Languages Austronésiennes

The languages austronésiennes (YEAR) are spoken in Southeast Asia and in the Pacific Ocean, with Madagascar (geographically with the variation) and with Taiwan. They include/understand two large branches, that of the Langues formosanes, which consist in fact in 4 branches, and that of the Austronesian Langues (MP). As the first were tardily classified, for a long time two terms, YEAR and MP, could be confused, which is not any more the case.

Certain linguists, but their theories do not adopt the method traditional comparist, tend to bring the austronésienne family to that of the Langues tai-kadai within a super-family or of a group or by allotting a filiation between the languages formosanes and closer to the languages kadai of the southern of China which would have evolved/moved in another environment (languages to which belong in particular, but they are languages much more recent, the Thai and the lao), while being based on a bottom of common vocabulary relating to the pronouns, with the numeral ones, to agriculture.

Thus the linguist Stanley Starosta, who endeavoured to rebuild a grammar austronésienne, being based at the same time on archeology and linguistics, advanced little before his death in 2003 the assumption that all linguistic families of East Asia: austroasiatic, miao-yao, austronésienne, sino-Tibetan and tai-kadai, were genetically related.

The name " austronésien" from the Greek comes Latin ized austronesia , meaning “islands of the south”. As of 1706, the philologist of the United Provinces Hadrian Reland had underlined the resemblances between the spoken language with Futuna, the Malayan and the Malgache (starting from the glossary collected in 1616 by the navigator Jacob the Mayor in Futuna). The existence of a linguistic family which will be later called austronésienne is definitively established by Lorenzo Hervás there Panduro in 1784 ( Catalogo delle Lingue ). In 1834, this family, extended to the Easter Island, is baptized Austronesian by the linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt in Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java (1836-39). The statute of the languages mélanésiennes (black islands) was treated separately however a long time. Tough prejudice, due to racial reasons , in spite of the luminous work of the linguist Otto Dempwolff (1920), of eminent linguists continued to deny any relationship austronésienne to them, however some (and from now on unanimously recognized). The hearth of origin of all these languages seems to be the south-eastern end of China of the South or Formosa (Taiwan) where populations austronésiennes live still today.

Typologiquement, these languages are characterized by two morphological processes which allow the formation of derived words and can be combined:

  • the affixation, by the addition of prefixes, suffixes, infix and circumfixes (combination of a prefix and a suffix) at a base,

  • the redoubling,

like by phonological systems relatively simple (few consonants and vowels, little even at all of groups of consonants difficult to pronounce, stated assonances, etc).

See also: Languages formosanes, Austronesian Languages

List

In seeing the list in this other article.

Languages currently the most spoken

The linguists estimate that in lower part of a million speakers, a language is vulnerable.

Classification

Since more than one century and the first work of Otto Dempwolff on what one called then the Austronesian languages (1) , the specialists in comparative literature did not have of cease to classify these languages, to seek their genealogical screen, to even rebuild hypothetical a proto-austronésien.

So on these questions research advances and the broad outlines are about known, of many points remain outstanding. The dispersion even of the covered geographical surface, the big number of these languages (more than 1.200 according to Tryon and of which little was seriously studied), make that the structure interns languages austronésiennes remains difficult to elucidate as soon as one enters in detail.

It is about certain from now on that it is in the languages Aborigènes of Taiwan (Langues formosanes) that the greatest genealogical differences are, whereas those are less more one moves away from there (there is a substantial homogeneity of the Polynesian Langues). This lets suppose that immediate Taiwan, or its surroundings, was undoubtedly the starting hearth from which Austronésiens were spread on most of the southern hemisphere, which confirms of the remainder today genetic research. Hereafter is deferred as example a classification presented like a consensus and inspired inter alia work of Blust, Biggs, Pawley, Tryon, Ross,… and published in 2002 pennies the title, The history and typology off western Austronesian voice systems , Australian National University, 2002.)

((1) Considered today as a branch of the family of the languages austronésiennes since the discovery of their family ties with the languages aboriginals of Taiwan by Blust at the end of the years 1970

(the names of certain languages are written according to their English C-W communication when the francized form is not of use - between brackets the usual abbreviations)

Austronésien

  • Atayal ic (formosan)
  • " Tsou - MP"
    • Tsouic (formosan, includes/understands the Rukai)
    • " Paiwan-MP"
      • Paiwanic (formosan, includes/understands the Ami)
      • Malayo-polynésien **** Outer Hesperonesian Outer Western Malayo-Polynesian (Borneo and Filipino: many small groups of languages, whose principal ones are the Ilokano, kapampangan, the Tagalog, Cebuano, the Malgache)
        • Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian (possible dispersion starting from Célèbes)
          • Sunda-Sulawesi Inner Western Malayo-Polynesian (Western Indonesia: Javanese, Sundanais, Malayan (Malaysian/Indonésien), cham (Vietnam), Balinese, Bugis (Célèbes), Chamorro (Guam), Paluan (Palaos))
          • Exchange-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP)
            • Central Malayo-Polynesian (around the Mer of Bandaged: languages of Timor, Sumba, Flora and of the Moluques)
            • Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (EMP) “'' mélanésien ''”, but which includes/understands also the '' micronésien '' and the Polynesian
              • Halmahera-Geelvink Bay (languages of Halmahera and the Irian Jaya Western, most important being buli and Biak)
              • Oceanic (oceanic) (Oc)

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