Yabem , or Jabêm , is an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea .
65-590: Yabem belongs to the division of the Melanesian languages spoken natively (in 1978) by about 2,000 people at Finschhafen , which is on the southern tip of the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province , Papua New Guinea , despite historical evidence that shows that the language originated in the northern coast. However, Yabem was adopted as local lingua franca along with Kâte for evangelical and educational purposes by
130-573: 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
195-496: 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
260-521: 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
325-694: A juxtaposed possessive word. Nouns can also take "affective" suffixes that indicate a speaker's attitude toward that thing: sympathy, affection or ridicule. Examples are from Bradshaw & Czobor (2005) unless otherwise stated: ŋac-èc man- DIM ŋac-èc man-DIM 'dear little man' gwad-êc cousin- 1SG . POSS gwad-êc cousin-1SG.POSS 'my cousin' gwad-êc-sìgo cousin- 1SG . POSS - RID gwad-êc-sìgo cousin-1SG.POSS-RID 'my stupid cousin' Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) ( help ); Verbs are distinguishable by their prefixes. They can take pronominal prefixes to indicate person, number, and irrealis/realis mode, as can be seen above in
390-419: A number of pidgins and creoles. Most notable among these are Indonesian , Tok Pisin , Hiri Motu , Solomon Islands Pijin , Bislama , and Papuan Malay . 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 ,
455-540: 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
520-739: 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
585-456: 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
650-505: 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
715-514: 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
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#1733092431081780-446: 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
845-507: 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
910-506: 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
975-553: 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
1040-505: Is voiced in low-tone syllables but voiceless in high-tone syllables. Other phonemes are neutral with respect to tone and so occur in both high-tone or low-tone environments. Yabem has nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns and adverbs. Some categories, such as verbs and nouns, are distinguishable by the types of morphology that they are able to take. Yabem nouns can take inalienable possessive suffixes, distinguishing person, number and inclusivity/exclusivity. Alienable possessives are indicated by
1105-546: The German Lutheran missionaries who first arrived at Simbang, a Yabem-speaking village, in 1885. Yabem was the first language for which the missionaries created a writing system because it was the first language that they encountered when they arrived. They even created a school system to provide education for the Yabem community. By 1939, it was spoken by as many as 15,000 people and understood by as many as 100,000 (Zahn 1940). In
1170-580: 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
1235-535: 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
1300-468: 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
1365-524: 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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#17330924310811430-409: 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
1495-450: The 1950s, Yabem remains one of the best-documented Austronesian languages, with extensive instructional and liturgical materials (including many original compositions, not just translations from German or English) as well as grammars and dictionaries. The government wanted an easier assimilation to Western culture and values and access to their superior educational resources and so English was the most efficient language of instruction. Still,
1560-486: The Austronesian languages ca. 1970 would divide them into something like the following branches: It is now known that the Melanesian languages do not form a genealogical node: they are at best paraphyletic , and very likely polyphyletic ; like Papuan , the term is now used as one of convenience, and sometimes placed in scare quotes . Although the term was at least in the beginning partially racial rather than linguistic,
1625-423: 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
1690-565: 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
1755-415: 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",
1820-418: 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
1885-454: 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
1950-506: The German missionary orthographies in New Guinea, apparently did not sanction labialized labials, preferring instead to signal rounding on labials by the presence of a round mid vowel ( -o- or -ô- ) between the labial consonant and the syllable nucleus, as in vs. ômôêŋ 'you'll come' vs. ômêŋ 'he'll come' or ômôa 'you'll dwell' vs. ômac 'you'll be sick' (Dempwolff 1939). (Compare
2015-492: The Melanesian and other Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages are typologically similar, due to being the Austronesian languages most heavily restructured under the influence of various Papuan language families. In terms of phylogenetic affiliation, “Melanesian languages” thus refer to a heterogenous set of language families : Most of the languages of Melanesia are members of the Austronesian language family or one of
