AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES

formerly called Malayo-polynesian, family of languages spoken in most of the Indonesian Archipelago; all of the Philippines, Madagascar, and the island groups of the Central and South Pacific (except for Australia and much of New Guinea); much of Malaysia; and scattered areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. Before the European colonial expansions of the past five centuries, the Austronesian language family had the widest territorial extent of any on Earth, reaching from Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa to Easter Island some 2,200 miles (3,500 km) west of Chile. Estimates of the number of Austronesian languages reach as high as 1,200, making it arguably the world's largest language family in terms of the number of its languages. The vast majority of speakers today are in Indonesia and the Philippines, the island of Java containing somewhat more than half. The family includes Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and Minangkabau, which are spoken in western Indonesia; and Malay, which is used in Malaysia as well. Other important members include Pilipino (Tagalog), Cebuano, and Ilokano in the Philippines and Malagasy in Madagascar. By contrast, many of the Austronesian languages used on the islands of Melanesia and Polynesia have only a few hundred speakers each. The Chamic languages are used by a few hundred thousand speakers in mainland Southeast Asia and on Hainan Island of China. Systematic comparative work on the Austronesian languages began during the 1860s, and the phonology of its prehistoric ancestor, Proto-Austronesian, was reconstructed by the German linguist Otto Dempwolff in the 1930s. Proto-Austronesian probably was spoken about 4000 BC on or near the island of Taiwan. It became diversified locally, giving rise to the hundreds of related languages that now constitute the Austronesian family. Although many of Proto-Austronesian's descendants have been separated for millennia, much common vocabulary has been preserved in widely scattered languages. Through the efforts of many scholars, Austronesian is today one of the best studied of all large language families. formerly called Malayo-Polynesian languages family of languages spoken in most of the Indonesian Archipelago; all of the Philippines, Madagascar, and the island groups of the Central and South Pacific (except for Australia and much of New Guinea); much of Malaysia; and scattered areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. In terms of the number of its languages and of their geographic spread, the Austronesian language family is among the world's largest. Additional reading A classic descriptive study is Hermanus Neubronner van der Tuuk, A Grammar of Toba Batak (1971; originally published in Dutch, 2 vol., 186467). Renward Brandstetter, An Introduction to Indonesian Linguistics, trans. by C.O. Blagden (1916), provides a still readable and informative overview of the Austronesian languages of island Southeast Asia and introduces the concept of the submorphemic element he called a Wurzel or root. The foundation for all subsequent comparative work is Otto Dempwolff, Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes, 3 vol. (193438, reprinted 1969); neither of the English translations of this work is to be trusted. The major modifications of Dempwolff's results appear in Isidore Dyen, The Proto-Malayo-Polynesian Laryngeals (1953); Otto C. Dahl, Proto-Austronesian, 2nd rev. ed. (1977); Robert A. Blust, The Proto-Oceanic Palatals (1978); and M.D. Ross, Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia (1988), and The Sound of Proto-Austronesian: An Outsider's View of the Formosan Evidence, Oceanic Linguistics, 31(1):2364 (Summer 1992). The most important discussions of the linguistic position of Malagasy are Otto C. Dahl, Malgache et Maanjan: un comparaison linguistique (1951); and K.A. Adellar, Malay Influence on Malagasy: Linguistic and Culture-Historical Implications, Oceanic Linguistics, 28(1):146 (Summer 1989). A.K. Pawley, Polynesian Languages: A Subgrouping Based on Shared Innovations in Morphology, The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 75:3964 (1966), laid the foundations for the internal subgrouping of Polynesian languages. Brandstetter's theory of the root is examined in greater detail in Robert A. Blust, Austronesian Root Theory: An Essay on the Limits of Morphology (1988). Linguistic reconstruction in a number of semantic fields is explored in A.K. Pawley and M.D. Ross (eds.), Austronesian Terminologies: Continuity and Change (1994); and contact-induced change in Austronesian languages is treated at length in Tom Dutton and Darrell Tryon (eds.), Language Contact and Change in the Austronesian World (1994). Two major Festschriften with numerous papers on Austronesian languages are Donald C. Laycock and Werner Winter (eds.), A World of Language (1987); and Robert A. Blust (ed.), Currents in Pacific Linguistics (1991). Darrell T. Tryon (ed.), Comparative Austronesian Dictionary: An Introduction to Austronesian Studies, 4 vol. (1995), although misnamed, contains the most complete list of Austronesian languages together with many useful sketches of phonology, morphology, and grammar. The most important studies on the possible external relationships of Austronesian languages are Paul K. Benedict, Austro-Thai Language and Culture, with a Glossary of Roots (1975); and Lawrence A. Reid, Morphological Evidence for Austric, Oceanic Linguistics, 33(2):323344 (December 1994). Robert Andrew Blust