Austronesian Culture and History

Armu. Rev. Anthropol. 1993.
22:425-59
Copyright 1993 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved
AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL
LINGUISTICS AND CULTURE
HISTORY
Andrew Pawley and Malcolm Ross
Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National
University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
KEY WORDS: Austronesian, historical linguistics, culture history, methods
INTRODUCTION
About one sixth of the world's languages are Austronesian (AN), but it is their
cultural and biological diversity and their predominantly insular distribution,
and not their numbers, that have made the Austronesian-speaking peoples of
great interest to anthropologists. In westem Melanesia, for instance, there are
many small, culturally and biologically heterogeneous communities living in
sustained intensive contact with speakers of non-AN languages and with each
other. In Polynesia, on the other hand, sister populations have diverged in
isolation. "Islands as laboratories" has long been a popular catchcry among
scholars working in Polynesia (69, 108, 113, 161, 179-181, 195, 227, 228).
For those searching for principles of change or seeking to reconstruct events of
culture history, each isolated Polynesian isleuid or island group has the value of
being a relatively independent witness to the effects of variables such as
geography, technology, population size, and time on a common ancestral base.
Although it lacks the elegant simplicity of its Polynesian part, the wider
AN-speaking region provides extremely rich material for culture historians
and typologists. Perhaps 5000-6000 years ago Proto Austronesian (PAN) was
spoken, almost certainly somewhere in East or Southeast Asia, by a neolithic
population (7, 8, 236). Some AN speakers became the world's first efficient
long distance navigators (7, 153, 206) and over several millennia the family
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scattered around two thirds of the earth's circumference, from Madagascar to

Easter Island, and over 70 degrees of latitude, from Taiwan and Hawaii to
New Zealand. In Island Southeast Asia,' AN languages largely replaced incumbent speech traditions. In the Central Pacific and in Madagascar, AN
speakers settled islands that previously had lain beyond the reach of Homo
sapiens. In westem Melanesia, known to have been settled for more than
40,0(X) years (3), AN speakers had a lesser impact but established themselves
in many coastal regions of New Guinea and on almost all the smaller islands.
During this diaspora, as the colonists encountered other peoples and cultures
and adapted to new ecological contexts, there was a considerable diversification in technology, social organization, cosmology, and biological makeup, as
well as language (7, 9,10, 34,72,161, 162,171,192,200, 244).
The culture historian seeks to make sense ofthe similarities and differences
exhibited by AN speakers, aligning evidence provided by different disciplines.
This task is made difficult by two types of methodological problems. First,
there are some large gaps in the data provided by each of the contributing
fields of study. Second, there are problems of synthesis. Whereas each discipline and subdiscipline has it own kinds of data and an array of techniques for
interpreting these data, culture history has no adequate procedures for marrying the evidence of different disciplines.
The AN region does provide some especially favorable contexts for comparing the findings of two ofthe pillars of culture historical research: archaeology and historical linguistics. However, relations between the disciplines are
uneasy. For example, Diebold (74:19-20) refers to a "chronic alienation"
between archaeologists and linguists concerned with reconstructing IndoEuropean prehistory. Green (131) observes that many Pacific archaeologists
believe that each discipline should stick to its last^that synthesis is rarely
feasible because archaeology and linguistics operate with such different data
and methods. There are linguists who think likewise.
In most syntheses of Holocene culture history in Island Southeast Asia and
the Pacific (7-11, 29, 150, 204, 205, 220, 232, 234, 239) historical linguistics
has provided much of the main storyline. This is particularly true for nonmaterial culture: no other discipline has quite such coherent tales to tell. The
comments of an archaeologist writing about Indo-European prehistory fit the
Austronesian scene equally well: "there is a sort of horrible irony in the fact
that, while modem archaeologists are greatly interested in reconstructing tbe
social systems of prehistoric peoples, historical linguists offer the archaeologists such detailed reconstructions that they are still beyond archaeological
retrieval even when we know what to look for" (175:122-123). Archaeology
1
Island Southeast Asia comprises Indonesia (except Irian Jaya), Malaysia, the Phillippines and
Taiwan.
AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
427
in the Austronesian region started much later than linguisticsin most areas
little or no work was done before the 1950s or 1960sand it is understandable
that many archaeologists at this stage prefer to write their own stories. But it is
difficult to see how culture historians can avoid the responsibility of evaluating competing interpretations of their materials against the full range of evidence provided by all the relevant disciplines.
Blust (29) points out instances in which archaeological and linguistic evidence may yield directly comparable evidence and so corroborate or contradict
each other's conclusions. For example, the suite of artifacts recovered from a
site may be compared with the names for artifacts reconstructible from cognate
sets and attributable to an earlier linguistic stage. There are other domains
where their testimony may be usefully complementary. Unlike reconstructed
languages, archaeological assemblages may be associated with secure locations and reasonably secure dates and the artifacts themselves will reveal
details of culture and culture change not recoverable from linguistic comparisons. On the other hand, in any prehistoric culture there are many elements
such as social categories, belief systems, and easily perishable artifacts that are
not directly accessible to archaeological methods but may be partly recoverable from reconstructed vocabulary. Then again, archaeologists sometimes
find it hard to decide whether a sequence of assemblages in a region shows
continuity of tradition (with internally generated change) or discontinuities
(the intrusion of foreign traditions). A good example from the Pacific is the
recent debate on the origins of the cultural complex associated with Lapita
pottery.
This highly distinctive ceramic tradition appears in the second half of the
second millennium BC in South Pacific sites spread over 4500 km from the
Bismarck Archipelago to West Polynesia. One school of thought believes that
the core elements of the Lapita cultural complex derive, with some local
adaptation, from an intrusive cultural tradition brought into the Bismarck
Archipelago by AN speakers from Southeast Asia. Another school argues that
most elements in the Lapita assemblages continue traditions that were established in the Bismarck Archipelago or New Guinea area well before the
appearance of Lapita pottery. Proponents of the AN intrusion interpretation
argue that historical linguistics strongly supports their view. Supporters of
local continuity prefer to treat the Lapita issue as a purely archaeological
matter, to which linguistic evidence is irrelevant, or to aver that the linguistic
evidence is itself unsound or inconclusive. Certainly, the appeal to linguistic
evidence can only be decisive in this debate if particular archaeological assemblages can be securely associated with particular linguistic traditions.
Linguistics and comparative ethnography each contribute in different ways
to reconstructions of social organization: one reconstructs terminologies for
particular linguistic stages and the other elucidates the range of behaviors and
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ideologies cissociated with types of terminologies. Many anthropologists and

