Talk:Austronesia

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[edit] Austronesian homeland

I find it odd to have a paragraph discussing the Austronesian language family and then introduce a hypothesis by anthropologists as to the location of the homeland. I have never heard that anthros believe the Yunnan plateau in China to be the homeland (there may well be some who do), but I know that linguists who specialise in Austronesian historical linguistics consider Taiwan to be the Austronesian homeland.

Additionally, I've never heard of the term Austronesia being used to refer to the 'homeland of the people who speak Austronesian languages' (presumably this is referring to the location of the speakers of Proto-Austronesian, the postulated parent language from which all Austronesian languages descend)--could we have a reference to some publication where this usage actually occurs? Dougg 09:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The languages are generally agreed to be traceable to Taiwan, but it is hypothesized (mainly by people trying to connect it to other language stocks) to have come from the mainland originally. Which of those should be the "homeland" I guess is a matter of semantics, but it does seem that Taiwan is more common. I guess I don't see why it's relevant here, though, instead of, say, Austronesian languages. Unless there is that usage of the word Austronesia to mean the homeland, but I haven't heard that either. Rigadoun 16:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The homeland for Austronesian languages would be the location of the parent language of the Austronesian language family, aka Proto-Austronesian. This is pretty widely accepted by linguists to have been Taiwan. If Proto-Austronesian arrived in Taiwan from the Chinese mainland then it was presumably one of a number of descendants from an even earlier protolanguage (as you say, possible connection to other stocks). Anyway, is there any evidence that anyone has used the term 'Austronesia' to refer to any region, whether an ancestral homeland or modern day extent? Dougg 01:16, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed on the homeland issue. I don't understand your last point. You've never heard the word Austronesia as a region, only the adjective Austronesian in reference to languages? In other words, are you arguing this article shouldn't exist? Rigadoun 15:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm not arguing that this article shouldn't exist, I'm asking for references that use the word 'Austronesian' in this way. While I'm not a specialist in Austronesian languages (I'm a Papuanist) I work with many who are, and I've never come across the word 'Austronesia'. I did a google search and while I found many examples, most of them are on websites that simply reproduce info from WP. I have however found one or two serious references which use the word so I accept that it is really in use (though I suspect that it's a recent back-formation). Dougg 00:44, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't seen them either. I've encountered the term as a geographic area, in which case it may include New Guinea or Australia. This seems to be supported by the dictionary definitions at onelook.com; unfortunately, none of them offer an etymology, word history, or date of citation. I'm watching this page just because of a major cleanup I did, without really adding new information. I can't vouch for what it says here, other than the subregions named. I would be inclined to agree that the use of the term as a linguistic region is a backformation from the language family, but I can't offer any evidence. Rigadoun 15:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, those 'dictionaries' typically give the definition 'islands of the central and southern Pacific', which would appear to exclude several areas where Austronesian languages are spoken, such as mainland south-east Asia, Taiwan, Madagascar. So on that basis the article would be incorrect in describing Austronesia as being the area where the Austronesian languages are spoken. I'll try to add something dealing with this (and some of the other issues we've discussed). Dougg 23:23, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of 'Austronesia'

This may be a bit pedantic, but the article says that the term 'Austronesia' comes from:

the Latin austrālis "southern" plus the Greek νήσος (nêsos) "island".

This, it seems to me, is not quite correct. The term 'Austronesian' (as in 'Austronesian languages') was coined by Wilhelm Schmidt by derivation from the Latin and Greek sources as given above. But the term 'Austronesia' would appear to be a more recent back-formation derived from the word 'Austronesian'. While many back-formations have been studied, I doubt I'll be able to find any sources examining the origin of this one; but at the same time I don't think there's any evidence that 'Austronesia' was derived directly from the Latin and Greek sources rather than, as I'm suggesting, from the earlier word 'Austronesian'. Dougg 06:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

If you don't like pedantry, you shouldn't do etymology! According to the OED, the term Austronesian is actually borrowed into English from German austronesisch.
[f. G. austronesisch (W. Schmidt 1899, in Mitteil. Anthrop. Ges. Wien XXIX. 248/1). f. L. austr(ālis) southern + -O + Gr. νήσ-ος island: see -IAN.]
The earliest English citation is a comment on the German source:
1903 Amer. Anthropol. V. 164/1 Father Schmidt..accepts that part of his [sc. Müller's] theory which sees in the Melanesians a mixed race sprung from the Papuan aborigines and Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) immigrants.
The OED doesn't discuss Austronesia of course, since it's a proper noun (it's a funny place for a dictionary to draw the line when you think about it--'proper adjectives' are OK, proper nouns not), but I think your suggestion is probably correct. I'll have a poke around and see if I can find any reference to Austronesien in early German sources. It'll be easy to falsify (if false), but hard to prove (if true). -- Ngio 07:57, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Ray, Sidney H. 1900. The Inter-Relation of Melanesian, Papuan and Polynesian Languages: Reviews of P. W. Schmidt Uber das Verhaltniss der melanesischen Sprachen zu deu polynesischen und untereinander and Die sprachlichen Verhaltnisse Oceaniens (Melanesiens, Mikronesiens, und Indonesiens in ihrer Bedeutung fur die Ethnologie. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 30. (1900), pp. 40-44.

“ Professor Schmidt suggests the adoption of the term Austronesian to describe the position of the whole of the languages including the Indonesian, Mikronesian, Melanesian, and Polynesian; the term Oceanic being abandoned because of its limited application in Germany as equivalent to Polynesian. There seems to be a certain amount of difficulty in adopting this term Austronesia, for the islands where these related languages are spoken, lie as much to the east of Asia as south, and there is, perhaps, more danger of confusion with the very different Australian by using a similar word, than there would be with the term Oceanic used in its English sense. ”

Note that Austronesia in this quote is clearly a typo for Austronesian; I think we can take it as strongly implied that Ray is aware of no pre-existing term Austronesia. From my googling about it seems that these days in German Austronesien is used interchangably with Oceanien

By the way, I've trumped the OED (their first citation for Austronesian is from three years later)! Ngio 08:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)