Niuatahi or also called Volcano O is a submarine volcano located in the far northern territory of Tonga. Since the cone in the middle is named Motutahi, the volcano is sometimes referred to as Niuatahi-Motutahi . Despite not having any record of any eruption, Niuatahi does have a record of recent hydrothermal activity.
79-663: Niuatahi was named by the Tonga Ministry of Lands, Environment, Climate Change and Natural Resources. In the Tongan language , Niuatahi means sea . The name Motutahi means island in the sea in the Tongan language. The volcano can be found approximately 70 km (43 mi) northwest of Niuatoputapu and 240 km (149 mi) southwest of the Samoan Islands . It is also located 40 km (25 mi) southwest of
158-412: A bathymetric survey expedition was executed and many ROV dives were made in 3 sites around the caldera including the southwest, the south-central and the north of the caldera. In the southwest, venting with 293 °C with clear to gray smoke was observed at 1,680 m (5,512 ft) depth. In the south-central area, clear to black smoke was observed at vents with temperatures of 334 °C at most at
237-573: 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 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
316-458: A depth similar to the southwest vents. In the north, the vents are located at a shallower depth of 1,550 m (5,085 ft) and they emit clear to black smokes with temperatures of 316 °C at most. All of these vent sites have a sulfide composition, hence the yellowish colors can be seen in some vent smokes. Tongan language Tongan (English pronunciation: / ˈ t ɒ ŋ ( ɡ ) ə n / TONG -(g)ən ; lea fakatonga )
395-500: A few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages , are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but 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
474-535: 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 a more recent spread of English in North America. While some scholars suspect that
553-404: A natural development, as /tʃ/ in many Polynesian languages derived from Proto-Polynesian /ti/ . /l/ may also be heard as an alveolar flap sound [ ɺ ] . Although the acute accent has been available on most personal computers from their early days onwards, when Tongan newspapers started to use computers around 1990 to produce their papers, they were unable to find, or failed to enter,
632-549: 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 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
711-745: 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 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
790-447: A sufficiently wide meaning to the word 'impress', we may say, perhaps, that ʻeku is used in reference to things upon which I impress myself, while hoku is used in reference to things which impress themselves upon me. ʻE possessives are generally used for: Ho possessives are generally used for There are plenty of exceptions which do not fall under the guidelines above, for instance, ʻeku tamai , "my father". The number of exceptions
869-484: A three-level definiteness distinction: There are three registers which consist of There are also further distinctions between For example, the phrase "Come and eat!" translates to: The Tongan language distinguishes three numbers : singular, dual , and plural . They appear as the three major columns in the tables below. The Tongan language distinguishes four persons: First person exclusive , first person inclusive , second person and third person. They appear as
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#1732775618183948-460: 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 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
1027-475: A verb? What, for example, is the rule or the guiding principle, which lies behind the fact that a Tongan says ʻeku paʻanga for ' my money' but hoku fale for 'my house'? It may be stated as follows: the use of ʻeku for 'my' implies that I am active, influential, or formative, &c., towards the thing mentioned, whereas the use of hoku for 'my' implies that the thing mentioned is active, influential, or formative, &c., towards me. Or, provided that we give
1106-516: 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 a population of related dialect communities living in scattered coastal settlements. Linguistic analysis of
1185-534: Is an Austronesian language of the Polynesian branch native to the island nation of Tonga . It has around 187,000 speakers. It uses the word order verb–subject–object . Tongan is one of the multiple languages in the Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages, along with Hawaiian , Māori , Samoan and Tahitian , for example. Together with Niuean , it forms the Tongic subgroup of Polynesian. Tongan
1264-514: Is difficult to make generalizations about the languages that make up a family as diverse as Austronesian. Very broadly, one can divide 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
1343-446: 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 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
1422-512: Is highly controversial. Sagart (2004) proposes that the numerals of the Formosan languages reflect a nested series of innovations, from languages in 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
1501-406: Is large enough to make the alienable and inalienable distinction appear on the surface to be as arbitrary as the grammatical gender distinction for Romance languages, but by and large the above guidelines hold true. The cardinal pronouns are the main personal pronouns which in Tongan can either be preposed (before the verb , light colour) or postposed (after the verb, dark colour). The first are
1580-412: Is less apt when used on nouns. Indeed, in most contexts hoku taki would be interpreted as "my leader", as a noun rather than a verb. What then of nouns that have no real verb interpretation, such as fale "house"? Churchward himself laid out the distinction thus: But what about those innumerable cases in which the possessive can hardly be said to correspond either to the subject or to the object of
1659-611: Is mainly formed by the rollback of the Tonga Trench . The Lau Basin is host to many different geologic structures that are both typical and unique compared to other Pacific back-arc basins. A typical characteristic includes the basin being located above a well-defined Wadati-Benioff zone that points to the location of the subduction of the Cretaceous Pacific Plate lithosphere into the Tonga Trench under
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#17327756181831738-686: Is primarily a spoken, rather than written, language. One of the first publications of Tongan texts was in William Mariner 's grammar and dictionary of the Tongan language, edited and published in 1817 by John Martin as part of volume 2 of Mariner's Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean . Orthography has changed since Mariner's time. An annotated list of dictionaries and vocabularies of
1817-510: 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 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
