Austronesian
- noun
- /ˌɔːstrəˈniːʒən/
- Specialized
:
lengua austronesia
- The Austronesian languages are spoken in many countries across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Examples
-
So proto Austronesian is the the ancestor of a bunch of languages of the Pacific mostly.
-
Recent advances in language phylogenetic analysis have led to more robust language trees for several language families (e.g., Austronesian; Gray et al. 2009), and more such studies are underway.
Academic text (2013) -
And this was constructed and I mentioned Austronesian language and that's all green.
-
No credible global language tree exists (Campbell and Poser 2008), and there are a limited number of examples of language trees with reliable estimates of time since divergence (e.g., branch length estimates for Austronesian; Gray et al. 2009).
Academic text (2013) -
Linguists study the Austronesian family to understand the spread of languages throughout the Pacific region.
-
Many island nations, such as Fiji and Samoa, have their own distinct Austronesian languages.
Synonyms
A language spoken on islands in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Madagascar
Compounds
- Specialized
A language spoken on islands in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Madagascar
Surface Forms
Morphology
Austronesian = Austronesia (transparent) = Austronesia + an
The language-family name is a regular denominal formation from the regional name 'Austronesia' with '-an', so its formation is transparent.
Etymology
Austronesian for languages takes the same parts: Austro- 'south' and -nesian 'island', so it points to the many island languages from Madagascar across the Pacific. That is why Austronesian is used for the large family of languages spoken across those islands.