linguists have risen to the challenge presented by the AN speakers' diversity in
social structure (e.g. 34, 51, 97, 98, 100, 108, 112, 113, 177, 183, 185, 186,
227-229). Some studies rely on typology as the basis for historical inferences.
Murdock (185, 186) believed that his sample of AN-speaking societies provides forceful evidence supporting his method of reconstructing the development of kinship system types. In a study of "adaptive radiation" in Polynesian
societies, Sahlins (228) sought to correlate differences in social stratification
with differences in economic and social conditions imposed by environmental
differences, e.g. between large, fertile, high islands and small islands and
atolls. In another paper (229), he argued that Polynesians and Melanesians
have different types of political structures with different potentials for change.
It is noticeable, however, that much writing on culture history is marred by
a weak understanding of linguistic methods, which sometimes results in an
uncritical use of linguistic data or an uncritical acceptance of speculative
proposals made by certain linguists. There is uncertainty about what each of
the methods of comparative linguisticsprincipally, the genetic comparative
method, internal reconstruction, dialect geography, typological comparison,
lexicostatistics, and the age-area methodis good for. The most recurrent
misuses of linguistic evidence in reconstructing social organizations are probably those that stem from a confusion between the genetic and typological
comparative methods of reconstructing elements of prehistoric cultures. It is
perhaps not widely understood that the genetic comparative method operates
on radically different principles from the typological method and that, when
the data it requires are plentiful, the former is a far more reliable instrument of
historical reconstruction. (Equally, it must be said that without ample data, the
genetic method cannot be applied rigorously.)
The limitations of comparative typology for sociological reconstruction are
well illustrated by attempts (94,177, 186) to reconstruct early Malayo-Polynesian or early Oceanic patterns of sibling classification on the basis of the
geographical distribution and statistical frequency of certain structural types.
The conclusion was drawn that early Oceanic speakers did not distinguish
terms for older and younger same-sex siblings or separate male and female
terms for cross-siblings. As several commentators have observed (41, 60, 62,
66), these conclusions are powerfully contradicted by the distribution across
subgroups of cognate terms for these same distinctions.
In this review we examine research in AN historical linguistics that carries
implications for culture history, focusing equally on the facts and theories that
have emerged from empirical research and on questions of method and evaluation. We treat four linguistic domains especially germane to culture historical
reconstruction: I. the genetic comparative method, 2. subgrouping, 3. lexical
reconstruction, and 4. continuity and change. These domains bear on several
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broad questions: Where and when were PAN and later interstages spoken?
What can be inferred about the society, technology, and physical environment
of speakers of PAN and AN interstage languages from reconstructions of
vocabulary? Which features of a particular culture (contemporary or attested
by archaeological or linguistic reconstructions) represent continuity of an ancestral tradition and which represent innovations? Why have some AN language-culture systems been much more conservative than others?
A NOTE ON RECENT GROWTH IN AUSTRONESIAN

LINGUISTICS
The existence of the AN family was recognized as early as 1708, from word
lists brought to Europe from Madagascar, Indonesia, and Polynesia (144,216).
During the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, research on
the family went on at a leisurely pace. The high point of comparative work in
this period was the publication in the 1930s of a three-volume study of AN
historical phonology and the reconstruction of some 2000 PAN roots with
supporting cognate sets by the German scholar, Dempwolff (73,73a,b).
In the 1950s and 1960s the pace picked up. Indonesian studies have long
had academic centers at the Universities of Leiden and Hamburg, but until the
middle of the twentieth century, most of the descriptive and comparative work
in AN was done by amateurs, chiefly missionary scholars. After World War n
a handful of professional linguists entered the field in the United States, the
United Kingdom, and the Antipodes, and highly productive research centers
emerged at the Universities of Auckland and Hawaii, the Australian National
University, and later, at the Language Center in Jakarta. A number of joumals
and publication series specializing in Austronesian or Pacific languages were
founded, including Oceanic Linguistics, Pacific Linguistics, Philippine Journal of Linguistics, Nusa, and Language and Linguistics in Melanesia. Regular
international conferences have been held since 1974. Of the 1600 or so entries
in a recent select Austronesian bibliography representing research done over
the last 150 years (56), over 70% are dated after 1970.
Looking at works written around 1970 gives a sharp reminder of how much
has changed in the Austronesian linguistic scene over the last few decades.
Even the perceived size of the family has doubled. The number of languages
was frequendy estimated at close to 500 (86,119,198). The most authoritative
recent surveys (132, 250) give figures of 1000-1200, making AN the world's
largest well-established language family, rivaled only by the less secure NigerCongo grouping. Both are far ahead of the next largest established families,
which are in the 150-200 range.
Why such dramatic growth in the perceived size of a family with a history
of study going back more than 200 years? Until recendy, several regions.
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particularly in Melanesia and eastem Indonesia, remained poorly known to

comparative Austronesianists, who were few in number and who concentrated
their attentions on a small selection of well-known languages. During the
scores of regional surveys carried out over the last few decades (e.g. 17, 54,
132, 177, 211, 219, 230, 231, 248, 251, 255, 263, 265, 266) hundreds of
languages spoken by small communities have come to light. Some 460 languages are spoken in Oceania (Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia). The
Indo-Malaysian region contains some 500 AN languages, the Philippines
about 150, and Taiwan 17, while a handful of others are spoken in Vietnam,
Thailand, and Madagascar. The ambitious two-part Language Atlas of the
Pacific Area (265, 266), though already out of date in some details, gives a
fairly accurate picture ofthe number and locations of languages.
THE GENETIC COMPARATIVE METHOD OE

