Explain the Malayo-Polynesian Languages, Please

Factual Questions
1

Okay, the world’s languages generally are broken down into a bunch of major groups like Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, etc. – big groups called “phylums” or “stocks” that are groups of related language families. I get this quite clearly.

And one of them is Malayo-Polynesian, which covers an area from Madagascar to Tahiti, including New Zealand, Indonesia, the Malay Peninsula, the indigenous languages of Taiwan, and virtually all the native languages of the various Pacific islands.

And yes, I know about Ethnologue, and I see that M-P is a major subgroup of something called “Austronesian.” But Ethnologue’s outline, though admirably thorough, is so complex in showing detailed breakdowns of relationships that I lose sight of the forest in noticing the relationship between two or three trees.

What I’m looking for, is for one of our talented comparative linguistics folks, to write a relatively clear and concise summary of how M-P is broken down into major groups, and what may be particularly interesting, in their opinion, about how they’re connected – a sort of simplified overview of the subject, that gives me some background for trying to wade through Ethnologue’s “Northeast Micronesic subgroup” or whatever, and have it make sense in terms of the big picture.

2

Austronesian comprises 4 main groups:

  1. Atayalic
  2. Tsouic
  3. Paiwanic
  4. Malayo-Polynesian

The first three are all indigenous to Taiwan and are spoken only on the island of Taiwan. The 4th is spread way the heck all over creation.

Malayo-Polynesian is divided into two main groups:
A. Western M-P
B. Central-Eastern M-P

A. Western Malayo-Polynesian includes the languages of the Philippines, Malaysia, Madagascar, and most of Indonesia. It also includes Cham, which is unusual for being the only M-P language indigenous to the mainland of Asia. Malay is spoken on the mainland too, but it originated in the Riau Islands of Indonesia. It’s broken down like this (just the broad outlines, internally it gets very complex):

  1. Northern Philippines
  2. Southern Philippines
  3. Meso-Philippine (Tagalog goes here)
  4. South Mindanao
  5. Celebes
  6. Borneo (Malagasy goes here)
  7. Sama-Bajaw
  8. Sundic (Malay, Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, Cham all go here)

B. Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian has one subgroup called “Oceanic,” for obvious reasons, that includes all the rest of the family. It breaks down like this:

  1. Central Malayo-Polynesian (Moluccan, Flores, etc. in the Lesser Sunda islands)
  2. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian:
    a) South Halmahera - Northwest New Guinea
    b) Oceanic

Since Oceanic includes the Polynesian languages you’re probably looking for, I’ll go into it a couple taxonomic levels deeper. The first 4 or 5 subgroups are in New Guinea.
I. Sarmi-Yotafa
II. Siassi
III. Markham
IV. Milne Bay-Central Province
V. Kimbe
VI. New Britain
VII. New Ireland-Tolai
VIII. Admiralty Islands
IX. Bougainville
X. Choiseul
XI. New Georgia
XII. Santa Isabel
XIII. Santa Cruz
XIV. Southern New Hebrides
XV. New Caledonia
XVI. Loyalty Islands
XVII. Remote Oceanic

The last of these subgroups includes the divisions
a. Micronesian
b. Southeast Solomons
c. Central & Northern New Hebrides
d. Central Pacific

This last one is subdivided further into 1. Rotuman-Fijian and 2. Polynesian. The latter includes more familiar languages like Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan.

Why I listed so many obscure little taxons - it shows what a teeny little corner of the family is occupied by the Polynesian languages that are spread over an enormous area. It shows how rapidly the speakers of these languages covered the area, because they are so closely related they dispersed very recently. By contrast, look how 3/4 of the top-level taxons are concentrated in Taiwan. It shows how much older those are, to have stayed in one place for a long time and differentiated deeply. This list also shows that the “Melanesian” languages comprise many different old taxons, while Polynesian and Micronesian are only parts of a single one of those taxons at that level. Really puts things in perspective.

Cite: A Guide to the World’s Languages by Merritt Ruhlen. Vol. I, Classification. (Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 338-353.

In fact, Ruhlen classified Austronesian not as a family on its own, but as only one sub-branch of a macrofamily called Austric, whose top-level divisions include
I. Miao-Yao (Hmong goes here)
II. Austroasiatic (Munda, Khasi, Khmer, and Vietnamese go here)
III. Austro-Tai - one sub-branch of this is Daic, which includes Thai and Lao, and the other sub-branch is Austronesian. But I will note that Austric, like other long-range macrofamilies, is a controversial phylum.

