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Austric Family of Languages
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or "AUSTRIC FAMILY OF LANGUAGES. - An addition must be made to the classification of languages given in the article Philology ( see 21.426) as the result of the further researches since 1908 in the Malay-Polynesian field and S.E. Asia. The establishment of the " Austric family " of languages may well be considered the most important achievement of these later years in the work of comparative philology.
The essential unity of the Oceanic languages, though partially recognized long ago by Humboldt in his Kawisprache, was not completely demonstrated until much more recent times. The connexion between the Polynesian and Indonesian languages (including the geographically outlying Malagasy) met with ready acceptance, but the affiliation of the Melanesian was not so easy. The difficulty was partly due to purely linguistic differences, the Melanesian type of speech being superficially very different from the Indonesian and Polynesian, partly to the diversity of the races which raised the natural, but quite unjustifiable, presumption that the languages could not be of the same stock. It was, however, eventually proved that Melanesian could not be kept out of the Oceanic family,' and it has since been shown that Micronesia, though different m race, ' Kern, " De Fidji-taal," Verhand, Kon. Akad. v. Wet. (Amsterdam, 1886), Afd. Letterk., Deel xvi.; " Over de verhouding van het Nufoorsch tot de Maleisch-Polynesische talen," Actes du VIe Congres International des Orientalistes. falls linguistically into the Melanesian section. Also it ultimately became plain that of these three subdivisions Indonesian best represented the archaic family type, while Polynesian at the other extreme had gone furthest in the direction of simplification and decay.' Thus was established, by the strictest scientific proof, the existence of the Oceanic or Malayo-Polynesian family of languages, extending from Madagascar in the west to Easter I. in the east, and from Formosa and Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south.
Meanwhile further exploration and research had revealed the existence in New Guinea and some of the neighbouring islands of a number of languages which could not be fitted into this scheme of classification, and did not even apparently form any family of their own, but only a number of distinct groups between which no ultimate relationship could be safely asserted. 2 These so-called Papuan languages (which have since been found in portions of Dutch and German as well as British New Guinea) are therefore to be regarded as a purely provisional group, the time for their systematic classification not having as yet arrived. But it is quite certain that they have nothing whatever to do with the Oceanic family, though some of the neighbouring members of the latter have undoubtedly been influenced and to some extent modified by Papuan languages, and also vice versa, particularly in the matter of syntax.' Moreover there exists in an outlying corner of Eastern Indonesia a small enclave comprising a number of closely related and very curious languages which differ profoundly from their neighbours of the Oceanic stock. These are the languages of the northern peninsula of Halmahera (or Jilolo), together with Ternate, Tidore, and a few other small adjacent islands. In spite of some attempts that have been made to show their ultimate connexion with the Oceanic family, 4 it cannot be said that the thesis has been proved or even rendered very probable. It is at least as likely that they are remnants of some archaic Papuan group, though the tribes that speak them are not Papuan in physical type.' The Oceanic languages having thus been delimited, 6 there remained the further question of their source of origin. By an ingenious comparison of purely linguistic data, Kern had shown' that the common mother-tongue from which they were derived must have been spoken on some long coastline in the tropics, the east coast of Indo-China seeming on the whole to be the most likely one. Here there were actually languages, such as Cham and its immediate neighbours, which were plainly in some way connected with the Indonesian branch of the Oceanic family. But no really satisfactory attempt could be made to connect the Oceanic with any of the different groups of Indo-Chinese languages until the latter had been properly classified. This was done in part by Forbes 8 and carried further by Kuhn,' but the final achievement was the work of W. Schmidt. In a series of admirable monographs 1° he succeeded in proving the intimate connexion of the aboriginal languages (Sakai and Semang) of the Malay Peninsula, the Mon-Khmer group, the Palaung-Wa-Riang group of the Shan states, Khasi in Assam, Nicobarese, and finally the Munda languages of India proper. All these are characterized by a structure based ultimately on monosyllabic roots from which more complex words are formed by means of pre 1 S. H. Ray, " The Common Origin of the Oceanic Languages," " Hellas" Revue Polyglotte Internationale, VIe Annee; Thalheimer, Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Pronomina der Sprachen lllikronesiens (1908), reviewed by Ray in Man (1908).
Ray, " The Languages of British New Guinea," Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv., pp. 1 5-39; ibid. xxvi., pp. 204-5; Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. iii., Linguistics (1907).
W. Schmidt, Man (1907) 106; Ray, Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxx. (Anthr. Rev. and Misc. 50).
4 Kern, Bijdr. tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indie (1891), Deel xl., pp. 493-530. See also A. Hueting, " Iets over de Ternataansch-Halmaherasche Taalgroep," ibid. (1908), lx., pp. 369-411.