LINGUISTICS
The genetic comparative method is the fundamental method of historical hnguistics. Often simply called "the comparative method," it differs sharply from
the typological comparative method. Typologists compare structural systems,
seeking to determine universal principles of association between types of
categories or subsystems. The statistical frequency of particular associations
may form the basis of historical inferences about possible earlier systems and
directions of change. A crucial weakness of the typological method, as an
instrument of culture history, is that it treats types and frequencies but not
historical particulars. The high frequency of a particular structural type in a
particular region or language family may be due not to its great antiquity but to
recent diffusion or to the expansion of one subgroup of the population.
The genetic comparative method deals with historical particulars. Its core
subject matter is the body of morphemes (smallest meaningful elements) that
related languages have inherited from a common ancestor. The strengths of the
method stem from several peculiar characteristics of human language that
make certain components of languages strikingly like species in their manner
of continuity and diversification. A meshing of these features defmes the
notion "genetic relationship" for languages.
A key peculiarity of language is that its morphemes are composed of units
of sounds (phonemes) that by themselves have no meaning. Because a language has from a dozen to several dozen phonemes and most morphemes
comprise several phonemes, there is a vast range of possible morphemic
forms. Consequently, its morphemes (other than onomatopoeic elements) will
show a high degree of arbitrariness in their sound-meaning pairings. Thus,
different languages are most unlikely to have more than a tiny percentage of
(non-onomatopoeic) morphemes that resemble each other by chance. The fmal
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peculiarity, crucial for the genetic method, is that sound change in the lexicon
of any well-defined speech community is largely regular. Sometimes other
changes, such as borrowings or the loss of old words, obscure the details of
sound changes, but ordinarily, the linguist can identify recurrent sound correspondences between related languages. Proof that morphemes in different
languages are cognate (related by direct inheritance from a common ancestor)
rests not at all on superficial similarity in form but on whether the morphemes
display regular sound correspondences. These factors make it possible to
distinguish genuine cognates from convergences and borrowings. The chances
are virtually nil for languages to independently develop such regularly corresponding roots as the following set: Tagalog hipag 'brother-in-law,' Malay
ipar 'related by marriage,' Sa'a (Solomon Is.) ihe 'brother-in-law,' Wayan (W.
Fijian) iva 'son-in-law;' or the set Tagalog ba:go, Malay baharu, Sa'a haalu,
Wayan vou, Tongan fo'ou, all meaning 'new.'
Commentators have occasionally suggested that although the principle of
sound change regularity is the key to unraveling the history of Indo-European,
it will not hold for language families such as AN (111). In AN, as in IndoEuropean, intensive borrowing between dialects and neighboring languages
has sometimes created a tangle that is almost impossible to unravel (123,125),
but the principle has proved highly effective in making sense of the history of
AN languages. In fact, in no group of languages is the regularity principle
better exemplified than in the isolated languages of the Polynesian Triangle
(21).
The linguist uses recurrent sound correspondences, together with a logic
that specifies the conditions under which phonological distinctions must be
attributed to the parent language in order to construct a theory of the sound
system of the proto-language. This yields a formal reconstruction of the protoform for each cognate set. Reconstruction of the meaning attributable to a
proto-form is straightforward if all witnesses agree. Otherwise the meaning
may be determined by a theory of semantic change together with subgrouping
considerations (44,46,51,131).
Unlike the typological method of historical reconstruction, the genetic comparative method classifies languages not on the basis of their shared similarities in structure but according to the distribution and weighting of shared
changes to a reconstructed ancestral language. Armed with a theory of the
proto-phonology and proto-lexicon, the linguist may be able to identify innovations peculiar to certain members of a family and thus arrive at a reasonable
family tree. A mass of uniquely shared innovations or a smaller number of
unusual ones indicates a period of common development apart from other
languages. The most significant innovations are usually certain kinds of regular sound changes, idiosyncratic sound changes in particular words, and
changes in the structure of morphological paradigms.
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The genetic method has strict limitations. It is only secondarily concemed

with the comparison of noncognate bits of language. It is not equipped to
investigate structural convergence due to bilingualism, genetic drift, or chance.
The genetic method can, however, be allied usefully with other methods. For
example, evidence about possible or favored kinds of structural change, taken
from typology, may help linguists to choose between competing historical
interpretations of comparative evidence.
AUSTRONESIAN SUBGROUPING AND DISPERSAL