3

It should be noted that Merritt Ruhlen’s classifications are quite controversal:

What happened to the Austronesian languages may be thought of as follows: The language family originated in Taiwan*. It diversified over a thousand years or so. The speakers of one of the resulting languages moved on to the Philippines. Again, it diversified over a thousand years or so. The speakers of one of the resulting languages moved on to Malaysia. Again, it diversified over a thousand years or so. The speakers of one of the resulting languages moved on to New Guinea. The speakers of another of the resulting languages moved on to some of the closer islands of the South Pacific. Again, the language diversified over a thousand years or so. The speakers of one of the resulting languages moved on to more distant islands in the Pacific. And so forth for a couple more iterations.

*Of course, the family originated in Taiwan only in the sense that the furthest we can definitely trace back these languages is to there. Presumably all the languages on Earth can be eventually traced back to a common origin, apparently in Africa. The Austronesian speakers may have come from Southeast Asia, as Ruhlen conjectures, for instance.

4

If Daic and Austronesian share the same subphylum, they diverged at some point antecedent to both. Austronesian very clearly came from Taiwan, while the earliest speakers of Daic languages lived in southern China from whence they migrated to Thailand and Laos more recently. Connecting the dots puts proto-Austro-Tai in southern China, with Austronesian moving east and Daic moving south. There are still Daic languages spoken in southern China.

5

Johanna writes:

> If Daic and Austronesian share the same subphylum, they diverged at some
> point antecedent to both. Austronesian very clearly came from Taiwan, while
> the earliest speakers of Daic languages lived in southern China from whence
> they migrated to Thailand and Laos more recently. Connecting the dots puts
> proto-Austro-Tai in southern China, with Austronesian moving east and Daic
> moving south. There are still Daic languages spoken in southern China.

Thanks. Incidentally, the terms “macrofamily,” “phylum,” and “subphylum” are (somewhat haphazardly) used for groupings of languages at levels higher than families (which are more or less the groupings at the furthest level that we can presently definitely trace relationships. Thus Indo-European and Astronesian are families because that’s currently as far as most linguists say that we can trace relationships with any certainty. Groupings like Nostratic (above Indo-European) and Astric (above Astronesian) are controversial and usually referred to by terms like “macrofamily,” “phylum,” and “subphylum.” This hierachy of terms could get confused if, for instance, a new higher level of relationships becomes accepted. This really ought to be straightened out somehow.

6

Thank you, Wendell and Johanna. It helped immensely in sorting out my understanding to have that! It was, frankly, very confusing to try to follow the Ethnologue outline and get a grasp of what the actual phylum was like.

7

Sheesh. I meant “Austronesian,” not “Astronesian.” No, I don’t believe that they originated on Mars.

8

LOL! Next, you’ll be telling us that Nostratic is the language they spoke in Cordwainer Smith books! :wink:

9

She wrote Pippi in the South Seas.

10

Interesting stuff. Couple of questions for a Sinophile but not a linguist.

  1. When did the Taiwan aboriginals as the earliest originator theory start? When I first spent time in Taiwan in the early 80’s, it was widely known the aboriginals were part of the polynesian diaspora but not the originators. Gulanyu Island was kept by the Japanese as a preserve of the native way of life. I used to go to one of the restricted aboriginal places outside of Taipei all the time.

  2. Daic - is that related to the Dai nationality in China’s Yunnan province?

  3. the Miao-Yao is still widely spread throughout southwest China. In fact, it looks like in 3 weeks I will be revisiting a Miao-Yao-Zhuang area called Longsheng, Guangxi Province.

  4. Anything to update on the Tibeto-Burman Sino-Tibetan links? When I researched and wrote my guidebook in the mid-1980’s, the classification was Tibeto-Burman without a Sino link. Again, I am not a linguist, but it’s certainly politically *expedient * for the Chinese to “prove” a linguistic link between tibetan and Chinese. Just wondering how “proven”, "concrete"or “tenuous” is the linguistic Sino-Tibetan link. And where do the Burman languages come into play.

11

When the science of glottochronology found that this is the best way to explain the taxonomic structure, as explained at the bottom of post 2 and in post 3.

Yes, exactly.

