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 , 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, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.
68-624: 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 the history of the phonology was made by
136-413: 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
204-527: 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 the northwest (near the putative landfall of the Austronesian migration from
272-477: A direct relationship with the soil which is essential to geography ." [REDACTED] Media related to Adriaan Reland at Wikimedia Commons Buginese language Buginese or Bugis (Buginese: ᨅᨔ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ /basa.uɡi/ ) is a language spoken by about 4 million people mainly in the southern part of Sulawesi , Indonesia . The word Buginese derives from the word Bahasa Bugis in Malay . In Buginese, it
340-590: 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
408-537: 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
476-472: 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
544-478: 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
612-545: 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
680-489: 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,
748-414: 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,
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#1733085378839816-493: Is Sureq Galigo , the epic creation myth of the Bugis people. Another written source of Buginese is Lontara , a term which refers to the traditional script and historical record as well. The earliest historical record of Lontara dates to around the 17th century. Lontara records have been described by historians of Indonesia as "sober" and "factual" when compared to their counterparts from other regions of Maritime Southeast Asia, such as
884-557: 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
952-511: 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
1020-554: 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
1088-419: Is called Basa Ugi while the Bugis people are called To Ugi . According to a Buginese myth, the term Ugi is derived from the name to the first king of Cina, an ancient Bugis kingdom, La Sattumpugi . To Ugi basically means 'the followers of La Sattumpugi'. Little is known about the early history of this language due to the lack of written records. The earliest written record of this language
1156-458: 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
1224-517: 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) ,
1292-400: 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
1360-497: 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 the other northern languages. Li (2008) proposes
1428-508: 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 ,
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#17330853788391496-522: Is represented by ⟨ny⟩ , [ŋ] by ⟨ng⟩ , [ɟ] by ⟨j⟩ , [j] by ⟨y⟩ . The glottal stop [ʔ] is usually represented by an apostrophe (e.g. ana' [anaʔ] 'child'), but occasionally ⟨q⟩ is also used. /e/ and /ə/ are usually uniformly spelled as ⟨e⟩ , but /e/ is often written as ⟨é⟩ to avoid ambiguity. Buginese has four sets of personal pronouns, one free set, and three bound sets: The enclitic set
1564-580: Is the result of migration since the 17th century that was mainly driven by continuous warfare situations. ( Dutch direct colonization started in the early 20th century.) Buginese has six vowels: /a/ , /e/ , /i/ , /o/ , /u/ , and the central vowel /ə/ . The following table gives the consonant phonemes of Buginese together with their representation in Lontara script . When Buginese is written in Latin script, general Indonesian spelling conventions are applied: [ɲ]
1632-642: Is used with subjects of intransitive verbs, and objects of transitive verbs. The proclitic set is with subjects of transitive verbs. The suffixed set is primarily used in possessive function. The following are grammatical aspects of the language: ᨄᨘᨑᨊᨚ pura-no have [portmanteau of perfective na ( ᨊ ) + you] ᨆᨙᨋ? manre eat ᨄᨘᨑᨊᨚ ᨆᨙᨋ? pura-no manre {have [portmanteau of perfective na ( ᨊ ) + you]} eat 'Have you already eaten?' ᨉᨙᨄ deq-pa not + [conditional ( ᨄ )] ᨉᨙᨄ deq-pa {not + [conditional ( ᨄ )]} 'Not yet.' ⟨q⟩ represents
1700-452: The babad of Java. These records are usually written in a matter-of-fact tone with very few mythical elements, and the writers would usually put disclaimers before stating something that they cannot verify. Prior to the Dutch arrival in the 19th century, a missionary, B. F. Matthews, translated the Bible into Buginese, which made him the first European to acquire knowledge of the language. He
1768-503: 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
1836-589: The Malay word for the palmyra palm , lontar , the leaves of which are the traditional material for manuscripts in India , South East Asia and Indonesia . Today, however, it is often written using the Latin script . The Buginese lontara (locally known as Aksara Ugi ) has a slightly different pronunciation from the other lontaras like the Makassarese. Like other Indic scripts, it also utilizes diacritics to distinguish
1904-551: 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
1972-616: 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 Adriaan Reland Adriaan Reland (also known as Adriaen Reeland/Reelant , Hadrianus Relandus ) (17 July 1676 – 5 February 1718 )
2040-574: The South Sulawesi subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Within the South Sulawesi subgroup, it is most closely related to Campalagian . Most of the native speakers (around 3 million) are concentrated in South Sulawesi , Indonesia but there are small groups of Buginese speakers on the island of Java , Samarinda and east Sumatra of Indonesia , east Sabah and Malay Peninsula , Malaysia and South Philippines . This Bugis diaspora
2108-540: 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
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2176-605: 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
2244-538: 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
2312-448: 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
2380-418: 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
2448-561: 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 a few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages , are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but
2516-660: 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
