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105-465: Central Dusun , also known as Bunduliwan (Dusun: Boros Dusun ), is an Austronesian language and one of the more widespread languages spoken by the Dusun (including Kadazan ) peoples of Sabah , Malaysia . What is termed as Central Dusun (or simply Dusun ) and Coastal Kadazan (or simply Kadazan ) are deemed to be highly mutually intelligible to one other; many consider these to be part of

210-563: A where the other languages also have a , and French k occurs elsewhere, the difference is caused by different environments (being before a conditions the change), and the sets are complementary. They can, therefore, be assumed to reflect a single proto-phoneme (in this case *k , spelled ⟨c⟩ in Latin ). The original Latin words are corpus , crudus , catena and captiare , all with an initial k . If more evidence along those lines were given, one might conclude that an alteration of

315-485: A "regular correspondence" between k in Hawaiian and t in the other Polynesian languages. Similarly, a regular correspondence can be seen between Hawaiian and Rapanui h , Tongan and Samoan f , Maori ɸ , and Rarotongan ʔ . Mere phonetic similarity, as between English day and Latin dies (both with the same meaning), has no probative value. English initial d- does not regularly match Latin d- since

420-413: 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

525-431: A different cluster must be reconstructed for each set. His reconstructions were, respectively, *hk , *xk , *čk (= [t͡ʃk] ), *šk (= [ʃk] ), and çk (in which ' x ' and ' ç ' are arbitrary symbols, rather than attempts to guess the phonetic value of the proto-phonemes). Typology assists in deciding what reconstruction best fits the data. For example, the voicing of voiceless stops between vowels

630-597: A few languages of the Chamic , South Halmahera–West New Guinea and New Caledonian subgroups do show lexical tone. Most Austronesian languages are agglutinative languages with a relatively high number of affixes , and clear morpheme boundaries. 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)'). Reduplication

735-417: A large set of English and Latin non-borrowed cognates cannot be assembled such that English d repeatedly and consistently corresponds to Latin d at the beginning of a word, and whatever sporadic matches can be observed are due either to chance (as in the above example) or to borrowing (for example, Latin diabolus and English devil , both ultimately of Greek origin ). However, English and Latin exhibit

840-544: 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. Sagart's resulting classification is: The Malayo-Polynesian languages are—among other things—characterized by certain sound changes, such as

945-406: A linguist might attempt to investigate the possibilities that either what was earlier reconstructed as *b is in fact *m or that the *n and *ŋ are in fact *d and *g . Even a symmetrical system can be typologically suspicious. For example, here is the traditional Proto-Indo-European stop inventory: An earlier voiceless aspirated row was removed on grounds of insufficient evidence. Since

1050-476: A long history of written attestation. This makes reconstructing earlier stages—up to distant Proto-Austronesian—all the more remarkable. The oldest inscription in the Cham language , the Đông Yên Châu inscription dated to c.  350 AD, is the first attestation of any Austronesian language. The Austronesian languages overall possess phoneme inventories which are smaller than the world average. Around 90% of

1155-541: A more recent spread of English in North America. While some scholars suspect that the number of principal branches among the Formosan languages may be somewhat less than Blust's estimate of nine (e.g. Li 2006 ), there is little contention among linguists with this analysis and the resulting view of the origin and direction of the migration. For a recent dissenting analysis, see Peiros (2004) . The protohistory of

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1260-558: 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. This proposal

1365-491: A non-distinctive quality of both. That example of the application of linguistic typology to linguistic reconstruction has become known as the glottalic theory . It has a large number of proponents but is not generally accepted. The reconstruction of proto-sounds logically precedes the reconstruction of grammatical morphemes (word-forming affixes and inflectional endings), patterns of declension and conjugation and so on. The full reconstruction of an unrecorded protolanguage