I’ve heard Hmong called “the tone champion of Southeast Asia” because it has more tones than any other language (7, according to Wikipedia, though my notes list 8). IIUC, Hmong is just another name for Miao.

Sino-Tibetan has been an established family since the early 20th century. The adjustments to Sino-Tibetan that have been made over the years were the removal of Daic and Miao-Yao, which were once erroneously classified under Sino-Tibetan. But S-T as we know it today has been a stable classification since the publication of Benedict’s work in 1942. I never heard of it being called into question. I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.

Sino-Tibetan is divided into two main groups:
I. Sinitic
II. Tibeto-Burmese

Sinitic has two groups:
A. Bai
B. Chinese

Tibeto-Burmese (called Tibeto-Karen by Paul Benedict, because he places Karen at an equal taxonomic level with the rest of Tibeto-Burmese) is kind of tricky to divide up into discrete groups. Tibetan is one clear node, and Burmese is another clear one, but in between there are lots of languages and there’s been debate on how to file them in relation to one another. For example, Naga-Kuki-Chin languages spoken in the northeastern frontier states of India like Nagaland and Manipur, or Yi (formerly Lolo) spoken in Yunnan. How do these fit in along with Tibetan, Burmese, and Karen? I don’t have a good fix on it myself.

12

As to Sino-Tibetan, the place that interests me the most is Manipur. The topography of the state of Manipur is shaped like a bowl, a wide central valley ringed by hills. In the valley lives the majority Manipuri ethnic group, whose language is called Meitei and belongs to the Kuki-Chin branch. In the hills live many minority ethnic groups speaking other Kuki-Chin languages, which have some related languages on the Burmese side of the border as well.

OK, I looked up the Wikipedia article on Sino-Tibetan languages and it turns you’re right–some jokers named Beckwith and Miller are trying to take Chinese out of Sino-Tibetan.

So I was wrong about that.

13

I’m obviously not a linguist, but I do like to learn stuff about languages.

Anyway. . .

When were Miao-Yao and Dai removed from Sino-Tibetan? I have a copy of Kenneth Katzner’s “Languages of the World,” which was originally published in 1977, and updated in 1986. It still includes them.

14

Say what you want about Ruhlen, he gives the histories of how linguists identified each language family and figured out the classification, step by step.

“Although a few scholars were skeptical of the Chinese-Tai connection, it was largely accepted until 1942, when a young American linguist, Paul K. Benedict, proposed that the nearest affiliation of the Tai group was with the Austronesian family and not Sino-Tibetan. In fact a similar opinion had been offered by Gustav Schlegel as early as 1902. Whether the roots shared by Chinese and Tai are merely early loans, as Benedict maintains, or represent the residue of a common origin, as suggested by Manomaivibool (1976) and others, continues to divide the linguistic community. Furthermore, even if these roots are loans, the direction of borrowing is often in dispute. Nevertheless, whether or not Chinese and Tai are genetically related at some level, it would appear that Tai’s closest relatives are the Austronesian languages.”
(Ruhlen, op. cit., p. 144)

Well, all I know is Tai Babilonia’s closest relatives sure are Austronesian. She’s Filipina.

"For Benedict, the Sino-Tibetan family was constituted as shown in List 4.17.

List 4.17. Proposed Subgroupings of the Sino-Tibetan Family
Benedict 1942
SINO-TIBETAN:
I SINITIC
II TIBETO-KAREN:
A KAREN
B TIBETO-BURMAN

He explicitly excluded Miao-Yao from Sino-Tibetan, linking it tentatively with Tai, Austronesian, and (until 1966) Austroasiatic in an Austric phylum.

4.4.2 Present Status of Sino-Tibetan Classification [1991]
Renewed interest in classificatory problems during the late 1960’s and 1970’s has led to a growing consensus that Sino-Tibetan is made up of just three subfamilies: Sinitic, Karen, and Tibeto-Burman. Those who would include Tai or Miao-Yao appear to be in a decreasing minority; Benedict (1976: 172) excludes both categorically: ‘The real problem . . . has always been why anyone . . . has ever seriously taken the Kam-Tai and/or M[iao]-Y[ao] languages to be true “blood cousins” of S[ino]-T[ibetan], given the almost total lack of any basic ties in the respective lexicons.’"
(Ibid., p. 144-145)

15

thanks, this has been an interesting thread. I spent a lot of time 20 years ago in the Tibetan-Yi-Miao-Yao-Dai areas…