6 The integrity of the Austronesian language family

In: Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, Roger Blench, Malcolm Ross, Ilia Peiros & Marie Lin,
eds, Past human migrations in East Asia: Matching archaeology, linguistics and
genetics, 161–181. London: Routledge
6 The integrity of the
Austronesian language family
From Taiwan to Oceania
Malcolm Ross
1. Introduction
My purpose in this chapter is to address four questions which relate to the integrity
of the Austronesian language family:
1
2
3
4
Are the aboriginal languages of Taiwan and the languages of Oceania
related?
What is the nature of this relationship? Does it reflect migration?
Do these relationships reflect migratory direction?
How does a linguist reach these answers?
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.
2. Are the Formosan and Oceanic languages related?
We may rephrase this question, and ask, ‘Are the Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian
languages (which include Oceanic) related?’ The answer is straightforward. They
are all Austronesian, a fact which is self-evident from the vocabulary in Table 6.1,
which shows a few common words from Atayal (north Taiwan), Tsou, Rukai and
Paiwan (all central/south Taiwan), Tagalog (Luzon, Philippines), Toba Batak
(western Sumatra), Uma (central Sulawesi), Manggarai (Flores), Kairiru (off the
north coast of New Guinea) and Samoan (Polynesia).
at
ra
Java
INDONESIA
Borneo

160¡
NEW
ZEALAND
New
Caledonia
Vanuatu
Fiji
Rotuma
Tuvalu
180¡
'ATA
Tonga
Niue
160¡
Rarotonga
Tahiti
Marquesas
Rapa
140¡
Tuamotu
Archipelago
FRENCH POLYNESIA
O C E A N I C
Tokelau
Wallis
Samoa
& Futuna
Kiribati
Marshall
Islands
Map 6.I The Austronesian family and major Austronesian language groups
AUSTRALIA
PAPUA
NEW GUINE A
140¡
Irian
Jaya
Nauru
Solomon Is
Federated States
of Micronesia
Hawai'i
ds
120¡
Guam
lan
100¡
Yap
S. HALMAHERA /
W. NEW GUINEA
CENTRAL
MALAYO-POLYNESIAN
Timor
Moluccas
Palau
Marianas
k Is
also
MADAGASCAR
Sulawesi
S
WESTERN
MALAYO-POLYNESIAN
m
*
JAPAN
FORMOSAN
Taiwan
PINE
Su
CHINA
ILIP
¢
PH
o
Co
120¡
40¡
Easter
Island
20¡
Equator 0¡
20¡
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 163
Table 6.1 Selected words in scattered Austronesian languages
ear
eye
head
louse
three
freshwater seven
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
3. What is the nature of Austronesian relationships?
This question asks about the genesis of new Austronesian-speaking communities.
The linguistic evidence suggests that new Austronesian-speaking communities
have in most cases been created through the geographical expansion of an old
Austronesian-speaking community and its subsequent separation, whether
sudden or gradual, into two or more new communities. That is, the relationship
among Austronesian languages is usually a genealogical relationship, reflecting
continuity across generations.
Important evidence of genealogical continuity occurs in the form of regular
correspondences between the sounds of various languages. In Table 6.1, Atayal
tʃ, for example, corresponds regularly with Tsou, Rukai and Paiwan ts and with
t in all the other languages. This is the result of regular sound changes that have
affected speech over time. I return to this below.
A caveat is needed here, however. Some Austronesian-speaking communities
have been created through the adoption of an Austronesian language by a
community which previously spoke some other language, i.e. by language
shift. In general, language shift leaves few linguistic clues, as speakers tend to
become highly competent in their new language, but sometimes linguistic clues
remain. Speakers may retain items of vocabulary from their former language.
Shift probably occurred quite often during the earlier phase of the Austronesian
dispersal as agriculturalist Austronesian speakers encountered and (partly)
absorbed communities of foragers in the Philippines and the Indo-Malaysian
archipelago. Reid (1994) provides evidence of this in the vocabulary of the
Austronesian languages of formerly foraging Negrito groups in the Philippines.