Subgrouping (cladistics or family tree construction) plays a central role in the
comparative method, especially in lexical reconstruction and the chronology
of changes. Although the sound system of the ancestral language of a heterogeneous family can, in principle, be reconstructed without reference to subgrouping assumptions, this is not the case for the lexicon. Each phoneme ofthe
proto-language has a determinable outcome or reflex in every daughter language in those morphemes that are retained from the ancestral stock. (Even if a
phoneme is lost, that loss is detectable as a zero reflex, i.e. nothing, in the
position where other languages have a positive reflex. For example. Way an
and Tongan zero correspond to Tagalog g, Malay r, and Sa'a / in the comparisons given earlier.) Unlike the phonemes, not every morpheme or word of the
proto-language is continued in each daughter language. Inferences about the
antiquity of a word shared by two members of a fannily (a cognate set) depend
on how closely the two languages are thought to be related, i.e. about the
structure of the family tree.
Subgrouping also provides a relative chronology for changes in a speech
traditionwhether these are generated internally or borrowed from other traditions. Finally, by indicating the geographic centers of genetic diversity, a
family tree may give strong clues about directions of language dispersal. Dyen
(81) has developed a set of procedures for inferring the most probable dispersal centers or "homelands" of language families or subgroups whose intemal
relationships are known, based on the principle of fewest moves.
At least five radically divergent hypotheses about the high order subgroups
of AN have been proposed. Until the 1930s views on AN high order subgroups
were ill-defined but most commentators (without providing any sound justification) spoke of four main branchesIndonesian, Melanesian, Micronesian,
and Polynesian. The last three groups corresponded to the familiar geographic
regions, and "Indonesian" (better labeled "Western AN") encompassed all the
languages not in the other groups, including the languages of Formosa, the
Philippines, and Madagascar. However, as we shall see, the status of the
Melanesian languages was particularly controversial.
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The Oceanic Hypothesis

A radically different view was foreshadowed by Kern (157) and developed by
Dempwolff (73). Dempwolff argued that the Melanesian, Polynesian, and all
but a few Micronesian languages fall into a single subgroup (today called
"Oceanic") apart from all Western AN languages. The Micronesian outsiders
are Chamorro, Belauan, and possibly Yapese, all spoken on the western margin of Micronesia. The Oceanic hypothesis, now accepted by virtually all
Austronesianists, has powerful implications for Pacific culture history. If all
AN languages of the southwest and Central Pacific derive from a single
linguistic interstage exclusive of the rest of the family, the implication is that
there was a single effective AN colonization of this area.
Dempwolff based his Oceanic group on the impressive number of shared
phonological innovations in roots retained from PAN. He first reconstructed a
PAN sound system from comparisons of what he believed to be a representative sample of languages. The many changes uniting the Oceanic languages in his sample included several mergers (where two or more PAN
phonemes became a single phoneme) such as the mergers of PAN *b and *p;
of *c, *j, *s, and *z; of *e and *aw, and of *uy and */. Dempwolff did not say
whether he regarded Oceanic as a primary branch of AN or as a subgroup with
certain Western AN languages. But in a postscript (73a: 193-94) he proposed
an explanation for the apparent biological differences between Polynesians
and Melanesians as well as for the greater diversity of the Melanesian languages. Rephrased in modem terms: the AN speakers who entered the Pacific,
and who came eventually to speak Proto Oceanic, were light-skinned, straighthaired people who had little resistance to malaria. Some Pacific islands were
already inhabited by dark, frizzy-haired people with stronger resistance to
malaria and other local diseases. Proto Oceanic speakers were in contact with
such people, intermarried with them and were influenced by them linguistically. Oceanic speakers then spread out over Melanesia and such contacts were
repeated. In places where malaria was rife, the malaria-resistant genes of the
darker, frizzy-haired people dominated. In places free of malaria, such as
Polynesia, the original gene pool of the Oceanic-speaking colonists was better
preserved.
The Oceanic hypothesis received further support from early postwar researchers (115-117, 182, 184) who drew the boundaries of the group more
precisely and noted certain irregular lexical changes diagnostic of Oceanic. In
Melanesia the boundary between Oceanic and non-Oceanic was placed just
east of Cenderawasih Bay at the western end of New Guinea (32, 120).
Linguists have tinkered a good deal with Dempwolffs PAN and Proto Oceanic sound systems and a number of refinements have been generally accepted
(20, 32, 79, 80, 85, 166, 219, 220). These modifications have reduced the
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number of shared sound changes defining Oceanic, but they still leave a
sizeable residue. Several grammatical innovations have been claimed to be
diagnostic of Oceanic (197, 207) together with certain irregular changes in the
form of words (117).
Challenges to the Oceanic Hypothesis