1896-561: 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 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
1975-488: Is unusual among Polynesian languages in that it has a so-called definitive accent . As with all Polynesian languages, Tongan has adapted the phonological system of proto-Polynesian. Tongan has heavily influenced the Wallisian language after Tongans colonized the island of ʻUvea in the 15th and 16th centuries. The earliest attempts to transcribe the Tongan language were made by Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire of
2054-707: The Australian Plate . The Wadati-Benioff zone of the area reaches as deep as 700 km (435 mi) under the North Fiji Basin . The seismic zone lies 140 km (87 mi) below the Tofua arc and 250 km (155 mi) under the Central and Eastern Lau Spreading Centers. More specifically, Niuatahi can be found in the northeastern part of the Lau Basin. Considering its unique tectonic setting,
2133-479: The Dutch East India Company when they first arrived in 1616. They transcribed a limited number of nouns and verbs using phonetic Dutch spelling and added them to a growing list of Polynesian vocabulary. Abel Tasman , also of the Dutch East India Company , attempted to converse with indigenous Tongans using vocabulary from this list when he arrived on Tongatapu on 20 January 1643, although he
2212-598: 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 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
2291-545: 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 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
2370-468: 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 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
2449-524: 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 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
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2528-409: The list of major and official Austronesian languages ). By the number of languages they include, Austronesian and Niger–Congo are 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
2607-418: The 'full-style' and 'telephone-style' numbers are in equally common use, while for other two-digit numbers the 'telephone-style' numbers are almost exclusively in use: ʻOku fiha ia? (how much (does it cost)?) Paʻanga ʻe ua-nima-noa (T$ 2.50) In addition there are special, traditional counting systems for fish, coconuts, yams, etc. (Cf. Classifier (linguistics) .) Tongan has a very rich oral literature and
2686-423: 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 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
2765-579: The Austronesian languages to be related to the Sino-Tibetan languages , and also groups the Kra–Dai languages as more closely related to 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
2844-415: 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 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",
2923-418: 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 a single first-order branch encompassing all Austronesian languages spoken outside of Taiwan, viz. Malayo-Polynesian . The relationships of
3002-454: 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, 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
3081-532: The NE Lau Basin hosts multiple types of submarine volcanism mostly composed by a subduction-related water-fluxed crust melting and crustal extension. Geochemically, the lavas from the NE Lau Basin vary from mid-ocean ridge basalt -like to arc-like lavas. The analysis of the lava rocks from the center of Niuatahi volcano revealed that the products were composed of aphyric to porphyritic with low- K dacite that consists of mostly glassy material. Meanwhile, in
3160-649: 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, 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
3239-472: The Taiwan mainland (including its offshore Yami language ) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian (sometimes called Extra-Formosan ) branch. Most Austronesian languages lack 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,
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3318-654: The Tonga telephone directory for years now ignores all rules. ) The original j , used for /tʃ/ , disappeared in the beginning of the 20th century, merging with /s/ . By 1943, j was no longer used. Consequently, many words written with s in Tongan are cognate to those with t in other Polynesian languages. For example, Masisi (a star name) in Tongan is cognate with Matiti in Tokelauan ; siale ( Gardenia taitensis) in Tongan and tiare in Tahitian . This seems to be
3397-598: The Tongan language is available at the website of the Bibliographical Society of America under the resource heading 'Breon Mitchell": . The Bible and the Book of Mormon were translated into Tongan and few other books were written in it. There are several weekly and monthly magazines in Tongan, but there are no daily newspapers. Weekly newspapers, some of them twice per week: Monthly or two-monthly papers, mostly church publications: The Tongan calendar
3476-434: 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 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
3555-405: The deepest divisions in Austronesian are found along small geographic distances, among 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
3634-423: 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 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
3713-515: 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 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
3792-581: 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 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
3871-534: 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) , is a minority one. As Fox (2004 :8) states: Implied in... discussions of subgrouping [of Austronesian languages]
3950-635: The family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family. In 1706, 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
4029-403: The far more known and more active West Mata submarine volcano, located in the same volcanic group as Niuatahi. An active ridge can also be found just west of the caldera walls. Niuatahi is a submarine volcano mostly known for its circular shape and enormous width. It is 15 km (9 mi) in diameter and with a depth of approximately 700 m (2,297 ft). The Motutahi cone located in
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#17327756181834108-399: The first lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages, Isidore Dyen (1965) presented a radically different subgrouping scheme. He posited 40 first-order subgroups, with 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
4187-612: The four major rows in the tables below. This gives us 12 main groups. In addition, possessive pronouns are either alienable (reddish) or inalienable (greenish), which Churchward termed subjective and objective . This marks a distinction that has been referred to, in some analyses of other Polynesian languages , as a-possession versus o-possession , respectively, though more Tongan-appropriate version would be ʻe-possession and ho-possession . Subjective and objective are fitting labels when dealing with verbs: ʻeku taki "my leading" vs. hoku taki "my being led". However, this