There have also been shifts as Austronesian speakers have encountered speakers
of Papuan languages, also agriculturalists, in New Guinea. Laycock (1973) notes
a few words from the Papuan language Olo in the speech of a group of speakers
164 Malcolm Ross
of Sissano, an Austronesian language spoken on the north coast of New Guinea,
and oral history recounts that they are descended from Olo speakers who shifted
language a few generations ago. Sometimes, language shift is evidenced by a
pronunciation of the new language that is characteristic of the speakers’ old
language: Indian English is a well-known case. Another such case has been noted
on New Ireland (Bismarck Archipelago), where speakers of a Papuan language
have shifted to an Austronesian language which in its present-day form is known
as Madak (Ross 1994). However, it is likely that the majority of language shifts
remain linguistically undetectable, as language shift constitutes a break in
genealogical continuity which usually has little linguistic effect.
From what we know of the archaeology and social anthropology of
Austronesian speakers, we can infer that shift was more common earlier in the
Austronesian dispersal as foragers adopted Austronesian speech, but less common
in New Guinea, where both Austronesian and Papuan speakers continued to
practise agriculture and the absorption of one group by another was less likely. It
is difficult to estimate just how great a role shift has played at any period, but it is
always likely to have been a minority role, as the correlation of archaeology and
linguistic evidence indicates that the expansion of Austronesian languages was
rapid (Bellwood, this volume), and shift could not have occurred fast enough to
account for its speed.
In the south-east Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Polynesia and most
of Micronesia, shift has played no role at all in the Austronesian expansion, as
these territories were previously uninhabited.
It has sometimes been claimed that new Austronesian-speaking communities
have come into being in various other ways. Dixon (1997) proposes a convergence
model in which unrelated languages gradually became more similar to each other
until a family resemblance emerges, but there is no attested case of this, and
such a process would not give rise to the regular sound correspondences among
Austronesian languages.
Capell (1943) claimed that Austronesian languages in New Guinea were the
outcomes of pidginization, but this is erroneous. A pidgin language is formed
in conditions of social catastrophe where speakers from two or more speech
communities try to use a target language native to none of them. The result is
often a language in which vocabulary is largely drawn from the target language,
and grammatical structure is a simplified version of speakers’ native languages.
The most clearly attested case in the Austronesian region is represented by the
varieties of Pacific Pidgin English, which clearly aren’t Austronesian. Such cases
occur only in conditions of social catastrophe and there is no evidence that they
were common during the Austronesian dispersal. The phenomenon which Capell
attributed to pidginization was metatypy, where one of the languages of a group
of bilingual speakers gets restructured on the model of their other language (Ross
1996). Metatypy is fairly easy to detect. It is a blip, but not a break, in genealogical
continuity, as the language continues to be passed on from one generation to the
next.
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 165
Finally, Bakker and Mous (1994) have collected a number of cases of language
intertwining: a new language is formed when members of two speech communities
form a single new community. Like pidginization, the result is a new language,
but one in which parts of the language are drawn from the two different sources in
quite unpredictable ways. No one has claimed that language intertwining played
a role in the dispersal of Austronesian.
Overwhelmingly, then, relationships between Austronesian languages are
relationships of inheritance. Shift has probably played a significant secondary role,
but not one that competes with inheritance. The main reason why Austronesian
languages cover the vast region which they occupy on the map in Figure 6.1 is
quite simply that their speakers dispersed, taking their languages with them.
4. Do these relationships reflect migratory direction?
The answer which most Austronesianist linguists would give today is that
speakers of Austronesian languages moved from Taiwan, via the Philippines
and the Indo-Malaysian archipelago, to New Guinea and Island Melanesia, and
thence to Polynesia and Micronesia. This view is encapsulated in the family tree
in Figure 6.2, which is based on a tree originally presented by Blust (1977) and
for which evidence has been presented in a number of publications by Blust.
Comparison of the tree (Figure 6.2) with the map (Figure 6.1) indicates clearly
that the Austronesian dispersal began in Taiwan and ended in Oceania.
