. It is primarily characterized by the retention of the original system of Philippine-type voice alternations, where typically three or four verb voices determine which semantic 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 as focus (not to be confused with the usual sense of that term in linguistics). Furthermore, the choice of voice is influenced by the definiteness of the participants. The word order has a strong tendency to be verb-initial.
• In contrast, the more innovative Indonesian-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 by applicative 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 the Batak languages, Old Javanese, Balinese, Sasak and several Sulawesi languages seem to represent an intermediate stage between these two types.[16][17]
• 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.

In addition to Malayo-Polynesian, thirteen Formosan subgroups are broadly accepted. The seminal article in the classification of Formosan—and, by extension, the top-level structure of Austronesian—is Blust (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, while Li (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 of Paiwanic, 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 called Sinasay or Sanasay (Li 2004). 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.[24]

Families of Formosan languages before Minnanese colonization, per Li (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 with Proto-Austronesian (PAN), following the model in Starosta (1995).[25] Rukai and Tsouic are seen as highly divergent, although the position of Rukai is highly controversial.[26]

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 from Pazeh. The fact that the Kradai 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.[27][28]

Sagart's resulting classification is:[29]

Austronesian (pAN ca. 5200 BP)

•   Saisiyat
•   Luilang
•   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])
  •   Favorlang–Taokas
  • Limaish
    (pAN *RaCep 'five' replaced by *lima 'hand'; *Ca~ reduplication to form the series of numerals for counting humans)
    •   Thao–Atayalic
    • 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)
      •   Siraya
      • 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'.)
          • Bunun
          • 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)
          •   Kavalanic languages
          •   Puluqish
            (innovative *sa-puluq 'ten', from *sa- 'one' + 'separate, set aside'; use of prefixes *paka- and *maka- to mark abilitative)
            • Northern: Ami–Puyuma
              (*sasay 'one'; *mukeCep 'ten' for the human and non-human series; *ukak 'bone', *kuCem 'cloud')
            • Paiwan
            • Southern Austronesian (pSAN ca. 4000 BP)
              (linker *atu 'and' > *at after *sa-puluq in numerals 11–19; lexical innovations such as *baqbaq 'mouth', *qa-sáuŋ 'canine tooth', *qi(d)zúR 'saliva', *píntu 'door', *-ŋel 'deaf')
              • Kra-Dai
              • Malayo-Polynesian

The Malayo-Polynesian languages are—among other things—characterized by certain sound changes, such as the mergers of Proto-Austronesian (PAN) *t/*C to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) *t, and PAN *n/*N to PMP *n, and the shift of PAN *S to PMP *h.[30]

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 the Philippines, Indonesia, and Melanesia. The second migration was that of the Oceanic languages into Polynesia and Micronesia.[31]

An Austro-Tai proposal linking Austronesian and the Kra-Dai languages of the southeastern continental Asian mainland was first proposed by Paul K. Benedict, and is supported by Weera Ostapirat, Roger Blench, and Laurent Sagart, based on the traditional comparative 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 that proto-Kra-Dai speakers were Austronesians who migrated to Hainan Island and back to the mainland from the northern Philippines, and that their distinctiveness results from radical restructuring following contact with Hmong–Mien and Sinitic. An extended version of Austro-Tai was hypothesized by Benedict who added the Japonic languages to the proposal as well.[32]

A link with the Austroasiatic languages in an 'Austric' phylum is based mostly on typological evidence. However, there is also morphological evidence of a connection between the conservative Nicobarese languages and Austronesian languages of the Philippines. 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.[33] 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.[33]

French linguist and Sinologist Laurent Sagart considers the Austronesian languages to be related to the Sino-Tibetan languages, and also groups the Kra–Dai languages as more closely related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages.[34] Sagart argues for a north-south genetic relationship between Chinese and Austronesian, based on sound correspondences in the basic vocabulary and morphological parallels.[33] Laurent Sagart (2017) concludes that the possession of the two kinds of millets[lower-alpha 1] in Taiwanese Austronesian languages (not just Setaria, as previously thought) places the pre-Austronesians in northeastern China, adjacent to the probable Sino-Tibetan homeland.[33] 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.[35][36] 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.[37] 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.[38][39]

Several linguists have proposed that Japanese 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 Austronesian substratum or adstratum.

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)[40] claims that Japanese genetically belongs to the "Transeurasian" (= Macro-Altaic) languages, but underwent lexical influence from "para-Austronesian", a presumed sister language of Proto-Austronesian.

The linguist Ann Kumar (2009) proposed that some Austronesians might have migrated to Japan, possibly an elite-group from Java, and created the Japanese-hierarchical society. She also identifies 82 possible cognates between Austronesian and Japanese, however her theory remains very controversial.[41] The linguist Asha Pereltsvaig criticized Kumar's theory on several points.[42] The archaeological problem with that theory is that, contrary to the claim that there was no rice farming in China and Korea in prehistoric times, it excavated indicating that rice farming has been practiced in this area since at least 5000 BC.[42] There are also genetic problems. The pre-Yayoi Japanese lineage was not shared with Southeast Asians, but was shared with Northwest Chinese, Tibetans and Central Asians.[42] 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 for old Japanese, based on 82 plausible Javanese-Japanese cognates, mostly related to rice farming.[42]

In 2001, Stanley Starosta proposed a new language family named East Asian, that includes all primary language families in the broader East Asia region except Japonic and Koreanic. This proposed family consists of two branches, Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan-Yangzian, with the Kra-Dai family considered to be a branch of Austronesian, and "Yangzian" to be a new sister branch of Sino-Tibetan consisting of the Austroasiatic and Hmong-Mien languages.[43] This proposal was further researched on by linguists such as 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 as George van Driem, albeit without the inclusion of Japonic and Koreanic.[44]

Blevins (2007) proposed that the Austronesian and the Ongan protolanguage are the descendants of an Austronesian–Ongan protolanguage.[45] But 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.[46]