Linguistic theories about the Austronesian homeland

Bibliographic Data

ID2890089
AuthorsJ C Anceaux (corresponding author)
Year1965
Volume121
Issue4
Pages417-432
Publication date1965-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0006-2294 • E-ISSN: 2213-4379
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/22134379-90002950
OpenAlexW2080040754
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

That establishing genetic relationship between languages leads to thinking about a can hardly come as a surprise. For such a relationship can only be thought of as the result of develop ment from a common ancestor : a proto-language. That our knowledge of that proto-language may be very poor and that statements about it are mainly formulas of what is found as common elements in the actual language materials and, therefore, are of a highly hypothetical character, does not alter the fact that a real language must have existed. The question of where that proto-language was spoken, is only legitimate. And it is obvious that linguists are among those who try to find an answer to this question. Still, it is remarkable that for the Malayo-Polynesian (or Austro nesian, as it was called later) language family the question arose very early. About the beginning of the nineteenth century it was Marsden1 who expressed the opinion that the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands must have come from Asia (from Tartary, he said). Only the population of the islands in the western part of the area ? by which he must have meant Melanesia ? might have come from New Guinea. Obviously, Marsden's guiding principle was more one of race than of consideration of linguistic facts. We shall see that, time and again, arguments of race and culture slip into linguistic discussions of the homeland problem. Very important for a theory about the origin of a language-family is the possibility of a relationship between this family and another, especially if the latter is found in a distant area. Therefore, we shall first see what has been said about the possibility of the Austronesian family showing relationship to other language groups. In this connection we may pass over in silence Bopp's ineffectual attempt to prove a relationship between Austronesian and Indo European and also MacDonald's theory on the Semitic origin of

Ancestor · Character (mathematics · Ethnology · Genealogy · Homeland · Linguistics · New guinea · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Surprise · Communication · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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