Yabem language - Misplaced Pages Continue
2080-524: The Morphology section. kê-poa 3SG -break kê-poa 3SG-break 'it breaks' Some words can function as either nouns or verbs and thus take either nominal or verbal morphology: ŋoc 1SG . POSS -sail lac ŋoc lac 1SG.POSS-sail 'my sail' Mismatch in the number of words between lines: 2 word(s) in line 1, 1 word(s) in line 2 ( help ); ta-lac 1PL -sail ta-lac 1PL-sail 'we sail' Most of these are derived from
2145-641: 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
2210-468: 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,
2275-434: 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
2340-421: The decade after World War II, the mission's network of schools managed to educate 30,000 students by using Yabem as the medium of instruction (Streicher 1982). Although the usage of Yabem as a local lingua franca was replaced by Tok Pisin , which was used in informal everyday life, such as religious meetings and the workplace, and English, which was used in more formal institutions like education and government in
2405-405: 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
2470-423: 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
2535-506: 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
2600-581: 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
2665-528: 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]
Yabem language - Misplaced Pages Continue
2730-616: 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
2795-399: 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
2860-425: 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
2925-407: 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
2990-747: 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 ,
3055-605: 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,
3120-613: The language's status as "threatened." It may be spelled Jabêm, Jabem, Jabim, Yabim and is also known as Laulabu. Yabem distinguishes seven vowel qualities. The glottal stop , written with a -c , is distinctive only at the end of syllables. The only other consonants that can occur there are labials and nasals: p, b, m, ŋ . The liquid /l/ is realized as either a flap [ɾ] or a lateral [l] . Syllable-structure constraints are most easily explained if labialized and prenasalized consonants are considered to be unit phonemes rather than clusters. However, Otto Dempwolff , who greatly influenced
3185-529: 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
3250-544: The many Papuan families. By one count, there are 1,319 languages in Melanesia, scattered across a small amount of land. The proportion of 716 sq. kilometers per language is by far the most dense rate of languages in relation to land mass in the earth, almost three times as dense as in Nigeria, a country famous for its high number of languages in a compact area. In addition to this large number of indigenous languages, there are also
3315-423: 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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#17330924310813380-451: 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
3445-728: The orthographies of Sio and Kâte .) Yabem has a simple system of register tone that distinguishes high-tone syllables from low-tone ones. In the standard orthography, high-tone syllables are unmarked, and the nuclei of low-tone syllables are marked with a grave accent, as in oc 'sun' vs. òc 'my foot' or uc 'breadfruit' vs. ùc 'hunting net'. Tone distinctions in Yabem appear to be of relatively recent origin (Bradshaw 1979) and still correlate strongly with obstruent voicing contrasts (but not in its closest relative, Bukawa ). Only high tones occur in syllables with voiceless obstruents ( p, t, k ), and only low tone occurs in syllables with voiced obstruents ( b, d, g ). The fricative /s/
3510-473: 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
3575-414: 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
3640-537: 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
3705-399: 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
3770-493: 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
3835-514: The sense of the noun originally, though some appear to be derived from actions expressed by verbs: ta-ômac 1PL -laugh ta-ômac 1PL-laugh Melanesian languages In linguistics, Melanesian is an obsolete term referring to the Austronesian languages of Melanesia : that is, the Oceanic , Eastern Malayo-Polynesian , or Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages apart from Polynesian and Micronesian . A typical classification of
3900-458: The transition from the usage of Kâte and Yabem, which are languages with local origins, to Tok Pisin and English, which are languages with foreign origins, affected the dynamic of the people and their view of language and the church somewhat negatively. Yabem also shares a close relationship with the Kela and Bukawa languages. In fact, many people who speak Bukawa also speak Yabem. Ethnologue classifies
3965-535: 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
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#17330924310814030-416: 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
4095-430: 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
4160-503: 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
4225-552: 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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