1993/01/01 by Robert Blust · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Ancestor #Archaeology #Archipelago #Austronesian languages #Cognate #Geography #History #Language and cultural evolution #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Linguistics #Peninsula #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · doi:10.2307/3623195
crossref issued 1993/01/01 · crossref published 1993/01/01 · crossref published-print 1993/01/01 · openalex publication_date 1993/01/01 · crossref created 2007/03/07 · crossref deposited 2018/05/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP). CEMP, encompassing all of the approximately 600 Austronesian languages of eastern Indonesia and the Pacific apart from Palauan, Chamorro, and possibly Yapese, is justified by a set of phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic, and semantic innovations that distinguish these languages from the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian family as a whole (Proto-Austronesian), and from the putative immediate ancestor of all non-Formosan Austronesian languages (Proto-Malayo-Polynesian). CMP, encompassing over 100 languages in the Lesser Sunda and Moluccan islands of eastern Indonesia, is justified by a set of phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic innovations that often fail to include all members of the proposed group. These overlapping distributions of innovated features in CMP languages are interpreted as evidence for a rapid spread of Austronesian speakers through eastern Indonesia from a primary dispersal point in the Northern Moluccas soon after the separation of the ancestral CMP and EMP language communities. Within CMP, it is found that several languages of the Bomberai Peninsula on the southwest coast of New Guinea, including at least Sekar, Onin, and Uruangnirin, subgroup closely with Yamdena of the Tanimbar archipelago some 300 miles distant in the southern Moluccas. It is concluded that the Bomberai languages reached their historical locations through a back-migration from the southern Moluccas well after the initial Austronesian settlement of eastern Indonesia.