Schmidt, " ` Die sprachlichen Verhaltnisse von Deutsch-Neuguinea," Zeitschr. f. Afrik. u. Ozean. Sprachen, Jahrg. v. and vi., espec. vi. pp. 74-99. See also Van der Veen, De Noord-Halmahera'se Taalgroep (1915).
6 It is hardly necessary to add that the languages of Australia and the now extinct dialects of Tasmania lie entirely outside this sphere.
" Taalkundige gegevens ter bepaling van het stamland der Maleisch-Polynesische volken," Versl. en Med. Kon. Akad. v. Wet. (Amsterdam, 1889), Afd. Letterk IIIe R., Deel 6.
Comparative Grammar of the Languages of Further India. " Beitr.ge zur Sprachenkunde Hinterindiens," Sitzungsb. d. K. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., Phil.-hist. Kl. (1889).
10 " Die Sprachen der Sakei and Semang auf Malakka and ihr Verhaltnis zu den Mon-Khmer-Sprachen," Bijdr. tot de T. L. en V. v. Ned.-Indic, 1901, Deel lii., pp. 399-5 8 3; " Grundzage einer Lautlehre der Mon-Khmer-Sprachen," Denkschr. d. Kais. Akad. d. Wiss. in Wien, 1905, Phil.-hist. Kl., Bd. iii.; " Grundzage einer Lautlehre der Khasi-Sprache in ihren Beziehungen zu denjenigen der Mon-Khmer-Sprachen." Abhandl. d. Konigl. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., 1905,1 K1., Bd. xxiii., Abt. iii. and op. cit. inf. fixes and infixes (in the case of Munda and Nicobarese, suffixes as well). Both in structure and vocabulary they are altogether different from the large family, or agglomeration, of languages to which Tibetan, Burmese, Siamese and Chinese belong.
On the other hand a considerable amount of work had been done, mainly by Dutch scholars such as Van der Tuuk, Kern, and Brandes, to analyze the structure of the Oceanic languages; they succeeded in showing that the superficial dissyllabism characteristic of the family was really the result of an ancient agglutinative system building upon originally monosyllabic roots." This left the way open to Schmidt to show 12 that his newly formed synthesis of languages, which he proposed to call Austroasiatic, was ultimately related to the Oceanic (or as he would style it Austronesian) family, so that the two could be conveniently grouped under the generic name " Austric." Schmidt's arguments were based both on similarity of structure and numerous cases of identity between the very roots of the two families; and so far as they were confined to linguistic classification his conclusions have met with general acceptance at the hands of those best qualified to judge. But his attempt to establish a corresponding anthropological unity of the very diverse races speaking all these different tongues was not so successful and must be regarded as altogether premature. Most of these populations are blends, and though conceivably there may be some thin strain of common blood running through all of them, it is impossible as yet to define it or correlate it with the common element of their speech. Nor is any such assumption a necessary conclusion from the linguistic data. The synthesis of the languages has established a purely linguistic unity, implying no identity of race and admitting the existence here and there (e.g. among the Negritos of the Malay Peninsula, in 'Melanesia and even in parts of Polynesia) 13 of traces of older aboriginal languages embedded, like flies in amber, in the prevailing type of speech.
BiBLioGRAPHY
Brandstetter, Tagalen and Madagassen (1902); Ein Prodromus zu einem vergleichenden Wiirterbuch der Malaiopolynesischen Sprachen (1906); Gemeinindonesisch and Urindonesisch (1911); Das Verbum. in vierundzwanzig Indonesischen Sprachen (1912); An Introduction to Indonesian Linguistics (1916); Ferrand, Essai de phonetique cornparie du malais et des dialectes malgaches (1909); Kern, " Taalvergelijkende Verhandeling over het Aneityumsch, met een Aanhangsel over het klankstelsel van het Eromanga," Verhand. Kon. Akad. v. Wet. (Amsterdam, 1906), N. R., D. viii., No. 2; Schmidt, " Ueber das Verhaltnis der Melanesischen Sprachen zu den Polynesischen and untereinander," Sitzungsb. d. Kais. Akad. d. Wiss. in Wien, Phil.-hist. Kl., Bd. cxli., No. vi., " Die Jabim-Sprache " (Deutsch-Neu-Guinea); ibid., Bd. cxliii., No. ix.; Meyer, " Die Papuasprache in Niederlandisch-NeuGuinea," Globus,, xciv., pp. 189-92; Finot, " Les etudes indochinoises," Bull. de l'E. F. d'Extreme-Orient, viii., pp. 221-33; Cabaton, " Dix dialectes indochinois," Journal Asiatique, Mars-Avril, 1905, PP. 26 5-344; Aymonier and Cabaton, Dictionnaire cam franrais (1906). (C. O. B.)
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Austric Family of Languages'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/a/austric-family-of-languages.html. 1910.