1470-498: A population of related dialect communities living in scattered coastal settlements. Linguistic analysis of the Proto-Austronesian language stops at the western shores of Taiwan; any related mainland language(s) have not survived. The only exceptions, the Chamic languages , derive from more recent migration to the mainland. However, according to Ostapirat's interpretation of the seriously discussed Austro-Tai hypothesis,

1575-531: A reconstruction of the Proto-Austronesian lexicon. The term Austronesian was coined (as German austronesisch ) by Wilhelm Schmidt , deriving it from Latin auster "south" and Ancient Greek νῆσος ( nêsos "island"). Most Austronesian languages are spoken by island dwellers. Only a few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages , are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but

1680-408: A regular correspondence of t-  : d- (in which "A : B" means "A corresponds to B"), as in the following examples: If there are many regular correspondence sets of this kind (the more, the better), a common origin becomes a virtual certainty, particularly if some of the correspondences are non-trivial or unusual. During the late 18th to late 19th century, two major developments improved

1785-407: A rigorous methodology for historical linguistic comparisons and proposed the existence of an Indo-European proto-language, which he called "Scythian", unrelated to Hebrew but ancestral to Germanic, Greek, Romance, Persian, Sanskrit, Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. The Scythian theory was further developed by Andreas Jäger (1686) and William Wotton (1713), who made early forays to reconstruct

1890-414: A single first-order branch encompassing all Austronesian languages spoken outside of Taiwan, viz. Malayo-Polynesian . The relationships of the Formosan languages to each other and the internal structure of Malayo-Polynesian continue to be debated. In addition to Malayo-Polynesian , thirteen Formosan subgroups are broadly accepted. The seminal article in the classification of Formosan—and, by extension,

1995-496: A single language. The language was among many other Sabahan vernacular languages suppressed under Mustapha Harun 's assimilationist enforcement of Bahasa Malaysia across the state. Under the efforts of the Kadazandusun Cultural Association Sabah , in 1995, the central Bundu-Liwan dialect was selected to serve as the basis for a standardised "Kadazandusun" language. This dialect, spoken in

2100-415: A single original phoneme : "some sound changes, particularly conditioned sound changes, can result in a proto-sound being associated with more than one correspondence set". For example, the following potential cognate list can be established for Romance languages , which descend from Latin : They evidence two correspondence sets, k : k and k : ʃ : Since French ʃ occurs only before

2205-413: A single parent language called the ' proto-language '. A sequence of regular sound changes (along with their underlying sound laws) can then be postulated to explain the correspondences between the attested forms, which eventually allows for the reconstruction of a proto-language by the methodical comparison of "linguistic facts" within a generalized system of correspondences. Every linguistic fact

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2310-507: A subgroup of Indo-European that Russian does not belong to, the Germanic languages . The division of related languages into subgroups is accomplished by finding shared linguistic innovations that differentiate them from the parent language. For instance, English and German both exhibit the effects of a collection of sound changes known as Grimm's Law , which Russian was not affected by. The fact that English and German share this innovation

2415-620: Is mata (from the most northerly Austronesian languages, Formosan languages such as Bunun and Amis all the way south to Māori ). Other words are harder to reconstruct. The word for two is also stable, in that it appears over the entire range of the Austronesian family, but the forms (e.g. Bunun dusa ; Amis tusa ; Māori rua ) require some linguistic expertise to recognise. The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database gives word lists (coded for cognateness) for approximately 1000 Austronesian languages. The internal structure of

2520-522: Is a minority one. As Fox (2004 :8) states: Implied in... discussions of subgrouping [of Austronesian languages] is a broad consensus that the homeland of the Austronesians was in Taiwan. This homeland area may have also included the P'eng-hu (Pescadores) islands between Taiwan and China and possibly even sites on the coast of mainland China, especially if one were to view the early Austronesians as

2625-568: 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. Under that view, there

2730-464: Is based on their concepts of how to proceed. This step involves making lists of words that are likely cognates among the languages being compared. If there is a regularly-recurring match between the phonetic structure of basic words with similar meanings, a genetic kinship can probably then be established. For example, linguists looking at the Polynesian family might come up with a list similar to