A distinction is made in Figure 6.2 between reconstructible interstage languages,
shown in boxes, and groups of languages that are not exclusively descended from
a single interstage, shown in italics. Thus Blust (1999) gives evidence that the
Figure 6.1 Blust’s Austronesian family tree
166 Malcolm Ross
Proto-Oceanic
Other Oceanic languages
Polynesian
Proto-Polynesian
Tongan, Niuean
Proto-Nuclear
Figure 6.2 A small part of the genealogical tree of Oceanic languages
fourteen Formosan languages form nine primary subgroups of Austronesian,
coordinate with each other and with Malayo-Polynesian. This means that there
is no ancestor which the Formosan languages share exclusively, as their most
immediate shared ancestor is Proto Austronesian, which they also share with
Proto Malayo-Polynesian. That is, there is no ‘Proto Formosan’. Sagart (2004;
this volume) proposes an alternative subgrouping of Formosan languages, but this
too recognizes no ‘Proto Formosan’.
Similarly, Figure 6.2 shows no ‘Proto Western Malayo-Polynesian’, as western
Malayo-Polynesian groups have no exclusively shared ancestor (Ross 1995).
Despite numerous references in the literature to a ‘Western Malayo-Polynesian’
group, the western Malayo-Polynesian languages consist of some 20–25 groups,
each descended from Proto Malayo-Polynesian. A similar comment can be made
about the central Malayo-Polynesian languages. I return to these matters in §7.
5. How does a linguist arrive at a genealogical tree?
Various scholars, some of them practitioners of disciplines other than linguistics,
have treated Blust’s tree as if it were an impressionistic creation which may be
easily dismissed (e.g. Meacham 1984; Solheim 1996; Oppenheimer and Richards
2001). For this reason, with apologies to readers who are familiar with the linguistic
comparative method, this section is devoted to a rather textbookish discussion
of the methodological underpinnings of genealogical (or phylogenetic) trees in
historical linguistics.
As I mentioned in relation to Table 6.1, Austronesian languages display largely
regular sound correspondences, attesting to largely regular sound changes which
reflect generational continuity. Sound correspondences also provide evidence
about subgrouping, which allows us to construct a tree (Figure 6.2) which in turn
allows us to infer directionality (§4).
We know from historical data that languages undergo change, and that change
tends to be regular. Regularity of sound change is attested, for example, by the
vowel change in Table 6.2. Wherever Old English (roughly ad 800) had long [u:]
like the oo in modern moon, Modern English has [aʋ] has in how. That is, Old
English [u:] has become Modern English [aʋ].
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 167
Table 6.2 An English vowel change
Old English
Modern English
hū [hu:]
how [haʋ]
hūs [hu:s]
house [haʋs]
mūs [mu:s]
mouse [maʋs]
ūt [u:t]
out [aʋt]
sūð [su:ð]
south [saʋθ]
būɣan [bu:ɣan]
bow [baʋ]
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 northeastern 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
Table 6.3 Sound correspondences in two languages of
New Britain (Bismarck Archipelago)
Minigir
Tolai
gloss
tasi-
tai-
‘cross-sibling’
savua-
avua-
‘widow’
bilausu-
bilau-
‘nose’
suru
uru
‘bone’
susu-
u-
‘breast; suck’
sui
ui
‘snake’
tasuka
tauka
‘squid’
mamisa
mami
‘short yam’
masoso
mao
‘(banana) ripe’
168 Malcolm Ross
Table 6.4 Cognate vocabulary in selected Oceanic languages
eye
back
father
hand, five
mosquito
ear
Takia
mala-
…
tama-
–
–
–
Tawala
mata-
muli-
ama
nima-
–
taniga-
Motu
mata-
muri-
tama-
ima-
namo
taia
Bali-Vitu
mata-
–
tama-
lima
–
taliŋa-
Tolai
mata
muru-
tama-
lima
–
taliŋa-
Bugotu
mata-
–
tama-
lima-
ñamu
–
Gela
mata-
muri
tama-
lima-
namu
taliŋa
Kwaio
maa-
buri-
maʔa
nima-
namu
ariŋa-
Bauan
mata-
muri
tama-
liŋa-
namu
daliŋa-
Tongan
mata
mui
tamai
nima
namu
teliŋa
Samoan
mata
muli
tama
lima
namu
taliŋa
Tahitian
mata
muri
tama
b
rima
namu
tariʔa
Rarotongan mata
muri
tamab
rima
namu
tariŋa
Maori
mata
muri
tama
b
rima
namu
tariŋa
Hawaiian
maka
muli
kama
lima
–
–
a
b
Note
a Also tama ‘child’. b ‘child’.