4266-425: 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 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
4345-460: The history of the phonology was made by the German linguist Otto Dempwolff . It included 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
4424-755: 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 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 ,
4503-617: The islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples ). They are spoken by about 328 million people (4.4% of the world population ). This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay (around 250–270 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard named " Indonesian "), Javanese , Sundanese , Tagalog (standardized as Filipino ), Malagasy and Cebuano . According to some estimates,
4582-536: 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 is from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to
4661-521: The middle of the caldera which rises 730 m (2,395 ft) above the floor of the caldera. Along the floor of the caldera can also be found active hydrothermal systems. The Niuatahi underwater volcano is located in an area of complex tectonics . It is located in the Lau Back-Arc Basin , which consists of oceanic crust that separates the remnant Lau-Colville Ridge and the active Tofua volcanic arc from each other. The back-arc basin
4740-628: The normal alienable possessive pronouns, the latter the stressed alienable pronouns, which are sometimes used as reflexive pronouns , or with kia te in front the inalienable possessive forms. (There is no possession involved in the cardinal pronouns and therefore no alienable or inalienable forms). Examples of use. Another archaic aspect of Tongan is the retention of preposed pronouns. They are used much less frequently in Samoan and have completely disappeared in East Polynesian languages, where
4819-423: 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 the Austronesian people can be traced farther back through time. To get an idea of
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#17327756181834898-455: 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 the Asian mainland (e.g., Melton et al. 1998 ), while others mirror
4977-507: The orthography of the Tongan language. However, C. M. Churchward's grammar and dictionary favoured the standard European alphabetical order, which, since his time, has been in use exclusively: Notes: The above order is strictly followed in proper dictionaries. Therefore, ngatu follows nusi , ʻa follows vunga and it also follows z if foreign words occur. Words with long vowels come directly after those with short vowels. Improper wordlists may or may not follow these rules. (For example,
5056-473: 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 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
5135-405: The pronouns are cognate with the Tongan postposed form minus ki- . (We love you: ʻOku ʻofa kimautolu kia te kimoutolu; Māori: e aroha nei mātou i a koutou). The possessives for every person and number (1st person plural, 3rd person dual, etc.) can be further divided into normal or ordinary (light colour), emotional (medium colour) and emphatic (bright colour) forms. The latter is rarely used, but
5214-452: The proper keystrokes, and it grew into a habit to put the accent after the vowel instead of on it: not á but a´ . But as this distance seemed to be too big, a demand arose for Tongan fonts where the acute accent was shifted to the right, a position halfway in between the two extremes above. Most papers still follow this practice. English uses only two articles : By contrast, Tongan has three articles, and possessives also have
5293-414: The rest of Austronesian put together, so there is a major genetic split within Austronesian between Formosan and 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
5372-543: 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 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
5451-399: 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 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
5530-497: 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', 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
5609-403: The southeastern part of the caldera, rock samples returned an olivine -bearing basalt composition, pointing to the products being mostly boninite which complies with past research in the area. No historical eruptions have been recorded however Niuatahi has been hydrothermally active since its discovery. On the caldera floor and rims of Niuatahi can be found many hydrothermal vents. In 2018,
5688-497: The two former are common and further subdivided in definite (saturated colour) and indefinite (greyish colour) forms. Notes: Examples of use. These are the remainders: the pronominal adjectives (mine), indirect object pronouns or pronominal adverbs (for me) and the adverbial possessives (as me). Notes: Examples of use: In Tongan, "telephone-style" numerals can be used: reading numbers by simply saying their digits one by one. For 'simple' two-digit multiples of ten both
5767-545: The two kinds of millets in Taiwanese Austronesian languages (not just Setaria, as previously thought) places the pre-Austronesians in northeastern China, adjacent to 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
5846-470: Was Dempwolff's recognition of the Oceanic subgroup (called Melanesisch by Dempwolff). The special position of the languages of Taiwan 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
5925-430: Was Malayo-Polynesian, distributed across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Melanesia. The second migration 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
6004-503: 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 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
6083-479: Was based on the phases of the moon and had 13 months. The main purpose of the calendar, for Tongans, was to determine the time for the planting and cultivation of yams, which were Tonga's most important staple food. Austronesian languages The Austronesian languages ( / ˌ ɔː s t r ə ˈ n iː ʒ ən / AW -strə- NEE -zhən ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia , parts of Mainland Southeast Asia , Madagascar ,
6162-513: Was poorly understood, likely using words added from different Polynesian languages. Tongan is presently written in a subset of the Latin script . In the old, "missionary" alphabet , the order of the letters was modified: the vowels were put first and then followed by the consonants : a, e, i, o, u, with variation of letter ā. That was still so as of the Privy Council decision of 1943 on
6241-567: 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, 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
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