2835-417: Is common, but the devoicing of voiced stops in that environment is rare. If a correspondence -t-  : -d- between vowels is found in two languages, the proto- phoneme is more likely to be *-t- , with a development to the voiced form in the second language. The opposite reconstruction would represent a rare type. However, unusual sound changes occur. The Proto-Indo-European word for two , for example,

2940-459: 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'). It is difficult to make generalizations about the languages that make up a family as diverse as Austronesian. Very broadly, one can divide

3045-497: Is defined as transmission across the generations: children learn a language from the parents' generation and, after being influenced by their peers, transmit it to the next generation, and so on. For example, a continuous chain of speakers across the centuries links Vulgar Latin to all of its modern descendants. Two languages are genetically related if they descended from the same ancestor language . For example, Italian and French both come from Latin and therefore belong to

3150-525: Is from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to the entire region encompassed by the Austronesian languages. It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years ago. However, evidence from historical linguistics cannot bridge the gap between those two periods. The view that linguistic evidence connects Austronesian languages to the Sino-Tibetan ones, as proposed for example by Sagart (2002) ,

3255-400: 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

Dusun language - Misplaced Pages Continue

3360-408: Is not a diphthong, and this is indicated by an apostrophe between the two vowels: a'a . Tindal Dusun has a Philippine-type focus system of syntax that makes one particular noun phrase in a sentence the most prominent. This prominent, focused noun phrase does not need to be the subject or the agent of the clause. In clauses with pronouns, the verbal morphology and the pronoun both indicate focus. If

3465-485: Is not considered "related" to Arabic. However, it is possible for languages to have different degrees of relatedness. English , for example, is related to both German and Russian but is more closely related to the former than to the latter. Although all three languages share a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European , English and German also share a more recent common ancestor, Proto-Germanic , but Russian does not. Therefore, English and German are considered to belong to

3570-452: 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 . 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. This classification retains Blust's East Formosan, and unites

3675-513: 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. Most Austronesian languages have Latin -based writing systems today. Some non-Latin-based writing systems are listed below. Below are two charts comparing list of numbers of 1–10 and thirteen words in Austronesian languages; spoken in Taiwan ,

3780-420: Is part of a whole in which everything is connected to everything else. One detail must not be linked to another detail, but one linguistic system to another. Relation is considered to be "established beyond a reasonable doubt" if a reconstruction of the common ancestor is feasible. The ultimate proof of genetic relationship, and to many linguists' minds the only real proof, lies in a successful reconstruction of

3885-726: Is reconstructed as *dwō , which is reflected in Classical Armenian as erku . Several other cognates demonstrate a regular change *dw- → erk- in Armenian. Similarly, in Bearlake, a dialect of the Athabaskan language of Slavey , there has been a sound change of Proto-Athabaskan *ts → Bearlake kʷ . It is very unlikely that *dw- changed directly into erk- and *ts into kʷ , but they probably instead went through several intermediate steps before they arrived at

3990-419: Is seen as evidence of English and German's more recent common ancestor—since the innovation actually took place within that common ancestor, before English and German diverged into separate languages. On the other hand, shared retentions from the parent language are not sufficient evidence of a sub-group. For example, German and Russian both retain from Proto-Indo-European a contrast between the dative case and

4095-572: The Gothick and the Celtick , though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family. The comparative method developed out of attempts to reconstruct the proto-language mentioned by Jones, which he did not name but subsequent linguists have labelled Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The first professional comparison between

4200-542: The Indo-European languages that were then known was made by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1816. He did not attempt a reconstruction but demonstrated that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit shared a common structure and a common lexicon. In 1808, Friedrich Schlegel first stated the importance of using the eldest possible form of a language when trying to prove its relationships; in 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask developed

4305-503: The Kra–Dai languages (also known as Tai–Kadai) are exactly those related mainland languages. Genealogical links have been proposed between Austronesian and various families of East and Southeast Asia . 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