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,
Figure 6.3 An elaborated Austronesian genealogical tree
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 171
1993) to establish the Central/Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Central MalayoPolynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian and South Halmahera/West New Guinea
subgroups shown in Figure 6.2.
The method described above is often supplemented by the use of corroboratory
evidence from external witnesses. Let us suppose that there were genuine doubt
about the direction of the innovation which I have described above as the Proto
Nuclear Polynesian merger of Proto Oceanic *l and *r, and that a scholar were
seriously entertaining the alternative, that there was just one consonant here, Proto
Oceanic *l, which split into two consonants in numerous Oceanic languages.
The crucial issue, of course, is whether Proto Oceanic had both *l and *r or just
*l. The nodes in the tree above Proto Oceanic in Figure 6.2 are Proto Eastern
Malayo-Polynesian, Proto Central/Eastern Malayo-Polynesian and Proto MalayoPolynesian. If Proto Oceanic inherited both *l and *r from these earlier interstage
languages, then we would expect to find these two consonants also separately
reflected in languages of other branches of the tree, and indeed we do.1
6. The Malayo-Polynesian, Formosan-Philippine and
Formosan hypotheses
Clearly, corroboratory evidence from external witnesses cannot be used at the
top of the tree. If Proto Austronesian represents the highest known node of the
tree, then it must be reconstructed on the basis of evidence from Austronesian
languages alone, as there are by definition no external witnesses.
But is this true? Might there be external witnesses? We can be reasonably
confident on archaeological grounds (Bellwood, this volume) that the ancestors of
Proto Austronesian speakers came to Taiwan from the mainland, but no languages
descended from siblings of Proto Austronesian can be identified there with
certainty. Three major proposals about the external relationships of Austronesian
have appeared in the literature. One, the ‘Austric’ hypothesis, links it with AustroAsiatic (Schmidt 1906). Although there are suggestive morphological similarities
between certain Austro-Asiatic and Austronesian languages, very little Proto
Austric vocabulary has been convincingly reconstructed (Reid 1999, 2005), i.e.
there is nothing that can be used as a reliable external witness. Sagart (1994)
has suggested that Old Chinese was a close relative of Proto Austronesian, and
now proposes that this relationship is due to the fact that both are members of a
Sino-Tibetan/Austronesian macrophylum (Sagart 2005b; this volume). He lists
possible cognate vocabulary, but it is insufficient to allow Old Chinese to be used
as an external witness. The third proposal is that the Tai-Kadai languages are
related to Austronesian. Benedict (1942, 1975) proposed a larger ‘Austro-Tai’
family, but this has been poorly received because of the liberties that Benedict
took in his reconstructions. More recently, however, Ostapirat (2005) has shown
that there are systematic sound correspondences between the basic vocabularies
reconstructed for Proto Tai-Kadai and Proto Austronesian. He takes these as
evidence that Tai-Kadai and Austronesian are related, but is agnostic as to whether
the two together form an Austro-Tai family or whether Tai-Kadai is a high-order
172 Malcolm Ross
subgroup of Austronesian (Ostapirat shows that it does not reflect the defining
innovations of Malayo-Polynesian). Building on Ostapirat’s work and his own
work on Formosan subgrouping, Sagart (2004, 2005a; this volume) proposes that
Tai-Kadai represents a branch of Austronesian that split from the rest of the family
at a node perhaps just above Proto Malayo-Polynesian in Figure 6.2. If this is
the case, then Tai-Kadai languages are not external witnesses for the purposes of
reconstructing Proto Austronesian, although they may provide additional internal
evidence.
