Malayo-Polynesian languages
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 of the island nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia, going well into the Malay peninsula. Cambodia, Vietnam and the Chinese island Hainan serve as the northwest geographic outlier. The northernmost geographical outlier does not pass beyond the north of Pattani, which is located in southern Thailand. Malagasy is spoken in the island of Madagascar located off the eastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Part of the language family shows a strong influence of Sanskrit and Arabic as the western part of the region has been a stronghold of Hinduism, Buddhism and, later, Islam.
| Malayo-Polynesian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Pacific, Madagascar |
| Linguistic classification | Austronesian
|
| Proto-language | Proto-Malayo-Polynesian |
| Subdivisions |
|
| ISO 639-5 | poz |
| Glottolog | mala1545[1] |
-en.svg.png) A map of the western sphere of Malayo-Polynesian languages, showing eight of its nine primary branches per Smith (2017). They are:
Moklenic
Philippine (not shown: Yami language spoken in Taiwan)
Western Indonesian (including Greater North Borneo languages)
Sumatran
South Sulawesi
Celebic
Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (including Oceanic languages)
The only primary branch not shown on the map is Chamorro, spoken in the Mariana Islands to the east of the Philippines. | |
 The branches of the Oceanic languages:
Admiralties and Yapese
St Matthias
Western Oceanic
Temotu
Southeast Solomons
Southern Oceanic
Micronesian
Fijian–Polynesian
The black ovals at the northwestern limit of Micronesia are the non-Oceanic languages Palauan and Chamorro. The black circles in with the green are offshore Papuan languages. | |
Two morphological characteristics of the Malayo-Polynesian languages are a system of affixation and the reduplication (repetition of all or part of a word, such as wiki-wiki) to form new words. Like other Austronesian languages they have small phonemic inventories; thus a text has few but frequent sounds. The majority also lack consonant clusters (e.g., [str] in English). Most also have only a small set of vowels, five being a common number.
Major languages
All major and official Austronesian languages belong to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup. Malayo-Polynesian languages with more than five million speakers are: Malay (including Indonesian), Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog, Malagasy, Cebuano, Madurese, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, and Minangkabau. Among the remaining more than 1,000 languages, several have national/official language status, e.g. Tongan, Samoan, Māori, Gilbertese, Fijian, Hawaiian, Palauan.
Typological characteristics
Terminology
The term "Malayo-Polynesian" was originally coined in 1841 by Franz Bopp as the name for the Austronesian language family as a whole, and until the mid-20th century (after the introduction of the term "Austronesian" by Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906), "Malayo-Polynesian" and "Austronesian" were used as synonyms. The current use of "Malayo-Polynesian" denoting the subgroup comprising all Austronesian languages outside of Taiwan was introduced in the 1970s, and has eventually become standard terminology in Austronesian studies.[2]
Classification
Relation to Austronesian languages on Taiwan
In spite of a few features shared with the Eastern Formosan languages (such as the merger of proto-Austronesian *t, *C to /t/), there is no conclusive evidence that would link the Malayo-Polynesian languages to any one of the primary branches of Austronesian on Taiwan.[2]
Internal classification
Malayo-Polynesian consists of a large number of small local language clusters, with the one exception being Oceanic, the only large group which is universally accepted; its parent language Proto-Oceanic has been reconstructed in all aspects of its structure (phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax). All other large groups within Malayo-Polynesian are controversial.
The most influential proposal for the internal subgrouping of the Malayo-Polynesian languages was made by Robert Blust who presented several papers advocating a division into two major branches, viz. Western Malayo-Polynesian and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian.[3]
Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian is widely accepted as a subgroup, although some objections have been raised against its validity as a genetic subgroup.[4][5] On the other hand, Western Malayo-Polynesian is now generally held (including by Blust himself) to be an umbrella term without genetic relevance. Taking into account the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis, the Malayo-Polynesian languages can be divided into the following subgroups (proposals for larger subgroups are given below):[6]
- Philippine (disputed)
- Batanic languages
- Northern Luzon
- Central Luzon
- Northern Mindoro
- Greater Central Philippine
- Kalamian
- South Mindanao (also called Bilic languages)
- Sangiric
- Minahasan
- Umiray Dumaget
- Manide-Inagta
- Ati
- Sama–Bajaw
- North Bornean
- Northeast Sabahan
- Southwest Sabahan
- North Sarawak
- Kayan–Murik
- Land Dayak
- Barito (including Malagasy)
- Moken–Moklen
- Malayo-Chamic
- Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands (probably including the Enggano language)
- Rejang
- Lampung
- Sundanese
- Javanese
- Madurese
- Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa
- Celebic
- South Sulawesi
- Palauan
- Chamorro
- Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
- Central Malayo-Polynesian
- Sumba–Flores
- Flores–Lembata
- Selaru
- Kei–Tanimbar
- Aru
- Central Maluku
- Timoric (also called Timor–Babar languages)
- Kowiai
- Teor-Kur
- Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
- South Halmahera–West New Guinea
- Oceanic (approximately 450 languages)
- Central Malayo-Polynesian
The position of the recently "rediscovered" Nasal language (spoken on Sumatra) is still unclear, but it shares most features of its lexicon and phonological history with either Lampung or Rejang.[7]
Malayo-Sumbawan (Adelaar 2005)
The Malayo-Sumbawan languages are a proposal by Adelaar (2005) which unites the Malayo-Chamic languages, the Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa languages, Madurese and Sundanese into a single subgroup based on phonological and lexical evidence.[8]
- Malayo-Sumbawan
- Malayo-Chamic-BSS
- Malayic
- Chamic
- Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa
- Sundanese
- Madurese
- Malayo-Chamic-BSS
Greater North Borneo (Blust 2010; Smith 2017, 2017a)
The Greater North Borneo hypothesis, which unites all languages spoken on Borneo except for the Barito languages together with the Malayo-Chamic languages, Rejang and Sundanese into a single subgroup, was first proposed by Blust (2010) and further elaborated by Smith (2017, 2017a).[9][10][11]
- Greater North Borneo
- North Borneo
- Northeast Sabah
- Southwest Sabah
- North Sarawak
- Kayan–Murik
- Land Dayak
- Malayo-Chamic
- Moken (not included by Smith (2017))
- Rejang
- Sundanese
- North Borneo
Because of the inclusion of Malayo-Chamic and Sundanese, the Greater North Borneo hypothesis is incompatible with Adelaar's Malayo-Sumbawan proposal. Consequently, Blust explicitly rejects Malayo-Sumbawan as a subgroup. The Greater North Borneo subgroup is based solely on lexical evidence.