2584-469: The biblical peoples , and ancient geography of Palestine. Reland retained his professorship for his entire life, and additionally became a noted poet. In 1718, at age 41, he died of smallpox in Utrecht. "Obviously, knowledge of Biblical, Talmudic, and secular sources forms the basis of Palestinian topography, but it is not enough. However valuable the work of Reland may be, it is incomplete because it lacks
2652-432: 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
2720-483: 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
2788-494: 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
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2856-629: The glottal stop. It is not written in the Lontara script. Example of usage: ᨆᨙᨒᨚ ᨀ méloq-kaq want-I ᨌᨛᨆᨙ cemmé bathe { ᨆᨙᨒᨚ ᨀ } ᨌᨛᨆᨙ méloq-kaq cemmé want-I bathe I want to take a bath Buginese was traditionally written using the Lontara script , of the Brahmic family , which is also used for the Makassar language and the Mandar language . The name Lontara derives from
2924-571: 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,
2992-703: The inherent vowel, so it is normally impossible to write consonant clusters (a few ones were added later, derived from ligatures, to mark the prenasalization ), geminated consonants or final consonants. The Bugis still distinguish themselves according to their major precolony states ( Bone , Wajo , Soppeng and Sidenreng ) or groups of petty states (around Pare-Pare , Sinjai and Suppa.) The languages of these areas, with their relatively minor differences from one another, have been largely recognized by linguists as constituting dialects: recent linguistic research has identified eleven of them, most comprising two or more sub-dialects. The following Buginese dialects are listed in
3060-458: 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
3128-416: 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',
3196-434: 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
3264-441: 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
3332-408: 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
3400-460: 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
3468-446: 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
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#17330853788393536-497: 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
3604-681: 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
3672-426: 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
3740-474: 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
3808-477: 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
3876-490: The vowels [i] , [u] , [e] , [o] and [ə] from the default inherent vowel /a/ (actually pronounced [ɔ] ) implicitly represented in all base consonant letters (including the zero-consonant a ). But unlike most other Brahmic scripts of India, the Buginese script traditionally does not have any virama sign (or alternate half-form for vowel-less consonants, or subjoined form for non-initial consonants in clusters) to suppress
3944-577: Was a noted Dutch Orientalist scholar, cartographer and philologist . Even though he never left the Netherlands, he made significant contributions to Middle Eastern and Asian linguistics and cartography, including Persia , Japan and Palestine during the biblical ages ( the Holy Land ). Reland was the son of Johannes Reland, a Protestant minister, and Aagje Prins in the small North Holland village of De Rijp. Adriaan's brother, Peter (1678–1714),
4012-470: Was also one of the first Europeans to master Makassarese . The dictionaries and grammar books compiled by him, and the literature and folklore texts he published, remain basic sources of information about both languages. Upon colonization by the Dutch , a number of Bugis fled from their home area of South Sulawesi seeking a better life. This led to the existence of small groups of Buginese speakers throughout Maritime Southeast Asia . Buginese belongs to
4080-474: 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
4148-702: Was an influential lawyer in Haarlem . Reland first studied Latin language in Amsterdam at age 11, and enrolled at University of Utrecht in 1693, at age 17, to study theology and philosophy. Initially interested in Hebrew and Syriac , he later began studying Arabic . In 1699, after obtaining his doctorate in Utrecht, Reland moved to Leiden and tutored the son of Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland . The latter invited him to move to England, but Reland declined because of his father's deteriorating health. In 1699, Reland
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#17330853788394216-787: Was appointed Professor of Physics and Metaphysics at the University of Harderwijk . By this point, he had achieved a good knowledge of Arabic , Hebrew , and other Semitic languages . In 1701, at age 25, he was appointed Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Utrecht. Beginning in 1713, he also taught Hebrew Antiquities. This was extended with a chair in Jewish Antiquity. Reland gained renown for his research in Islamic studies and linguistics; his work being an early example of comparative linguistics . Additionally, he studied Persian and
4284-519: Was considered the first objective survey of Islamic beliefs and practices. It quickly became a reference work throughout Europe and was translated into Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish. Reland also extensively researched Middle Eastern locations and biblical geography, taking interest in Palestine. He published Antiquitates Sacrae veterum Hebraeorum (1708) and Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata (1714), in which he described and mapped
4352-467: 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
4420-524: 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
4488-551: Was interested in the relation of Eastern myths to the Old Testament . He published a work concerning East Asian myths, Dissertationum miscellanearum partes tres , in 1708. Moreover, he discovered the link for the Malay language to the Western Pacific dictionaries of Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire . Reland, through compiling Arabic texts, completed De religione Mohammedica libri duo in 1705. This work, extended in 1717,
4556-444: 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
4624-411: 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
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