Hence there are no external witnesses to which appeal can be made in
reconstructing Proto Austronesian, and partly for this reason there is more than
one hypothesis about the higher-level subgrouping of Austronesian and therefore
about where Proto Austronesian was spoken.
Above, I have presented Dahl’s (1973) and Blust’s (1977) Malayo-Polynesian
hypothesis, accepted in its broad outlines by most historical linguists working
on Austronesian. However, two linguists, Dyen (1995) and Wolff (1995), have
put forward variants of what Pawley (2002) dubs the ‘Formosan-Philippine
hypothesis’,2 and Peiros (1994; this volume) proposes what I will call a Formosan
hypothesis. I shall not discuss alternative hypotheses about the migrations of early
Austronesian speakers offered by archaeologists Meacham (1984) and Solheim
(1996) or geneticists Oppenheimer and Richards (2001, 2002), as they employ no
linguistic evidence.3
Under the Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis, a number of innovations are held to
define Malayo-Polynesian languages and to have occurred before the dispersal
of Proto Malayo-Polynesian speakers. There are three sound-change innovations
(Blust 1990):
1
2
3
PAn *t and *C merged as PMP *t.
PAn *N and *n merged (with some unexplained exceptions) as PMP *n.4
PAn *S and *h merged as PMP *h.
There is also a number of quite complicated morphological innovations, the
details of which are beyond the scope of this chapter. They consist of innovations
in pronouns and in verbal affixes. A major set of innovations in pronouns involved
a ‘politeness shift’. These changes were reconstructed by Blust (1977) and are
revised by Ross (2006). Both Proto Austronesian and Proto Malayo-Polynesian
had complex and unusual verbal systems, and these systems are largely shared
by their modern descendants in Taiwan and the Philippines (these are the
similarities noted by the proponents of the Formosan-Philippine hypothesis). The
Proto Malayo-Polynesian verbal system, however, underwent innovations that
introduced complexities absent from Formosan systems. Among other things,
Proto Malayo-Polynesian added the derivational prefixes *paN- ‘distributive’,
*paR- ‘durative, reciprocal’ and *paka- ‘aptative, potential’ (Ross 2002).
The Formosan-Philippine hypothesis essentially says that the Formosan
and Philippine languages look so similar that they must form a subgroup. The
similarities are to be found both in vocabulary and in grammar. This position,
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 173
however, neglects the methodological point made in §5 that a subgroup is defined
by shared innovations. If the Formosan-Philippine hypothesis is to be taken
seriously, then it needs to be shown that Formosan and Philippine languages
reflect a set of innovations that other Austronesian languages do not share, i.e. that
there is evidence for a shared Proto Formosan-Philippine node. Such evidence
has not been offered. Instead, it is likely that the similarities among Formosan
and Philippine languages are shared retentions of Proto Austronesian features,
an inference which causes no difficulty under the Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis.
Alternative explanations would also need to be offered for the Malayo-Polynesian
innovations noted above, together with an alternative Austronesian subgrouping,
but these have not been forthcoming.
Any alternative to the Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis needs to explain away
these shared innovations. Of the sound-change innovations, the most important –
because of its high token frequency – is (1). It is readily illustrated from Table 6.1,
and the relevant sound correspondences are shown in Table 6.6. Under the MalayoPolynesian hypothesis, Proto Austronesian had two sounds *C (perhaps [ts]) and
*t, which are reflected differently in Atayal, Tsou, Rukai and Paiwan, but which
merged in Proto Malayo-Polynesian.5
An alternative interpretation of the evidence would suggest that only *t occurred
in Proto Austronesian, and that it split into two sounds in a language ancestral
just to Atayal, Tsou, Rukai, Paiwan and certain other Formosan languages. Peiros
(n.d., 1994; this volume) sets out to show that such a split did occur, and that it
was regularly conditioned. He uses this as evidence for a Formosan hypothesis,
i.e. a hypothesis to the effect that the Formosan languages form a subgroup
descended from a ‘Proto Formosan’ (Peiros, this volume). He accepts the
validity of innovations (2) and (3) above and therefore of the Malayo-Polynesian
(his ‘non-Formosan’) subgroup. This means that, for him, Proto Austronesian
underwent a primary split into Proto Formosan and Proto Malayo-Polynesian. If
Table 6.6 Sound correspondences from Table 6.1
Proto Austronesian
*C
*t
Atayal
tʃ
t
Tsou
ts
t
Rukai
ts
t
Paiwan
ts
ty
Proto Malayo-Polynesian
*t
*t
Tagalog
t
t
Toba Batak
t
t
Uma
t
t
Manggarai
t
t
Kairiru
t
t
Samoan
t
t
174 Malcolm Ross
this were so, it seems that the likely homeland of Proto Austronesian, based on the
probable homelands of the two daughter-languages, would still be either Taiwan
or somewhere in its immediate neighbourhood.
