Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- proper noun A proposed common ancestor to the group of
Austronesian languages. ComprisingMalayo-Polynesian andFormosan languages.
Etymologies
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Examples
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A poignant example is Proto-Austronesian PAN *sa-puluq 'ten' or literally 'one-ten', built on *esa 'one' and *-puluq 'ten; -ty'.
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Darrell Tryon, "Proto-Austronesian and the Major Austronesian Subgroups" (17 – 38), and Peter Bellwood, "Austronesian Prehistory in Southeast Asia: Homeland, Expansion, and Transformation" (96 – 111).
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In contrast to Austronesian languages almost everywhere else, the Oceanic languages on the north coast of the Papua New Guinea mainland show an unusual disinclination to make use of the morphological causative inherited from Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Austronesian.
Far Outliers 2009
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"Proto-Austronesian and the Major Austronesian Subgroups."
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But, from what I remember from the Austronesian languages seminar I took a few years ago, there's still lots of basic vocabulary in Malay, like names for body parts (such as mata `eye', which has cognates in just about every Austronesian language), some of the pronouns, and numbers (but only from 1-6; 7 is derived from a root meaning `to point', but I forget where 8 and 9 come from) which can be traced back to Proto-Austronesian.
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