Dusun language - Misplaced Pages Continue

4410-453: The Latin , and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both

4515-572: The Malayo-Polynesian languages . Sagart argues for a north-south genetic relationship between Chinese and Austronesian, based on sound correspondences in the basic vocabulary and morphological parallels. Laurent Sagart (2017) concludes that the possession of the two kinds of millets in Taiwanese Austronesian languages (not just Setaria, as previously thought) places the pre-Austronesians in northeastern China, adjacent to

4620-581: The Philippines , the Mariana Islands , Indonesia , Malaysia , Chams or Champa (in Thailand , Cambodia , and Vietnam ), East Timor , Papua , New Zealand , Hawaii , Madagascar , Borneo , Kiribati , Caroline Islands , and Tuvalu . saésé jalma, jalmi rorompok, bumi nahaon Comparative method In linguistics , the comparative method is a technique for studying

4725-456: The accusative case , which English has lost. However, that similarity between German and Russian is not evidence that German is more closely related to Russian than to English but means only that the innovation in question, the loss of the accusative/dative distinction, happened more recently in English than the divergence of English from German. In classical antiquity , Romans were aware of

4830-463: The 9th or 10th century AD, Yehuda Ibn Quraysh compared the phonology and morphology of Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic but attributed the resemblance to the Biblical story of Babel, with Abraham, Isaac and Joseph retaining Adam's language, with other languages at various removes becoming more altered from the original Hebrew. In publications of 1647 and 1654, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn first described

4935-551: The Asian mainland (e.g., Melton et al. 1998 ), while others mirror the linguistic research, rejecting an East Asian origin in favor of Taiwan (e.g., Trejaut et al. 2005 ). Archaeological evidence (e.g., Bellwood 1997 ) is more consistent, suggesting that the ancestors of the Austronesians spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago. Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it

5040-547: 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. 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. In most languages, consonant clusters are only allowed in medial position, and often, there are restrictions for

5145-539: The Austronesian languages into three groups: Philippine-type languages, Indonesian-type languages and post-Indonesian type languages: The Austronesian language family has been established by the linguistic comparative method on the basis of cognate sets , sets of words from multiple languages, which are similar in sound and meaning which can be shown to be descended from the same ancestral word in Proto-Austronesian according to regular rules. Some cognate sets are very stable. The word for eye in many Austronesian languages

5250-454: The Austronesian languages is complex. The family consists of many similar and closely related languages with large numbers of dialect continua , making it difficult to recognize boundaries between branches. The first major step towards high-order subgrouping was Dempwolff's recognition of the Oceanic subgroup (called Melanesisch by Dempwolff). The special position of the languages of Taiwan

5355-418: The Austronesian people can be traced farther back through time. To get an idea of the original homeland of the populations ancestral to the Austronesian peoples (as opposed to strictly linguistic arguments), evidence from archaeology and population genetics may be adduced. Studies from the science of genetics have produced conflicting outcomes. Some researchers find evidence for a proto-Austronesian homeland on

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5460-772: The Bundu and Liwan valleys of the Crocker - Trusmadi ranges (now parts of the present-day districts of Ranau , Tambunan and Keningau ), was selected as it was deemed to be the most mutually intelligible when conversing with other "Dusun" or "Kadazan" dialects. The phonemes in Central Dusun and Coastal Kadazan are as follows: Robinson specifies that /r/ in Tindal Dusun is a flap [ ɾ ] . [x] occurs as an allophone of /k/ in word-medial position. Tangit and MBDK note that Coastal Kadazan consonants correspond to

5565-476: The Danish scholars Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) and Karl Verner (1846–1896), and the German scholar Jacob Grimm (1785–1863). The first linguist to offer reconstructed forms from a proto-language was August Schleicher (1821–1868) in his Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen , originally published in 1861. Here is Schleicher's explanation of why he offered reconstructed forms: In