Like the Nuclear Polynesian merger described in §5, the success of a converse
hypothesis depends on demonstrating that the split, in this case of *t, occurred
under regular conditions. Peiros’ account of the putative split of *t into *C and *t
is based on data from one Formosan language, Tsou, which, he claims, reflects
processes which occurred in Proto Formosan. More specifically, Tsou is said to
reflect the placement of stress in Proto Austronesian and Proto Formosan, and
*t-split is said to be conditioned by the position in the root of *t, the occurrence
in the root of certain other consonants and vowels, and the position of stress. It
is probably true that Tsou reflects ancient stress placement, but the conditionings
proposed by Peiros are rather implausible (i.e. unlike those commonly occurring
in the world’s languages), admit of a number of exceptions, and the distribution
of *t and *C is more readily accounted for by the operation of Proto Austronesian
consonant harmony (Ross 1992).6 Peiros’s study is intriguing and I think that
the reconstruction of stress and consonant harmony in early Austronesian needs
further investigation, but on balance the present evidence does not support his
hypothesis.7
This means that there are no convincing innovations supporting either the
Formosan-Philippine or Formosan hypotheses, and the Malayo-Polynesian
hypothesis stands effectively without a strong challenger.
7. Elaborating the tree
Linguistic inheritance is often more complicated than the model I have outlined
so far implies. The divergence of sister-languages is often ‘a gradual and untidy
affair’ (Pawley 2002) which results in innovation-linked subgroups (= linkages)
rather than the innovation-defined subgroups discussed in §5 and §6. An
innovation-linked subgroup is a group of languages with a network of overlapping
innovations. That is, no innovation is shared by all the languages in the subgroup.
Instead, for example, languages A, B and C share innovation X, languages B,
C, D and E share innovation Y, and languages A, C and E share innovation Z.
Innovation-linked subgroups may arise either via a dialect network from gradual
diversification within a speech community, or from division within an existing
linkage, In this case the new linkage has no discrete protolanguage (Pawley and
Ross 1995). Geraghty (1983) shows that such innovation-linked subgroups exist
in Fiji.
These observations are relevant to the Austronesian genealogical tree, an
elaborated version of which is presented in Figure 6.4. Two of its features are
mentioned in §4. The Formosan languages belong, according to Blust (1999),
to nine primary Austronesian subgroups, coordinate with each other and with
Malayo-Polynesian. Western Malayo-Polynesian languages belong to 20–25
Malayo-Polynesian groups, coordinate with each other and with Central/Eastern
Malayo-Polynesian. A third feature of the elaborated tree is its presentation of
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 175
the internal structure of Central/Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, which has received
rather piecemeal attention in the literature and to which I return below.
The subgrouping of Formosan languages among themselves remains somewhat
problematic. Three alternatives to Blust’s proposed nine primary Austronesian
subgroups are offered in this volume, one by Peiros (in his Table 7.4), a second
by Li, and a third by Sagart. However, if Taiwan is indeed the homeland of
Austronesian, then it is to be expected that the subgrouping of its Austronesian
languages will be hard to disentangle, since (i) the languages are likely to form
primary Austronesian subgroups and (ii) contact over the long period that they
have been more or less in their present locations is likely to have obscured
the boundaries of these subgroups. There is some agreement among the three
proposals about the smallest subgroups, but these are outweighed by complex
disagreements about larger groupings, and it is clear that this issue needs much
more work.