In the 1960s the Oceanic hypothesis was challenged on lexicostatistical
grounds. A study by Dyen (82, 84) showed that the AN languages of Melanesia are exceptionally diverse in terms of percentages of cognates in a standard
list of some 200 basic vocabulary meanings. Over 30 of the 40 lexicostatistically defmed first-order branches in Dyen's classification were confined to
Melanesia, a finding that led one linguist and a few anthropologists (82, 186,
244) to propose Melanesia as the most likely homeland of the Austronesians.
This classification was dramatically at odds with innovation-based subgroupings and has gained few supporters. Subsequent lexicostatistical studies
in AN have shown that different meanings in the standard 200-word list have
widely varying rates of replacement (92). They have shown that languages
vary a lot in their overall lexical replacement rates (37), thereby raising the
question why some languages have been much more lexically conservative
than others.
The lexical diversity of the AN languages of Melanesia was earlier given a
quite different explanation. Some scholars, chiefly Ray (210) and Capell (53),
argued that the Melanesian languages are not Austronesian in the same sense
as other members ofthe family. Instead, the languages of Melanesia were seen
as hybrids, the products of contact between Indonesian (Westem AN) and
Papuan (non-AN) languages that followed migrations of Westem AN speakers
to various parts of Melanesia. The typical result of such contact in each region
was a pidgin or mixed language with an AN superstrate and a Papuan substrate. The Papuan language was thought to differ radically for each locality
and this was the main reason why the non-Austronesian content of Melanesian
languages differed so greatly from region to region. A second part of the
argument, spelled out in detail by Capell, denies that the Melanesian and
Polynesian languages form a subgroup apart from Indonesian. The AN elements in the Melanesian languages, he said, stem from multiple sources: an
early movement from Indonesia established AN languages in parts of Melanesia, then people from the Philippines, central Sulawesi, and so on settled in
different places. Capell specified groups of words that he believed stemmed
from particular regions.
The Ray-Capell theory has been attractive to some anthropologists who see
it as a ready explanation for the perceived biological and cultural differences
between Melanesian and other AN speakers. For many years the theory was
cited in anthropological surveys as if it were the standard or most probable
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interpretation ofthe facts (190). However, there are some fundamental fiaws in
the linguistic argument. An objection to the first partthe hypothesis that
Papuan speakers in various parts of Melanesia adopted AN languages with
substrate residueswas that in no case was the Papuan substrate language
identified (119, 120); it remained a deus ex machina. Although Papuan-AN
bilingualism in the New Guinea area is common and several recent studies
(e.g. 76, 246) have shown that some AN languages have been greatly affected
by contact with neighboring Papuan languages, we are asked to believe that
language shift happened again and again, that all the Melanesian languages are
the product of pre-AN communities adopting AN languages. Yet there are
parts of Melanesia^Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fijithat probably had no
pre-AN inhabitants. The other and quite crucial objection is that the second
part of the Ray-Capell theorymultiple colonization by AN speakers from
different parts of Island Southeast Asiadirectly counters the evidence for the
Oceanic hypothesis. In any case, statistical analysis (184) shows that there is
no solid basis to Capell's correlations between particular words and particular
regions.
The present consensus is that although AN-Papuan contacts have not contributed to the genetic diversity of AN languages, which the comparative
method defines in terms of subgrouping relations, they have contributed much
to the structural and lexical diversity of languages in the Melanesian area (171,
219, 225, 246) and to the sheer number of discrete languages spoken by small
communities.
Recent Proposals about High Order Subgroups

During the 1960s and 1970s a more complex theory of AN high order subgroups emerged from work on historical phonology and morphology. The
poorly documented Formosan languages, completely left out of Dempwolff s
comparisons, became key witnesses in the reconstmction of PAN. Several
changes to Dempwolffs proposed PAN sound system have been made in the
light of Formosan testimony (71, 84, 87, 222). Dyen noted the possibility of a
primary split in AN between {a) some or all Formosan languages and {b) a
group containing all other AN languages (84,87) on the grounds of phonological mergers common to all the extra-Formosan languages. Dahl (71) argued
forcefully for such a primary split. Blust (30, 49) named the extra-Formosan
branch "Malayo-Polynesian" (MP) and gave a morphological argument supporting it. Although several scholars have expressed strong reservations (89,
91,262), the hypothesis has gained increasing acceptance (140,212, 223, 243,
270).
There are several variants of the Formosan/Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis
(223). According to Blust (30, 49), Harvey (140), and Reid (212) the Formo-
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PAN
Formosan
Central/Eastem MP
Lesser Sundas,
Maluku, etc.
S. HalmaheraAV.
New Guinea
Oceanic
Figure J Subgrouping of Austronesian languages after Blust.
san languages may comprise more than one first-order branch of AN, perhaps
dividing into Atayalic (northern), Tsouic (central), and Paiwanic (southern)
groups. Another point of debate (48, 212, 269) is whether the languages of the
Philippines form a subgroup within MP. Although most Philippine languages
seem at least superficially similar to each other, Reid (212) suggests that they
have no significant innovations in common. Zorc (269) challenges Reid, arguing that Philippine languages share numerous lexical replacements and that
these constitute innovations defining a Philippine subgroup. The problem in
the Philippines, as in many other compact regions, is to distinguish innovations from borrowings among related languages that have been in contact for
millennia. A recent study of Tiruray (Mindanao) vocabulary (50) shows that
this Philippine language has replaced neariy 30% of its basic vocabulary with
loans from its neighbors.
Blust (30, 31, 37-39, 42, 49) has proposed a more detailed family tree
(Figure 1). In this tree the Westem MP comprises chiefiy the languages of the
Philippines, Malaysia, westem Indonesia (including Sulawesi) as far east as
mid-Sumbawa, and Madagascar and Central MP comprises approximately the
languages of eastem Indonesia east of Sumbawa and Sulawesi excluding
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Halmahera. Oceanic remains, but it has been demoted to something like a

fourth-order subgroup.
A caveat is in order conceming Figure 1. It is probably fair to say that of
Blust's proposed subgroups, MP and three of its daughtersEastem MP,
South HalmaheraAVest New Guinea, and Oceanicare rather widely accepted
because each is based on a significant body of diagnostic innovations. Westem
MP, Central MP, and Central/Eastem MP, on the other hand, are much more
problematic. The difficulties in finding innovations encompassing the entire
putative Central MP group very likely refiect the existence of an earlier extensive and longstanding dialect network in the eastem Indonesian region (133).
What one finds is overlapping innovations, each covering part of the region.
As a whole, Westem MP languages seem to inherit only the innovations
shared by all MP languages, i.e. those attributable to Proto MP (PMP). This
suggests that there was no Proto Westem MP, but rather that PMP diverged
into a number of dialects, one of whose descendants became Proto Central/Eastem MP. The Westem MP languages are simply those MP languages
that do not belong to the Central/Eastem group. In the same vein. Central MP
languages may be just those Central/Eastem languages that are not members
of Eastem MP.
It has long been recognized that linguistic splits are often imperfecti.e.
not sudden and complete, but entailing the gradual divergence of a chain of
local dialects. A corollary is that subgroups are often imperfecti.e. the
product of a split in a homogeneous proto-language. Many imperfect subgroups are formed by the spread of innovations over parts of a chain of
dialects, over many centuries, before this chain finally breaks up into discrete
languages. AN comparativists have begun to give more attention to the methodological problems that ancient dialect chains present in subgrouping and
reconstmction. The most incisive application ofthe methods of dialect geography to a single AN region is Geraghty's (101) study ofthe history ofthe Fijian
languages but there have been other studies that examine dialect chains, contemporary or past (2,67,70,91,168, 177, 189,205,209, 219,230,248). Ross
(219) attempts to build into his classification of Westem Oceanic languages a
distinction between perfect subgroups, which result from complete splits, and
imperfect subgroups.
Some Rival Hypotheses