5670-631: The Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland first observed similarities between the languages spoken in the Malay Archipelago and by peoples on islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the 19th century, researchers (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt , Herman van der Tuuk ) started to apply the comparative method to the Austronesian languages. The first extensive study on the history of the phonology was made by the German linguist Otto Dempwolff . It included

5775-676: The Japanese-hierarchical society. She also identifies 82 possible cognates between Austronesian and Japanese, however her theory remains very controversial. The linguist Asha Pereltsvaig criticized Kumar's theory on several points. 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 , excavations have indicated that rice farming has been practiced in this area since at least 5000 BC. There are also genetic problems. The pre-Yayoi Japanese lineage

5880-443: The ancestral forms from which the semantically corresponding cognates can be derived. In some cases, this reconstruction can only be partial, generally because the compared languages are too scarcely attested, the temporal distance between them and their proto-language is too deep, or their internal evolution render many of the sound laws obscure to researchers. In such case, a relation is considered plausible, but uncertain. Descent

5985-580: The application of the comparative method to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European since Indo-European was then by far the most well-studied language family. Linguists working with other families soon followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships. There is no fixed set of steps to be followed in the application of the comparative method, but some steps are suggested by Lyle Campbell and Terry Crowley , who are both authors of introductory texts in historical linguistics. This abbreviated summary

6090-611: The baselessness of the assumption that the non-Indian Indo-European languages were derived from Old-Indian ( Sanskrit ). The aim of the comparative method is to highlight and interpret systematic phonological and semantic correspondences between two or more attested languages . If those correspondences cannot be rationally explained as the result of linguistic universals or language contact ( borrowings , areal influence , etc.), and if they are sufficiently numerous, regular, and systematic that they cannot be dismissed as chance similarities , then it must be assumed that they descend from

6195-480: The change, the accent shifted to initial position. Verner solved the puzzle by comparing the Germanic voicing pattern with Greek and Sanskrit accent patterns. This stage of the comparative method, therefore, involves examining the correspondence sets discovered in step 2 and seeing which of them apply only in certain contexts. If two (or more) sets apply in complementary distribution , they can be assumed to reflect

6300-470: The development *b → m would have to be assumed to have occurred only once. In the final step, the linguist checks to see how the proto- phonemes fit the known typological constraints . For example, a hypothetical system, has only one voiced stop , *b , and although it has an alveolar and a velar nasal , *n and *ŋ , there is no corresponding labial nasal . However, languages generally maintain symmetry in their phonemic inventories. In this case,

6405-533: The development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction in which the internal development of a single language is inferred by the analysis of features within that language. Ordinarily, both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages; to fill in gaps in

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6510-481: The evidence of other Indo-European languages . For instance, the Latin suffix que , "and", preserves the original *e vowel that caused the consonant shift in Sanskrit: Verner's Law , discovered by Karl Verner c. 1875, provides a similar case: the voicing of consonants in Germanic languages underwent a change that was determined by the position of the old Indo-European accent . Following

6615-433: The families of the native Formosan languages . According to Robert Blust , the Formosan languages form nine of the ten primary branches of the Austronesian language family. Comrie (2001 :28) noted this when he wrote: ... the internal diversity among the... Formosan languages... is greater than that in all the rest of Austronesian put together, so there is a major genetic split within Austronesian between Formosan and

6720-490: The first element of the cluster. 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 . Tonal contrasts are rare in Austronesian languages, although Moken–Moklen and

6825-522: The first sound-law based on comparative evidence showing that a phonological change in one phoneme could depend on other factors within the same word (such as neighbouring phonemes and the position of the accent ), which are now called conditioning environments . Similar discoveries made by the Junggrammatiker (usually translated as " Neogrammarians ") at the University of Leipzig in

6930-505: The following (their actual list would be much longer): Borrowings or false cognates can skew or obscure the correct data. For example, English taboo ( [tæbu] ) is like the six Polynesian forms because of borrowing from Tongan into English, not because of a genetic similarity. That problem can usually be overcome by using basic vocabulary, such as kinship terms, numbers, body parts and pronouns. Nonetheless, even basic vocabulary can be sometimes borrowed. Finnish , for example, borrowed