In both the Formosan and Western Malayo-Polynesian branches of Table 6.4,
we are confronted by a number of subgroups all descended from a single
protolanguage, the relationships between which are murky. However, this
murkiness has different causes in each of the two branches, Whereas the problem
of sorting out the internal linguistic history of Austronesian in Taiwan is largely a
product of a long period of time in situ in a contained area, the parallel problem
FIGURE 6.4 TO BE SUPPLIED
Figure 6.4 CAPTION TO BE SUPPLIED
176 Malcolm Ross
with regard to Western Malayo-Polynesian languages arose (i) because the region
was apparently settled rapidly by Austronesian speakers and (ii) because there
have been numerous population movements within this region at different times,
resulting in a complex linguistic prehistory (Blust 2006). Despite this complexity,
there has been some recent progress in sorting out chunks of western MalayoPolynesian history. Adelaar (2005) proposes a Malayo-Sumbawan subgroup,
based on shared lexical and phonological innovations, that includes Malayic,
Chamic and the Balinese-Sasak-Sumbawa group in one branch, and Sundanese and
Madurese in two other branches. Malayo-Sumbawan does not include Javanese.
This is effectively the first progress on this topic since Nothofer (1975). Blust
(2006) concludes that the Sama Bajaw language of the so-called ‘sea gypsies’ has
its origins, like Malagasy, among the Barito languages of south-east Borneo.
At the western extreme of the western Malayo-Polynesian area lies Acehnese.
It has long been recognized that this is an Austronesian language containing
Austroasiatic elements. Thurgood (1999) argued that Acehnese is a member of the
Chamic subgroup of Austronesian, and attributes its presence in western Sumatra
to a movement of speakers during the late first millennium ad. Recent work by
Sidwell (2005) suggests, however, that it has fewer Austroasiatic elements than
the Chamic languages and should be regarded as a primary branch of AcehChamic (in opposition to the Chamic languages) because speakers of the language
ancestral to Acehnese became relatively isolated from the rest of Aceh-Chamic
in their present location by ad 400 as a result of the extension of influence of the
Funan state from the lower Mekong around the Gulf of Thailand to the Isthmus
of Kra.
I move now to Central/Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) in the eastern part
of the Indo-Malaysian archipelago, which is an innovation-defined subgroup, but
only just (Blust 1993). The innovation set is less significant than those which
define Malayo-Polynesian and Oceanic, indicating that Proto CEMP speakers
spent only a short period as a unified speech community. Proto CEMP underwent
no innovations in its sound system relative to Proto Malayo-Polynesian, but all
known CEMP languages reflect a reduction of heterorganic consonant sequences
arising through reduplication, except where the first consonant was a nasal (m,
n, ŋ).8 For example, Proto Malayo-Polynesian *bukbuk ‘wood weevil’ became
Proto CEMP *bubuk, i.e. the heterorganic Proto Malayo-Polynesian sequence *kb
was reduced to Proto CEMP *b. There were also a number of irregular changes
to single words. For example, Proto Malayo-Polynesian *maRi ‘come’ became
Proto CEMP *mai. As a result of crossing the Wallace Line, Proto CEMP speakers
acquired words for marsupials (Blust 1982). CEMP languages also underwent
quite radical grammatical changes, but these are more readily attributed to
widespread metatypy due to contact with now lost non-Austronesian languages
than to changes which occurred in Proto CEMP (this is an area which needs more
research).
Central Malayo-Polynesian languages form an innovation-linked group, i.e.
there was never a Proto Central Malayo-Polynesian (Blust 1993). Instead, they are
simply what was left of the CEMP group after the communities ancestral to Proto
The integrity of the Austronesian language family 177
South Halmahera/West New Guinea (SHWNG) and Proto Oceanic had separated
from it.
