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6 The Integrity of The Austronesian Language Famil
6 The Integrity of The Austronesian Language Famil
6 The Integrity of The Austronesian Language Famil
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Malcolm Ross
Australian National University
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Malcolm Ross
1. Introduction
My purpose in this chapter is to address four questions which relate to the integrity
of the Austronesian language family:
In the course of answering these questions I will refer to three sets of languages
using terms that are well understood by Austronesianist linguists but perhaps
rather opaque to other readers. Formosan denotes the aboriginal languages of
Taiwan, Malayo-Polynesian all Austronesian languages outside Taiwan. On the
map in Figure 6.1 the latter are divided into Western Malayo-Polynesian, Central
Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera/West New Guinea and Oceanic, terms
which are discussed in §4 and §7. Today there are 14 Formosan languages (there
were perhaps two or three times as many when outsiders reached Taiwan in the
17th century) and perhaps as many as a thousand Malayo-Polynesian languages.
The third term, Oceanic, denotes a subset of Malayo-Polynesian and includes
most of the Malayo-Polynesian languages of New Guinea, Island Melanesia,
Polynesia and Micronesia.
CHINA
FORMOSAN
Taiwan
*
20¡
Marianas Hawai'i
PH
ILIP
Guam Federated States
of Micronesia
Yap
PINE
Palau Marshall
S
Islands
S. HALMAHERA /
Su
m W. NEW GUINEA Kiribati
at
ra Equator 0¡
¢
Borneo
Sulawesi
Nauru
O C E A N I C
Irian
Moluccas Jaya
INDONESIA PAPUA
Java NEW GUINE A Solomon Is
Tuvalu Marquesas
Timor Tokelau
WESTERN
Rotuma Wallis FRENCH POLYNESIA
Co
& Futuna Samoa
o
MALAYO-POLYNESIAN
CENTRAL k Is
Vanuatu Tuamotu
lan
MALAYO-POLYNESIAN Archipelago
also Niue
ds
Fiji Tahiti
MADAGASCAR 20¡
'ATA
Tonga Rarotonga
AUSTRALIA New
Caledonia
Rapa Easter
Island
NEW
ZEALAND 40¡
Map 6.I The Austronesian family and major Austronesian language groups
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 163
Table 6.1 Selected words in scattered Austronesian languages
ear eye head three freshwater seven
louse eel
Atayal tʃaŋiaʔ – kutʃuʔ tu-ɣaɫ tuɣa-qiy ma-pituʔ
Tsou – mtsō ktsū turu tuŋ-roza pitu
Rukai tsaɭiŋa matsa kotso toɭo tola pito
Paiwan tsaɭiŋa matsa kətsiɭu tyəɭu tyulya pityu
Tagalog tēŋa mata kūto ta-tlo – pito
Toba Batak – mata hutu tolu – pitu
Uma tiliŋa mata kutu tolo – pitu
Manggarai – mata hutu təlu tuna pitu
Kairiru tiliŋ mata qut tuol tun –
Samoan taliŋa mata ʔutu tolu tuna fitu
In the Pacific we usually find ourselves dealing with languages whose earlier
stages are undocumented, and so we must reconstruct their earlier stages from
their sound correspondences. Table 6.3 shows vocabulary from two closely related
languages. The most obvious difference between them is that Minigir s corresponds
to zero in Tolai. Minigir clearly preserves an earlier stage of the language, whilst
s has been lost in Tolai. We can, then, reconstruct an earlier stage of the language
(here it happens to be identical to Minigir) and infer a sound change in Tolai
(loss of s). In this case, there is really no alternative analysis, as it is extremely
improbable that zero has in unpredictable contexts sporadically become s. That is,
the sound is unidirectional, and Tolai is the innovating language.
To understand how innovations enable us to detect subgroups and to construct
a tree, we need to examine a more complex example. Table 6.4 shows vocabulary
from Oceanic languages selected from right across the region. Takia is spoken
off the north coast of New Guinea, Tawala in south-east Papua, Motu in central
Papua, Bali-Vitu in islands to the north of New Britain and Tolai at the north-
eastern end of New Britain. These are representative languages of the Western
Oceanic subgroup. Bugotu, Gela and Kwaio belong to the South-east Solomonic
group, Bauan Fijian, Tongan, Samoan, Tahitian, Rarotongan, Maori and Hawaiian
to the Central Pacific group. However, to name their subgroups is to anticipate the
argument below.
A gap in the table indicates that there is no cognate (i.e. related) word in the
language. Footnotes indicate cases where the word which otherwise means ‘father’
(also) means ‘child’. This is an unsurprising change in meaning, as Oceanic kin
terms quite often have reciprocal meanings (father/child, grandparent/grandchild).