7035-896: The following consonants found in other varieties: Kadazandusun is usually said to have four vowels /a i u o/. According to Tingit, /o/ in Central Dusun is less rounded than in Coastal Kadazan and is sometimes represented with ⟨e⟩. Dusun is written using the Latin alphabet using 21 characters (the letters C, E, F, Q, and X are used in loanwords): A B D G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z These characters together are called Pimato . Diphthongs: ⟨aa⟩ ⟨ai⟩ (sometimes pronounced /e/ ) ⟨ii⟩ ⟨oi⟩ ⟨uu⟩ Some combinations of vowels do not form diphthongs and each vowel retains its separate sound: ⟨ao⟩ ⟨ia⟩ ⟨iu⟩ ⟨ui⟩ ⟨ue⟩ . In some words ⟨aa⟩

7140-494: The geographic outliers. According to Robert Blust (1999), Austronesian is divided into several primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively in Taiwan. The Formosan languages of Taiwan are grouped into as many as nine first-order subgroups of Austronesian. All Austronesian languages spoken outside the Taiwan mainland (including its offshore Yami language ) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian (sometimes called Extra-Formosan ) branch. Most Austronesian languages lack

7245-587: The highest degree of diversity found in the area of Melanesia . The Oceanic languages are not recognized, but are distributed over more than 30 of his proposed first-order subgroups. Dyen's classification was widely criticized and for the most part rejected, but several of his lower-order subgroups are still accepted (e.g. the Cordilleran languages , the Bilic languages or the Murutic languages ). Subsequently,

7350-512: The historical record of a language; to discover the development of phonological, morphological and other linguistic systems and to confirm or to refute hypothesised relationships between languages. The comparative method emerged in the early 19th century with the birth of Indo-European studies , then took a definite scientific approach with the works of the Neogrammarians in the late 19th–early 20th century. Key contributions were made by

7455-400: The languages and b in only one of them, if *b is reconstructed, it is necessary to assume five separate changes of *b → m , but if *m is reconstructed, it is necessary to assume only one change of *m → b and so *m would be most economical. That argument assumes the languages other than Arapaho to be at least partly independent of one another. If they all formed a common subgroup,

7560-453: The late 19th century led them to conclude that all sound changes were ultimately regular, resulting in the famous statement by Karl Brugmann and Hermann Osthoff in 1878 that "sound laws have no exceptions". That idea is fundamental to the modern comparative method since it necessarily assumes regular correspondences between sounds in related languages and thus regular sound changes from the proto-language. The Neogrammarian hypothesis led to

7665-534: The later forms. It is not phonetic similarity that matters for the comparative method but rather regular sound correspondences. By the principle of economy , the reconstruction of a proto-phoneme should require as few sound changes as possible to arrive at the modern reflexes in the daughter languages. For example, Algonquian languages exhibit the following correspondence set: The simplest reconstruction for this set would be either *m or *b . Both *m → b and *b → m are likely. Because m occurs in five of

7770-464: 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. A link with the Austroasiatic languages in an ' Austric ' phylum is based mostly on typological evidence. However, there

7875-434: The major Austronesian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people. For example, Indonesian is spoken by around 197.7 million people. This makes it the eleventh most-spoken language in the world . Approximately twenty Austronesian languages are official in their respective countries (see the list of major and official Austronesian languages ). By the number of languages they include, Austronesian and Niger–Congo are

7980-442: 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. 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

8085-432: The method's effectiveness. First, it was found that many sound changes are conditioned by a specific context . For example, in both Greek and Sanskrit , an aspirated stop evolved into an unaspirated one, but only if a second aspirate occurred later in the same word; this is Grassmann's law , first described for Sanskrit by Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini and promulgated by Hermann Grassmann in 1863. Second, it

