The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the

Austronesian languages The Austronesian languages ( ) 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 ...

, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the

Austronesian peoples The Austronesian people, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples who have settled in Taiwan, maritime Southeast Asia, parts of mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melan ...

outside of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

, in the island nations of

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

(

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

and the

Philippine Archipelago As an archipelago, the Philippines comprises about 7,641 islands clustered into three major island groups: Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. Only about 2,000 islands are inhabited,

) and the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

, with a smaller number in continental

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

in the areas near the

Malay Peninsula The Malay Peninsula is located in Mainland Southeast Asia. The landmass runs approximately north–south, and at its terminus, it is the southernmost point of the Asian continental mainland. The area contains Peninsular Malaysia, Southern Tha ...

, with

Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

and the Chinese island

Hainan Hainan is an island provinces of China, province and the southernmost province of China. It consists of the eponymous Hainan Island and various smaller islands in the South China Sea under the province's administration. The name literally mean ...

as the northwest geographic outlier. Malagasy, spoken on the island of

Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...

off the eastern coast of Africa in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

, is the furthest western outlier. Many languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family in insular Southeast Asia show the strong influence of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, as the western part of the region has been a stronghold of

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

, and, later,

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

. Two morphological characteristics of the Malayo-Polynesian languages are a system of

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...

ation and

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...

(repetition of all or part of a word, such as '' wiki-wiki)'' to form new words. Like other Austronesian languages, they have small phonemic inventories; thus a text has few but frequent sounds. The majority also lack

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

s. Most also have only a small set of vowels, five being a common number.

Major languages

All major and official Austronesian languages belong to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup. Malayo-Polynesian languages with more than five million speakers are: Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog, Malagasy, Malay, Cebuano, Madurese, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, and Minangkabau. Among the remaining more than 1,000 languages, several have national/official language status, e.g. Tongan, Samoan,

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...

Gilbertese Gilbertese (), also known as Kiribati (sometimes ''Kiribatese'' or ''Tungaru''), is an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Kiribati. It belongs to the Micronesian branch of the Oceanic languages. The word ''Kiribati'', the current name of th ...

, Fijian, Hawaiian, Palauan, and Chamorro.

Typological characteristics

Terminology

The term "Malayo-Polynesian" was originally coined in 1841 by

Franz Bopp Franz Bopp (; 14 September 1791 – 23 October 1867) was a German linguistics, linguist known for extensive and pioneering comparative linguistics, comparative work on Indo-European languages. Early life Bopp was born in Mainz, but the pol ...

as the name for the Austronesian language family as a whole, and until the mid-20th century (after the introduction of the term "Austronesian" by Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906), "Malayo-Polynesian" and "Austronesian" were used as synonyms. The current use of "Malayo-Polynesian" denoting the subgroup comprising all Austronesian languages outside of Taiwan was introduced in the 1970s, and has eventually become standard terminology in Austronesian studies.

Classification

Relation to Austronesian languages on Taiwan

In spite of a few features shared with the Eastern Formosan languages (such as the merger of

proto-Austronesian Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify in ...

*t, *C to /t/), there is no conclusive evidence that would link the Malayo-Polynesian languages to any one of the primary branches of Austronesian on Taiwan.

Internal classification

Malayo-Polynesian consists of a large number of small local language clusters, with the one exception being

Oceanic Oceanic may refer to: *Of or relating to the ocean *Of or relating to Oceania **Oceanic climate **Oceanic languages **Oceanic person or people, also called "Pacific Islander(s)" Places * Oceanic, British Columbia, a settlement on Smith Island, ...

, the only large group which is universally accepted; its parent language

Proto-Oceanic Proto-Oceanic (abbreviated as POc) is a proto-language that comparative linguistics, historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic languages, Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian ...

has been reconstructed in all aspects of its structure (phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax). All other large groups within Malayo-Polynesian are controversial. The most influential proposal for the internal subgrouping of the Malayo-Polynesian languages was made by

Robert Blust Robert A. Blust (; zh, c=白樂思, p=Bái Lèsī; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the Uni ...

who presented several papers advocating a division into two major branches, viz. Western Malayo-Polynesian and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian is widely accepted as a subgroup, although some objections have been raised against its validity as a genetic subgroup. On the other hand, Western Malayo-Polynesian is now generally held (including by Blust himself) to be an umbrella term without genetic relevance. Taking into account the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis, the Malayo-Polynesian languages can be divided into the following subgroups (proposals for larger subgroups are given below): *Malayo-Polynesian **

Philippine The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

(disputed) ***

Batanic languages The Batanic languages (sometimes also called Bashiic or Ivatanic) are a dialect cluster of the Austronesian language family. They are spoken on Babuyan Island, just north of Luzon; three of the Batanes Islands, between the Philippines and Taiw ...