If there was ever a Proto Eastern Malayo-Polynesian speaking speech
community, its existence was even more fleeting than that of Proto CEMP.
Evidence for the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian grouping consists of putative
innovations in vocabulary (Blust 1978 gives 56), but some of these may prove to
be inherited words.
The two putative daughters of Proto Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, which may
actually have been daughters of Proto CEMP, were Proto SHWNG and Proto
Oceanic. Each is a subgroup defined by a clear set of sound changes (for SHWNG,
see Ross 1995) and in the case of Oceanic by other kinds of innovation too.
Oceanic is the most clearly defined of all Austronesian subgroups, first established
by Dempwolff (1937). The innovation set has since undergone modifications and
additions which have strengthened it. Summaries are given by Ross (1995, 1998)
and Lynch et al. (2002: ch. 4).
What is the point of elaborating Blust’s tree in Figure 6.2 in this way? First,
because Figure 6.4 is in various respects a more accurate presentation of the
dispersal of Austronesian speakers. Second, because it tells us something about
the speed of the Austronesian dispersal. We may infer that where a subgroup is
well defined by innovations, its speakers spent a period of time as a unified speech
community, during which the innovations in their speech occurred. This is true
of Proto Malayo-Polynesian, Proto SHWNG and Proto Oceanic (further east it
is also true of Proto Polynesian and Proto Nuclear Polynesian). The CEMP and
Eastern Malayo-Polynesian nodes in Blust’s tree are much less well defined,
however, suggesting that the putative Proto CEMP and Proto Eastern MalayoPolynesian speech communities each remained a unity only for a short time (and
the latter perhaps not at all).
These findings accord with the archaeological record, which indicates
that Malayo-Polynesian speakers dispersed at some speed from the northern
Philippines southwards into the Indo-Malaysian archipelago and eastwards to
New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago. According to Bellwood and Hiscock
(2005), they settled this region in about nine centuries, between 2300 and 1400 bc.
The speed of settlement is attested by the fact that CEMP and Eastern MalayoPolynesian are tiny blips in the rapid eastward progress of Austronesian speakers.
No significant lengths of time were spent in one place by speakers ancestral to the
CEMP languages until they reached New Guinea, where the excellent definition
of the Oceanic subgroup indicates that the Proto Oceanic speech community
remained integrated for some time, a fact which correlates with the efflorescence
of the Lapita Culture in north-west Melanesia from about 1400 bc (Kirch 1997;
Ross et al. 1998, 2002).
178 Malcolm Ross
Notes
1 We need to be assiduous in this task. It happens that the languages of the South
Halmahera/West New Guinea group, the ‘sibling’ of Oceanic, also exhibit a merger of
the consonants ancestral to Proto Oceanic *l and *r.
2 Wolff (2006) indicates that he now accepts the Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis and has
abandoned the Formosan-Philippine hypothesis.
3 Interestingly, Hurles (2002) offers an alternative explanation of the genetic data used
by Oppenheimer and Richards. The alternative account accords well with the MalayoPolynesian hypothesis.
4 *N is written as *L by some scholars.
5 They have also merged in certain Formosan languages (Blust 1999), but these languages
do not share in the other Malayo-Polynesian innovations, and so it is inferred that the
merger occurred separately in these languages and in Proto Malayo-Polynesian.
6 Ross (1992) includes a critique of Peiros (n.d.) which also applies to Peiros (1994).
7 Peiros (this volume) also offers a lexicostatistical classification supporting a Formosan
subgroup. I have strong methodological objections to lexicostatistics, but these lie
beyond the scope of this chapter. Setting these aside, however, it should be noted
that Peiros does not clarify the position of non-Formosan languages in relation to his
Formosan subgroup, i.e. he does not show that they form a separate lexicostatistically
documented subgroup. Thus his lexicostatistics do not support a hypothesis different
from Blust’s or Sagart’s.
8 ‘Heterorganic’ means ‘articulated at different points in the mouth’. For example, p, b
and m are labial, t, d, n and r are apical (pronounced with the point of the tongue), k,
g and ŋ are velar (pronounced with the back of the tongue).
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