8190-627: The mid-20th century, a number of linguists have argued that this phonology is implausible and that it is extremely unlikely for a language to have a voiced aspirated ( breathy voice ) series without a corresponding voiceless aspirated series. Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov provided a potential solution and argued that the series that are traditionally reconstructed as plain voiced should be reconstructed as glottalized : either implosive (ɓ, ɗ, ɠ) or ejective (pʼ, tʼ, kʼ) . The plain voiceless and voiced aspirated series would thus be replaced by just voiceless and voiced, with aspiration being

8295-409: The north as well as to the south. Martine Robbeets (2017) 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

8400-493: 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',

8505-521: The original k took place because of a different environment. A more complex case involves consonant clusters in Proto-Algonquian . The Algonquianist Leonard Bloomfield used the reflexes of the clusters in four of the daughter languages to reconstruct the following correspondence sets: Although all five correspondence sets overlap with one another in various places, they are not in complementary distribution and so Bloomfield recognised that

8610-457: 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). Rukai and Tsouic are seen as highly divergent, although the position of Rukai is highly controversial. Sagart (2004) proposes that the numerals of the Formosan languages reflect a nested series of innovations, from languages in

8715-462: The position of the Formosan languages as the most archaic group of Austronesian languages was recognized by Otto Christian Dahl (1973), followed by proposals from other scholars that the Formosan languages actually make up more than one first-order subgroup of Austronesian. Robert Blust (1977) first presented the subgrouping model which is currently accepted by virtually all scholars in the field, with more than one first-order subgroup on Taiwan, and

8820-449: 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. 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. Several linguists have proposed that Japanese

8925-499: The present work an attempt is made to set forth the inferred Indo-European original language side by side with its really existent derived languages. Besides the advantages offered by such a plan, in setting immediately before the eyes of the student the final results of the investigation in a more concrete form, and thereby rendering easier his insight into the nature of particular Indo-European languages , there is, I think, another of no less importance gained by it, namely that it shows

9030-527: The primitive common language. In 1710 and 1723, Lambert ten Kate first formulated the regularity of sound laws , introducing among others the term root vowel . Another early systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made by the Hungarian János Sajnovics in 1770, when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian . That work

9135-535: The principle of regular sound-changes to explain his observations of similarities between individual words in the Germanic languages and their cognates in Greek and Latin. Jacob Grimm , better known for his Fairy Tales , used the comparative method in Deutsche Grammatik (published 1819–1837 in four volumes), which attempted to show the development of the Germanic languages from a common origin, which

9240-500: The probable Sino-Tibetan homeland. 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. Additionally, results from Wei et al. (2017) are also in agreement with Sagart's proposal, in which their analyses show that

9345-461: The regular sound-correspondences exhibited by the lists of potential cognates. For example, in the Polynesian data above, it is apparent that words that contain t in most of the languages listed have cognates in Hawaiian with k in the same position. That is visible in multiple cognate sets: the words glossed as 'one', 'three', 'man' and 'taboo' all show the relationship. The situation is called

9450-688: The rest... Indeed, the genetic diversity within Formosan is so great that it may well consist of several primary branches of the overall Austronesian family. At least since Sapir (1968) , writing in 1949, linguists have generally accepted that the chronology of the dispersal of languages within a given language family can be traced from the area of greatest linguistic variety to that of the least. For example, English in North America has large numbers of speakers, but relatively low dialectal diversity, while English in Great Britain has much higher diversity; such low linguistic variety by Sapir's thesis suggests

9555-518: The same family, the Romance languages . Having a large component of vocabulary from a certain origin is not sufficient to establish relatedness; for example, heavy borrowing from Arabic into Persian has caused more of the vocabulary of Modern Persian to be from Arabic than from the direct ancestor of Persian, Proto-Indo-Iranian , but Persian remains a member of the Indo-Iranian family and