***

Northern Luzon Luzon ( , ) is the largest and most populous List of islands in the Philippines, island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the List of islands of the Philippines, Philippine archipelago, it is the economic and political ce ...

***

Central Luzon Central Luzon (; ; ; ; ), designated as Region III, is an administrative region in the Philippines. The region comprises seven provinces: Aurora, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga (with its capital, San Fernando City serving as the re ...

*** Northern Mindoro *** Greater Central Philippine *** Kalamian *** South Mindanao (also called Bilic languages) *** Sangiric *** Minahasan *** Umiray Dumaget *** Manide–Alabat *** Ati *** Klata ** Sama–Bajaw ** North Bornean *** Northeast Sabahan *** Southwest Sabahan *** North Sarawak ** Kayan–Murik ** Land Dayak ** Barito (including Malagasy) ** Moken–Moklen ** Malayo-Chamic ***

Chamic The Chamic languages, also known as Aceh–Chamic and Acehnese–Chamic, are a group of ten languages spoken in Aceh (Sumatra, Indonesia) and in parts of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hainan, China. The Chamic languages are a subgroup of Malay ...

*** Malayic ** Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands (probably including the Enggano language) ** Rejang ** Lampung-Komering ** Sundanese ** Javanese ** Madurese ** Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa ** Celebic **

South Sulawesi South Sulawesi () is a Provinces of Indonesia, province in the South Peninsula, Sulawesi, southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Selayar Islands archipelago to the south of Sulawesi is also part of the province. The capital and largest ci ...

** Palauan ** Chamorro ** Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian ***

Central Malayo-Polynesian The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages (CMP) are a proposed branch in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The languages are spoken in the Lesser Sunda and Maluku Islands of the Banda Sea, in an area corresponding ...

(dubious) **** Sumba–Flores **** Flores–Lembata **** Selaru **** Kei–Tanimbar **** Aru **** Central Maluku **** Timoric (also called Timor–Babar languages) **** Kowiai **** Teor-Kur ***Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (dubious) **** South Halmahera–West New Guinea ****

(approximately 450 languages)

Nasal

The position of the recently rediscovered

Nasal language Nasal () is an Austronesian language of southwestern Sumatra. Classification Anderbeck & Aprilani (2013) consider Nasal to be an isolate within the Malayo-Polynesian branch. Smith (2017), though, includes the language in the "Sumatran" subgrou ...

(spoken on Sumatra) is unclear; it shares features of lexicon and phonology with both

Lampung Lampung, officially the Province of Lampung (; ), is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. It has a short border with the province of Bengkulu to the northwest, and a longer border with the provi ...

and Rejang.

Enggano

Edwards (2015)Edwards, Owen (2015). "The Position of Enggano within Austronesian." ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 54 (1): 54–109. argues that Enggano is a primary branch of Malayo-Polynesian. However, this is disputed by Smith (2017), who considers Enggano to have undergone significant internal changes, but to have once been much more like other Sumatran languages in Sumatra.

Philippine languages

The status of the Philippine languages as subgroup of Malayo-Polynesian is disputed. While many scholars (such as

) support a genealogical subgroup that includes the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Reid (2018) rejects the hypothesis of a single Philippine subgroup, but instead argues that the Philippine branches represent first-order subgroups directly descended from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian.Reid, Lawrence A. 2018.
Modeling the linguistic situation in the Philippines
" In ''Let's Talk about Trees'', ed. by Ritsuko Kikusawa and Lawrence A. Reid. Osaka: Senri Ethnological Studies, Minpaku.

(Zobel 2002)

Zobel (2002) proposes a ''Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian'' subgroup, based on putative shared innovations in the

Austronesian alignment Symmetrical voice, also known as Austronesian alignment or the Austronesian focus system, is a typologically unusual kind of morphosyntactic alignment in which "one argument can be marked as having a special relationship to the verb". This speci ...

and

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

found throughout Indonesia apart from much of Borneo and the north of Sulawesi. This subgroup comprises the languages of the

Greater Sunda Islands The Greater Sunda Islands (Indonesian language, Indonesian and Malay language, Malay: ''Kepulauan Sunda Besar'') are four tropical islands situated within the Indonesian Archipelago, in the Pacific Ocean. The islands, Borneo, Java, Sulawesi and S ...