Some scholars have argued for a Formosan-Philippine subgroup, as opposed to the notion of a primary division between Formosan and the rest. The
Formosan-Philippine hypothesis (83, 90, 91, 93, 253) is based on what its
proponents see as an impressive number of exclusively shared cognate sets.
They argue that some of these cognate sets must refiect lexical innovations
common to the languages of Taiwan and the Philippines. Dyen (91) has
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PAWLEY & ROSS
recently proposed a variant of this hypothesis whereby the Formosan-Philippine group is part of a chain that also includes western Indo-Malaysian languages. He labels this chain "Indo-Formosan." In other words, he implies that
Proto Indo-Formosan remained a dialect chain for many centuries, stretching
over the long string of islands from Formosa to westem Indo-Malaysia. The
question is whether a dialect chain could have been maintained over a chain of
islands as far flung as those of Taiwan, the Philippines, and westem Indo-Malaysia and if so, for how long.
A seductive feature of the Formosan-Philippine and Indo-Formosan hypotheses is that the languages in the proposed groups show quite strong similarities to each other (93,261). But the case should not be overstated. Similarities in vocabulary are more obvious across Philippine languages and certain
languages of southeastem Taiwan than across the rest of Taiwan. Stmctural
similarities, and in particular the elaborate system of verbal "focus" (whereby
a range of semantic rolesactor, undergoer, location, instmment, or beneficiary^may occur as the "topic" or subject of a clause, with the role of the topic
marked by a distinctive affix on the verb), occur across a range of Philippine
languages and some Formosan and westem Indo-Malaysian languages (48,
201, 223, 243,259,260).
As we have mentioned, the genetic comparative method subgroups languages by identifying shared innovations attributable to a common ancestor.
The Formosan-Philippine and Indo-Formosan groups are supported only by
putative lexical replacements inferred on the basis of exclusively shared cognate sets, which tend to be shaky evidence, especially when not supported by
innovations of other kinds. For one thing, words are the most easily borrowed
elements of a language and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between
shared inherited replacements, which are diagnostic of a subgroup, and borrowings, which are not. More serious is the difficulty of determining what has
replaced what in a family with only two first-order subgroups. Taking cognate
sets meaning 'leaf,' for example, Formosan languages have a cognate set
refiecting *wciSaw 'leaf (49) whereas MP languages show a distinct cognate
set refiecting *daSun 'leaf.' Did PAN have both forms or only one? If only
one, which? When we encounter a sound correspondence like /s/ in Language
A versus /h/ in Language B, we can be reasonably certain that the sound in
their common proto-language was *s and that the direction of change was
from *s to /h/ (95). But given the present data, there is no analogous way of
determining whether *daSun replaced *waSaw, or vice versa, or whether both
were present in PAN.
Of course, arguments of this sort are not resolved by a single piece of
evidence. The proponents of a Formosan-Philippines group appeal to the relatively large number of exclusively shared cognate sets supporting it. But we
439
have no means of knowing that these are not shared retentions from PAN
and/or borrowings, rather than innovations (51).
The Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Hypothesis and the Intemal

Classification of Oceanic
A significant body of shared innovations indicates that the immediate relatives
of Oceanic consist of a South Halmahera-West New Guinea (SHWNG) group,
whose members are spoken in the southem half of Halmahera and around
Cenderawasih Bay, at the northwestem end of Irian Jaya, close to the Bird's
Head of New Guinea (31). The name "Eastem Malayo-Polynesian" is now
generally applied to the putative SHWNG/Oceanic group.
Except for the well-defined Polynesian group and the fairly well-marked
Nuclear Micronesian group it has been hard to identify subgroups of Oceanic
that cover a wide area. However, substantial evidence has recently been
brought forward indicating several large high order subgroups in westem
Melanesia (i.e. New Guinea and the westem Solomon Islands). Ross (219)
argues for two such high order subgroups: a Westem Oceanic group, derived
from a dialect network, and an Admiralties group. He divides Westem Oceanic into three large groups: the North New Guinea Cluster, consisting of all
the AN languages of the north coast and offshore islands of Papua New
Guinea from Aitape to the Huon Gulf together with the languages of the
northem coast of New Britain west of the Willaumez Peninsula and much of
southem New Britain; the Papuan Tip Cluster, containing the Oceanic languages of southeastem and central Papua; and a third very large group, called
Meso-Melanesian, encompassing the languages of northem New Britain east
of the Willaumez Pensinula, the Bali-Vitu group. New Ireland, and the westem
Solomons. Each of the three larger groups appears to derive from an old
dialect network. Evidence is insufficient to classify the languages of the St.
Matthias group, to the north of New Ireland, but these may well constitute a
separate high order subgroup within Oceanic.
No very large subgroups have been clearly identified elsewhere in Melanesia. The more important currently accepted groups include Southeast Solomonic, centered in Guadalcanal, Malaita and San Cristobal (168, 196, 251);
Central and Northern Vanuatu (67, 196); Southem Vanuatu (170, 172); and
New Caledonia-Loyalties (103, 142). A Nuclear Micronesian subgroup is
generally recognized (17, 18, 154), comprising the languages of geographic
Micronesia excluding Chamorro, Belau, and Yapese. Its center of genetic
diversity is in the east, in the region of Kiribati, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and the
Marshalls (154).
Much effort has gone into fmding the immediate relatives of Polynesian.
The consensus is that the Fijian languages and Rotuman are, by a small
margin, its closest kin and the name "Central Pacific" is given to this putative
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PAWLEY & ROSS
Proto Oceanic
Admiralties
Southeast
Solomonic
Nuclear
Micronesian
Central/North
Vanuatu
Westem Oceanic
North New
Guinea
Meso-Melanesian
New
CaledoniaLoyalties
Central Pacific
Polynesian
Fijian
Rotuman
Papuan Tip
Figure 2 A partial subgrouping of Oceanic languages.
subgroup (101,102,115,118, 196,199). Geraghty (101) suggests that Polynesian and the eastem Fijian dialects were once a unity distinct from westem
Fijian. The first split in Polynesian appears to have been between a Tongic
branch comprising Tongan and Niuean, and a Nuclear Polynesian branch
comprising the 28 or so remaining Polynesian languages (21, 63, 64, 193,
194).
A wider "Eastem Oceanic" subgroup, comprising at least Central Pacific
plus Central and Northem Vanuatu and perhaps Southeast Solomonic has been
proposed (101, 174, 196) but the evidence for such a group is so far unconvincing. Figure 2 gives a summary of important Oceanic subgroups that have
some degree of general acceptance.
Dispersal Centers: TheAge-Area Method