Smith (2017)
Based on a proposal initially brought forward by Blust (2010) as an extension of the Greater North Borneo hypothesis,[9] Smith (2017) unites several Malayo-Polynesian subgroups in a "Western Indonesian" group, thus greatly reducing the number of primary branches of Malayo-Polynesian:[10]
- Western Indonesian
- Sumatran
(an extended version of Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands that also comprises Nasal; the question of internal subgrouping is left open by Smith) - Celebic
- South Sulawesi
- Palauan
- Chamorro
- Moklenic
- Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
- Philippine (linkage)
(according to Smith, "not a subgroup as much as a loosely related group of languages that may contain multiple primary branches")
Edwards (2015)[13] argues that Enggano is a primary branch of Malayo-Polynesian. However, this is disputed by Smith (2017), who considers Enggano to have undergone significant internal changes, but was once much more like the other Sumatran languages in Sumatra.
Additionally, Reid (2013)[14] argues that Inati (Ati) is also a primary branch of Malayo-Polynesian.
Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian
Zobel (2002) proposes a Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian subgroup, based on putative shared innovations in the Austronesian alignment and syntax found throughout Indonesia apart from much of Borneo and the north of Sulawesi. This subgroup comprises the languages of the Greater Sunda Islands (Malayo-Chamic, Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands, Lampung, Sundanese, Javanese, Madurese, Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa) and most of Sulawesi (Celebic, South Sulawesi), Palauan, Chamorro and the Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages.[15] This hypothesis is one of the few attempts to link certain Western Malayo-Polynesian languages with the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages in a higher intermediate clade, but has received little further scholarly attention.
References
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Malayo-Polynesian". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Blust, Robert (2013). The Austronesian Languages (revised ed.). Australian National University. hdl:1885/10191. ISBN 978-1-922185-07-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
- Blust, R. (1993). Central and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Oceanic Linguistics, 32(2), 241–293.
- Ross, Malcolm (2005), "Some current issues in Austronesian linguistics", in D.T. Tryon, ed., Comparative Austronesian Dictionary, 1, 45–120. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Donohue, M., & Grimes, C. (2008). Yet More on the Position of the Languages of Eastern Indonesia and East Timor. Oceanic Linguistics, 47(1), 114–158.
- Adelaar, K. Alexander, and Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 2005. The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar. London: Routledge.
- Anderbeck, Karl; Aprilani, Herdian (2013). The Improbable Language: Survey Report on the Nasal Language of Bengkulu, Sumatra. SIL Electronic Survey Report. SIL International.
- Adelaar, A. (2005). Malayo-Sumbawan. Oceanic Linguistics, 44(2), 357–388.
- Blust, Robert (2010). "The Greater North Borneo Hypothesis". Oceanic Linguistics. 49 (1): 44–118. doi:10.1353/ol.0.0060. JSTOR 40783586.
- Smith, Alexander D. (2017). "The Western Malayo-Polynesian Problem". Oceanic Linguistics. 56 (2): 435–490. doi:10.1353/ol.2017.0021.
- Smith, Alexander (2017a). The Languages of Borneo: A Comprehensive Classification. PhD Dissertation: University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
- Smith, Alexander D. 2018. The Barito Linkage Hypothesis, with a Note on the Position of Basap. JSEALS Volume 11.1 (2018).
- Edwards, Owen (2015). "The Position of Enggano within Austronesian." Oceanic Linguistics 54 (1): 54-109.
- Reid, Lawrence A. (2013) "Who Are the Philippine Negritos? Evidence from Language." Human Biology: Vol. 85: Iss. 1, Article 15.
- Zobel, Erik, "The position of Chamorro and Palauan in the Austronesian family tree: evidence from verb morphosyntax". In: Fay Wouk and Malcolm Ross (ed.), 2002. The history and typology of western Austronesian voice systems. Australian National University.