Included in the table are three words that are not strictly cognate with other words
in the same column. Tawala ama and Kwaio maʔa are terms for ‘father’ which
are derived from vocative (address) forms, whereas the other forms in the column
(tama- etc) reflect the reference form. The vocative and reference forms were
systematically related at a much earlier stage of their history. Kwaio buri- ‘back’
occurs where we might expect muri-: it reflects an alternative word-form with
a complex but explicable relationship to muri-, not an irregular sound change
(Ross 2003).
The relatedness of the words in Table 6.4 across languages is self-evident. It
is also quite obvious that the sounds in these words correspond in a fairly regular
manner across languages, and these correspondences are set out in Table 6.5 (a gap
– three dots – indicates that the sound is not represented in Table 6.4). Thus the
words for ‘eye’ and ‘back’ begin with m-, except for Kwaio buri-, and the words
for ‘father’, ‘hand, five’ and ‘mosquito’ all display a medial -m-, except Kwaio
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 169
maʔa and Bauan liŋa- (which reflects an earlier variant *limʷa). A correspondence
involving the t- of ‘father’ and ‘ear’ and -t- of ‘eye’ is equally obvious. Slightly less
transparent is the correspondence involving the l- of Tolai ‘hand, five’ and -l- of
Tolai ‘ear’. Several other correspondences are represented only once in Table 6.4.
These involve the -r- of Tolai ‘back’, the ñ- of Bugotu ‘mosquito’ and the -ŋ- of
Tolai ‘ear’. All the correspondences recorded in Table 6.5 occur in other words in
these languages, i.e. they are regular correspondences.
On the top row of Table 6.5 are shown the relevant reconstructed consonants of
Proto Oceanic, the language ancestral to all Oceanic languages. I will not discuss
reconstruction methodology here, but a glance at Table 6.5 shows that, at least in
this application, there is nothing particularly esoteric about it.
Now that we have reconstructed Proto Oceanic consonants, we can reconstruct
the innovations that have occurred in the various languages. Proto Oceanic *t, for
example, has become Kwaio zero, i.e. it has been lost, and Hawaiian k.
What is important here is a pattern of innovations displayed by the languages
in the five lowest rows of the table, namely Samoan, Tahitian, Rarotongan, Maori
and Hawaiian. It is clear from the other languages in the table that Proto Oceanic
*l and *r must each be reconstructed. It is also clear that these two sounds have
merged in the five languages at the bottom of the table (i.e. both are reflected as l
in Samoan and Hawaiian and as r in Tahitian, Rarotongan and Maori). We can be
confident that it is these five languages that have innovated. The alternative would
be to reconstruct a single consonant in Proto Oceanic, e.g. *l, and to claim that
it had split in the languages from Takia to Tongan. However, this split would be
Table 6.5 Sound correspondences in selected Oceanic languages
Proto Oceanic *m *t *l *-r- *ñ- *-ŋ-
Takia m t-; -l- … … … …
Tawala m t n -l- … -g-
Motu m t Ø -r- n- -Ø-
Bali-Vitu m t l … … -ŋ-
Tolai m t l -r- … -ŋ-
Bugotu m t l … ñ- …
Gela m t l -r- n- -ŋ-
Kwaio m Ø -l- -r- n- -ŋ-
Bauan m t l -r- n- -ŋ-
Tongan m t -l- -Ø- n- -ŋ-
Samoan m t l -l- n- -ŋ-
Tahitian m t r -r- n- -ʔ-
Rarotongan m t r -r- n- -ŋ-
Maori m t r -r- n- -ŋ-
Hawaiian m k l -l- … …
170 Malcolm Ross
unconditioned, i.e. it would be impossible to predict which of the two outcomes
(e.g. Tolai l or r) would occur in which word. An unconditioned split is a relatively
rare phenomenon.
The merger of Proto Oceanic *l and *r in these five languages is a shared
innovation. It happens that these languages (and others) also share other
innovations. The most probable explanation of these innovations is not that
they have occurred in each of the five languages in parallel, but that these five
languages (among others) are descended from a single ancestor in which these
innovations occurred. Thus shared innovations allow us to identify subgroups,
and Samoan, Tahitian, Rarotongan, Maori and Hawaiian are all attributed to the
Nuclear Polynesian subgroup of Oceanic. That is, they are descended from a
single interstage language, Proto Nuclear Polynesian.
The Nuclear Polynesian languages share a further set of innovations with
Tongan and Niuean. These innovations define the Polynesian subgroup of
Oceanic (Pawley 1966, 1967; Biggs 1971). Thus we can draw a small part of the
genealogical tree of Oceanic languages as in Figure 6.3.
The method that I have briefly outlined here, the comparative method of
historical linguistics, was applied by Dempwolff (1937) when he reconstructed
Urmelanesisch, today known as Proto Oceanic. Further research has slightly
modified and has extended Dempwolff’s collection of innovations (Lynch et al.
2002: ch. 4).
The same method was used by Dahl (1973) and Blust (1977) to establish the
Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of Austronesian, and by Blust (1978, 1982, 1983,
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