Occam's Razor tells us that the most likely primary dispersal center for a
genetic group of species or languages is the area of its current greatest genetic
diversity. The subgrouping outlined in Figure 1 places the most likely primary
dispersal center for Austronesian in the region of Taiwan and the northem
Philippines, where the Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian groups are contiguous. The same subgrouping also implies (a) a Philippines dispersal center for
the Malayo-Polynesian branch with a subsequent fanning out across the IndoMalaysian archipelago, {b) an eastem Indonesia dispersal center for Central &
Eastem Austronesian, and (c) a dispersal center either in northem Halmahera
or Cenderawasih Bay in New Guinea for Eastem MP. Blust (32) favors Cen-
441
derawasih Bay because of the apparently greater genetic diversity of its languages.
Taken together. Figures 1 and 2 imply a primary dispersal center for Oceanic in westem Melanesia (specifically, the Bismarck Archipelago or the
facing northem cocist of New Guinea). The structure ofthe Oceanic family tree
has been interpreted by some (200, 205) as indicating a rapid dispersal of
Oceanic-speaking peoples from northwestern Melanesia across southem
Melanesia and into the Central Pacific following the breakup of Proto Oceanic.
This interpretation is based on the observation that there is no well-defined
center of genetic diversity within Oceanic itself. If there had been an initial
break of Oceanic into several languages in northwestem Melanesia, followed
much later by movements into southem Melanesia (the southeast Solomons,
Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji), Polynesia, and Micronesia, one would
expect to find the languages of the later-settled regions subgrouping with one
or another of the major northwest Melanesian groups, but this is not the case.
LEXICAL RECONSTRUCTION AND CULTURE HISTORY

Lexical reconstmctions were first used over a century ago to elucidate early
AN culture (156) but a much richer body of evidence has now accumulated.
As Dempwolffs (73) phonological and lexical reconstmctions included no
Formosan languages they are now generally attributed to PMP rather than
PAN. In a series of papers Blust (25-28, 33, 39, 43, 45) has increased the
number of cognate sets requiring PMP or PAN lexical reconstructions to over
4000. He is consolidating this material into a massive comparative dictionary
that will include reconstmctions for various stages from PAN down. At the
PAN level, constraints of method and data continue to hamper reconstmctions.
Only those cognate sets represented in both Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian
can be attributed to PAN etyma. The small number of Formosan languages and
the poor quality of most descriptions means that the number of Formosan
cognates with Malayo-Polynesian is modestperhaps little more than 1000.
A Proto Polynesian lexical file, begun in 1965 at the University of Auckland as part of a broad Polynesian culture history project, has grown to over
3000 reconstmctions (23). A Proto Micronesian file of some 1300 roots has
been assembled at the University of Hawaii. A Proto Oceanic lexicon and
thesaums with perhaps 2000 lexemes is in preparation at the Australian National University.
A good deal of lexical work has been concemed chiefly with historical
phonology and has paid little attention to the fine grain of semantics. There is
now a move to examine closely the history of particular semantic fields,
especially those of interest for culture history, and to specify reconstmcted
meanings more precisely. Recent studies have examined terms for horticulture
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PAWLEY & ROSS
(99), wet rice cultivation (215), plant names (24, 249), canoe parts and sailing
(206), buildings (44), cooking techniques (169), fish and/or fishing (105, 149,
257), birds (65, 68), dog and pig (173), and aspects of early AN social organization (34, 35, 38, 40, 51, 131, 201, 167). Blust (39) reconstructs about 180
terms for marine and land-based flora and fauna, and for climate and topography, showing the levels of his family tree (PAN, PMP, etc) at which they are
reconstructible. Zorc (270) has taken about 1300 PAN and PMP reconstructions as the basis of a sketch of early AN culture history. Chowning (61)
surveys a wide range of cultural fields, noting cognate sets within Oceanic that
are candidates for Proto Oceanic status.
Dispersal Centers: The Evidence of Lexical Reconstructions

