What is "austronesian"

Usage examples of "austronesian".

Melanesian languages belong to the one large language group: the Austronesian language family of which the Polynesian languages all constitute one subgroup.

The area of agreement is that the Polynesian languages are related more closely to some Melanesian languages than to the Micronesian languages, and that all belong to the great Austronesian language group.

South-West Pacific in at least two stages: first, the so-called Papuans speaking languages very distantly related to each other, and not at all related so far as is known to the Austronesian group.

Linguists suggest that the fragmentation of the Austronesian languages of Melanesia implies a dispersal five to six thousand years ago.

There are, however, complications, revealed particularly by the linguistic work of Isidore Dyen, who has suggested that the most likely homeland for the Austronesian languages is eastern Melanesia, not east Asia.

Northern archeologist who knew little about the prehistory of this region, I was fascinated to learn of a series of remarkable discoveries made in the past decade that changed the interpretation of Austronesian prehistory.

On the Asian mainland Austronesian-speaking farmers were able similarly to replace some of the former hunter-gatherers of the Malay Peninsula, because Austronesians colonized the peninsula from the south and east (from the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo) around the same time that Austroasiatic-speaking farmers were colonizing the peninsula from the north (from Thailand).

However, Austronesian farmers could spread no farther into the Southeast Asian mainland, because Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai farmers had already replaced the former hunter-gatherers there, and because Austronesian farmers had no advantage over Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai farmers.

But the language families closest to Austronesian are thought to be Tai-Kadai, Austroasiatic, and Miao-Yao.

As a result, while the Austronesian expansion swept away the original Indonesians, it failed to make much headway in the New Guinea region, just as it also failed to make headway against Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai food producers in tropical Southeast Asia.

We saw previously that much the same is true of the Malaysian Negritos (Semang) and Philippine Negritos, who adopted Austroasiatic and Austronesian languages, respectively, from the farmers who came to surround them.

Austronesian languages spoken in the Bismarcks and Solomons and north coastal New Guinea are related, as a separate sub-sub-subfamily termed Oceanic, to the sub-sub-subfamily of languages spoken on Hal-mahera and the west end of New Guinea.

Tens of thousands of years before the arrival of Austronesians, New Guineans had colonized the Bismarck and Solomon Archipelagoes, and a trade in obsidian (a volcanic stone suitable for making sharp tools) was thriving in the Bismarcks at least 18,000 SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA "351 years before the Austronesians arrived.

Tens of thousands of years before the arrival of Austronesians, New Guineans had colonized the Bismarck and Solomon Archipelagoes, and a trade in obsidian (a volcanic stone suitable for making sharp tools) was thriving in the Bismarcks at least 18,000 years before the Austronesians arrived.

Why did Austronesian people, stemming ultimately from mainland China, colonize Java and the rest of Indonesia and replace the original inhabitants there, instead of Indonesians colonizing China and replacing the Chinese?