9660-503: The similarities between Greek and Latin, but did not study them systematically. They sometimes explained them mythologically, as the result of Rome being a Greek colony speaking a debased dialect. Even though grammarians of Antiquity had access to other languages around them ( Oscan , Umbrian , Etruscan , Gaulish , Egyptian , Parthian ...), they showed little interest in comparing, studying, or just documenting them. Comparison between languages really began after classical antiquity. In

9765-426: 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

9870-474: 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

9975-477: The two largest language families in the world. They each contain roughly one-fifth of the world's languages. The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family in the first half of the second millennium CE, before the spread of Indo-European in the colonial period . It ranged from Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa to Easter Island in the eastern Pacific. Hawaiian , Rapa Nui , Māori , and Malagasy (spoken on Madagascar) are

10080-902: The verb carries actor focus morphology, the actor of the clause will therefore be a nominative pronoun (or, rarely, an emphatic pronoun). Any other noun phrase in the clause will necessarily take pronouns from a different set, as only one noun phrase can be in focus in any given clause. "The "emphatic" pronouns are used alone or preposedly, either as answers or to stress the pronoun. Ika You(emph) i [personal] Kinomulok? Kinomulok Ika i Kinomulok? You(emph) [personal] Kinomulok Are you Kinomulok? I [personal] Kinomulok Kinomulok oku I I Kinomulok oku [personal] Kinomulok I I am Kinomulok. Isai Who ko? you(non-emph) Isai ko? Who you(non-emph) Who are you? I [personal] Tolimu Batholomew oku I I Tolimu oku [personal] Batholomew I I am Bartholomew. Austronesian language In 1706,

10185-477: The word for "mother", äiti , from Proto-Germanic *aiþį̄ (compare to Gothic aiþei ). English borrowed the pronouns "they", "them", and "their(s)" from Norse . Thai and various other East Asian languages borrowed their numbers from Chinese . An extreme case is represented by Pirahã , a Muran language of South America, which has been controversially claimed to have borrowed all of its pronouns from Nheengatu . The next step involves determining

10290-481: 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. 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

10395-469: Was first recognized by André-Georges Haudricourt (1965), who divided the Austronesian languages into three subgroups: Northern Austronesian (= Formosan ), Eastern Austronesian (= Oceanic ), and Western Austronesian (all remaining languages). In a study that represents the first lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages, Isidore Dyen (1965) presented a radically different subgrouping scheme. He posited 40 first-order subgroups, with

10500-472: Was found that sometimes sound changes occurred in contexts that were later lost. For instance, in Sanskrit velars ( k -like sounds) were replaced by palatals ( ch -like sounds) whenever the following vowel was *i or *e . Subsequent to this change, all instances of *e were replaced by a . The situation could be reconstructed only because the original distribution of e and a could be recovered from

10605-535: 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. Blevins (2007) proposed that the Austronesian and the Ongan protolanguage are the descendants of an Austronesian–Ongan protolanguage. This view

10710-517: Was later extended to all Finno-Ugric languages in 1799 by his countryman Samuel Gyarmathi . However, the origin of modern historical linguistics is often traced back to Sir William Jones , an English philologist living in India , who in 1786 made his famous observation: The Sanscrit language , whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek , more copious than

10815-446: Was not shared with Southeast Asians, but was shared with Northwest Chinese, Tibetans and Central Asians . 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. In 2001, Stanley Starosta proposed

10920-412: Was that of the Oceanic languages into Polynesia and Micronesia. From the standpoint of historical linguistics , the place of origin (in linguistic terminology, Urheimat ) of the Austronesian languages ( Proto-Austronesian language ) is most likely the main island of Taiwan , also known as Formosa; on this island the deepest divisions in Austronesian are found along small geographic distances, among

11025-401: Was the first systematic study of diachronic language change. Both Rask and Grimm were unable to explain apparent exceptions to the sound laws that they had discovered. Although Hermann Grassmann explained one of the anomalies with the publication of Grassmann's law in 1862, Karl Verner made a methodological breakthrough in 1875, when he identified a pattern now known as Verner's law ,

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