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An Account of Austronesian. Lisa J. Erickson Linguistics 450 Cynthia Hallen 28 February 2000. The Austronesian, or Malayo-Polynesian language family, which is comprised of between 800 and 1200 languages, is thought to be the most widespread and the second largest language phyla in the world. Some 270 million people are speakers of Austronesian ...
- Overview
- Major subgroups
Given the size of the Austronesian family, the subgrouping of the languages is a matter of some importance, bearing on, among other things, the determination of the Austronesian homeland. Until the 1930s the branches of Austronesian were customarily identified with purely geographic labels: Indonesian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian. The inadequacy of this subdivision is apparent; Polynesian, for example, is known to encompass not only the languages of Polynesia but also Polynesian Outlier languages of both Melanesia and Micronesia. Moreover, each of the other geographically defined groups turns out to be a heterogeneous collection of languages that belong to more than one linguistically defined group.
The first breakthrough in the subgrouping of the Austronesian languages was made by Dempwolff in the second volume of his distinguished trilogy, where he concluded that the languages of Polynesia and most of those of Melanesia and Micronesia share a number of innovative features that are most plausibly attributed to changes in a single protolanguage, which he named Urmelanesisch (Proto-Melanesian) and which is known today as Proto-Oceanic. The Oceanic hypothesis maintains that all Austronesian languages east of a line that runs through Indonesian New Guinea at approximately 138° E longitude—except for Palauan and Chamorro of western Micronesia—are descended from a single protolanguage spoken many generations after the initial breakup of Proto-Austronesian itself.
Given the size of the Austronesian family, the subgrouping of the languages is a matter of some importance, bearing on, among other things, the determination of the Austronesian homeland. Until the 1930s the branches of Austronesian were customarily identified with purely geographic labels: Indonesian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian. The inadequacy of this subdivision is apparent; Polynesian, for example, is known to encompass not only the languages of Polynesia but also Polynesian Outlier languages of both Melanesia and Micronesia. Moreover, each of the other geographically defined groups turns out to be a heterogeneous collection of languages that belong to more than one linguistically defined group.
The first breakthrough in the subgrouping of the Austronesian languages was made by Dempwolff in the second volume of his distinguished trilogy, where he concluded that the languages of Polynesia and most of those of Melanesia and Micronesia share a number of innovative features that are most plausibly attributed to changes in a single protolanguage, which he named Urmelanesisch (Proto-Melanesian) and which is known today as Proto-Oceanic. The Oceanic hypothesis maintains that all Austronesian languages east of a line that runs through Indonesian New Guinea at approximately 138° E longitude—except for Palauan and Chamorro of western Micronesia—are descended from a single protolanguage spoken many generations after the initial breakup of Proto-Austronesian itself.
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers.The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippine Archipelago) and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia in the areas near the Malay Peninsula ...
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Aug 16, 2022 · This hypothesis suggests the East Formosan people – including the Amis, the largest Indigenous group of Taiwan – are most closely related to Malayo-Polynesian, including Māori, in the...
- Victoria Chen
May 5, 2024 · The Malays speak various dialects belonging to the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) family of languages. The Malays were once probably a people of coastal Borneo who expanded into Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula as a result of their trading and seafaring way of life.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
May 24, 2024 · Malayo-Polynesian languages. Key People: Leonard Bloomfield. Related Topics: Indonesian languages. Oceanic languages. Formosan languages. South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages. Central Malayo-Polynesian languages. (Show more) On the Web: Academia - The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar: a historical perspective 2005 (May 24, 2024)
Western Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by over 200 million people and include Malagasy, the language of 13 million people on the island of Madagascar; Malay, native to 28 million in Malaysia and the island of Sumatra, in Indonesia; Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia [Indonesian language], which is based on the Malay language and is spoken ...