( Malayo-Chamic, Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands,

, Sundanese, Javanese, Madurese, Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa) and most of Sulawesi ( Celebic,

), Palauan, Chamorro and the

Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages The Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) languages form a proposed branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages consisting of over 700 languages (Blust 1993). Distribution The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken in the Lesser Sun ...

. This hypothesis is one of the few attempts to link certain Western Malayo-Polynesian languages with the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages in a higher intermediate subgroup, but has received little further scholarly attention.

Malayo-Sumbawan (Adelaar 2005)

The Malayo-Sumbawan languages are a proposal by

K. Alexander Adelaar Karl Alexander "Sander" Adelaar (born 1953 in The Hague) is a Dutch linguist. He is primarily interested in the Austronesian languages of Borneo, Madagascar, and Taiwan, as well as the Malayic languages. He also does research on the oral and lite ...

(2005) which unites the

Malayo-Chamic languages The Greater North Borneo languages are a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian languages, Austronesian language family. The subgroup historically covers languages that are spoken throughout much of Borneo (excluding the areas where the Barito lan ...

, the Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa languages, Madurese and Sundanese into a single subgroup based on phonological as well as lexical evidence. *Malayo-Sumbawan **Malayo-Chamic-BSS *** Malayic ***

*** Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa ** Sundanese ** Madurese

Greater North Borneo (Blust 2010; Smith 2017, 2017a)

The Greater North Borneo hypothesis, which unites all languages spoken on Borneo except for the

Barito languages The Barito languages are around twenty Austronesian languages of Indonesia (Borneo), plus Malagasy, the national language of Madagascar, and the Sama–Bajaw languages around the Sulu Archipelago. They are named after the Barito River located ...

together with the

, Rejang and Sundanese into a single subgroup, was first proposed by Blust (2010) and further elaborated by Smith (2017, 2017a). * Greater North Borneo **

North Borneo North Borneo (usually known as British North Borneo, also known as the State of North Borneo) was a British Protectorate, British protectorate in the northern part of the island of Borneo, (present-day Sabah). The territory of North Borneo wa ...

*** Northeast Sabah *** Southwest Sabah *** North Sarawak ** Kayan–Murik ** Land Dayak ** Malayo-Chamic **

Moken The Moken (also Mawken or Morgan; ; ) are an Austronesian people of the Mergui Archipelago, a group of approximately 800 islands claimed by both Myanmar and Thailand, and the Surin Islands. Most of the Moken live a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer ...

(not included by Smith (2017)) ** Rejang ** Sundanese Because of the inclusion of Malayo-Chamic and Sundanese, the Greater North Borneo hypothesis is incompatible with Adelaar's Malayo-Sumbawan proposal. Consequently, Blust explicitly rejects Malayo-Sumbawan as a subgroup. The Greater North Borneo subgroup is based solely on lexical evidence.

Smith (2017)

Based on a proposal initially brought forward by Blust (2010) as an extension of the Greater North Borneo hypothesis, Smith (2017) unites several Malayo-Polynesian subgroups in a "Western Indonesian" group, thus greatly reducing the number of primary branches of Malayo-Polynesian: *Malayo-Polynesian **Western Indonesian *** Greater North Borneo ****North Borneo ***** Northeast Sabah ***** Southwest Sabah ***** North Sarawak **** Central Sarawak **** Kayanic **** Land Dayak **** Malayic ****

**** Sundanese **** Rejang ***Greater Barito ( linkage) **** Sama–Bajaw **** Greater Barito (

paraphyletic Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In co ...

linkageSmith, Alexander D. 2018
The Barito Linkage Hypothesis, with a Note on the Position of Basap
JSEALS Volume 11.1 (2018).) ***

*** Javanese *** Madurese *** Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa **Sumatran (an extended version of Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands that also comprises

Nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

; the question of internal subgrouping is left open by Smith) ** Celebic **

** Palauan ** Chamorro ** Moklenic ** Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian **

( linkage) (according to Smith, "not a subgroup as much as a loosely related group of languages that may contain multiple primary branches")

References

External links

2008 Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database analysisHistory.com Encyclopedia: Malayo-Polynesian Languages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Malayo-Polynesian Languages Culture of Oceania Languages of Southeast Asia