Lexical reconstructions for environmental features sometimes provide evidence for or against centers and directions of dispersal. Cognate words for
certain plants and animals characteristic of the Indo-Pacific tropics and subtropics are found in regions as widely separated as Formosa and Polynesia.
Such widespread terms do no more than indicate an AN homeland somewhere
in this vast region (29,40, 86,156, 270). However, Blust (38) does better with
cognate sets for certain mammals restricted to one side of the Wallace Line,
which separates the Asian from the Australian (including eastem Indonesian)
faunal zones. Cognate names for the scaly anteater (reflecting a proto-form
*qaRem), a monkey taxon (HUCUT)), and ruminants (probably deer)
[*(qa)Nuarf 'ruminant taxon,' *salajer) 'male, of ruminants,' and *(q)uReT)
'horn'] are found in languages of Formosa, in certain parts of westem IndoMalaysia, and (except for the scaly anteater) the Philippines. If one accepts the
hypothesis of a primary division between Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian,
one must attribute all of these etyma to PAN. The inference can then be drawn
that PAN was spoken west of the Wallace Line.
Blust (40) also points out that PAN had many etyma associated with the sea
and a system of orientation distinguishing between *daya 'landward,' and
*lahud 'seaward,' characteristic of people who live on the coast or on islands.
Other words were *baRiuS 'typhoon' and *qamiS(-an) 'north' or 'cold season.' The last two etyma taken together indicate a homeland north of the
equator and perhaps on the margin of the tropical zone, for which southem
Taiwan or the northem Philippines are reasonable candidates.
Technology and the Austronesian Dispersal

Several commentators (10, 12, 126, 127, 205, 232) have argued that horticulture was another key element in the Austronesian diaspora. Possession of a
variety of crops may have enabled ANs to replace or marginalize non-farming
populations in Island Southeast Asia and to survive on small islands with
impoverished biota in the Central Pacific (126, 129). Blust (29) attributes to
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PAN a cluster of terms for rice and millet: *pajay 'rice plant, paddy,' *beRas
'husked rice,' *Semay 'cooked rice,' *ZaRami 'rice straw,' and *zawa 'millet'
(all reflected both in Formosan and Indonesian witnesses), as well as *qumah
'garden, cultivated field' (reflected also in Oceanic). Rice is present in early
Neolithic sites in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Borneo (15). However, rice
agriculture goes back at least 6000 years in mainland Southeast Asia (15), with
wet field (paddy) rice probably preceding dry field (swidden) rice, and it
would be surprising if PAN speakers lacked terms for wet rice technology. It
may be significant that northem Luzon languages continue PAN *pajay and
*Semay by terms that mean 'paddy rice' and 'swidden rice,' respectively
(215). A group of terms for root crops are attributable to PMP but not to PAN:
*tales 'taro: Colocasia sp.', *qubi 'yam: Dioscorea sp.,' and *biRaq 'giant
arum: Ahcasia sp.' All the root crop terms persist in Oceanic, but none of
those for grain crops do, indicating that rice and millet were not part of the
Proto Oceanic economy. Names for sago (PMP *Rambia), bananas (PMP
*pu(n)ti), sugar cane (PAN *tebuS), and a range of tree and ground fruits can
also be attributed to PMP or PAN.
Over 20 boat and sailing terms can be reconstructed for PMP (206). These
include terms for several outrigger parts, hull planking, and sail, indicating that
these were part of PMP technology as one would expect from the comparative
ethnographic evidence (134). None of the terms for outrigger parts have cognates in mainland Formosan languages. Linguistics cannot tell us whether
Formosan peoples lost the outrigger technology or whether they never had it.
Austronesian Social Organization

Linguistic evidence has been at the center of an ongoing debate about the
nature of kinship groups and marriage systems in early AN society. Using a
comparative typological method, relating a variety of social factsrules of
residence, marriage and descent, kinship terms, etcMurdock (185, 187)
concludes that early Austronesians had bilateral kindreds and a Hawaiian-type
kinship terminology rather than descent groups and distinct terms for mother's
and father's siblings. Goodenough (112), an isolated partial dissenter from this
view, argues for land-holding descent groups, which by definition could not
have been ego-centered kindreds. He notes a cognate set indicating *kainaya
'land-holding descent group,' attributable to the common ancestor of Polynesian and Nuclear Micronesian languages.
Blust (34) argues that careful attention to linguistic evidence suggests a
radically different set of conclusions from those reached by Murdock. Drawing on lexical agreements between Oceanic and Philippine-lndo-Malaysian
languages he reconstructs a system of terms that are attributable to PMP and
sometimes to PAN. Unless otherwise indicated, the following are all attributable to PMP: *Rumaq 'house, lineage,' *datu 'lineage or clan priest or offi-
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PAWLEY & ROSS
cial' (with compound terms meaning 'male *datu' and 'female *datu' or
'*datu ofthe upper vs lower half), *suku 'quarter, limb; section in a quadripartite society,' *na Se(m)pat na baiay 'four houses; four parts of a society,'
*Sua(n)ji 'blood kinsman,' *ma(n)tuqa 'MBAVF,' *dawa 'ZS/DH,' *[aya
'FZS/ZH (ms),' and PAN *aya 'FZ.' Drawing on Murdock's work Blust notes
(34:220) that the PMP system of kin terms "shows a negative statististical
correlation with exclusive organization around the bilateral kindred, and hence
implies the coetaneous presence of descent groups." He concludes that, taken
together, the linguistic material and the theory of social types require the
inferences that PMP society 1. had descent groups that were subsequently lost
in a broad culture area extending over the Philippines and westem Indo-Malaysia, 2. practiced preferential marriage to a classificatory mother's brother's
daughter, 3. proscribed marriage to father's sister's daughters, 4. ordered lineages into a dual division, with its associated universal cosmological scheme,
and 5. recognized a four-part division of "houses," representing descent or
residential groups. He also suggests that there is a strong case for inferring
asymmetrical exchange of wives between marriage classes.
Blust regarded his study as an illustration of the greater reliability of the
genetic comparative method vs comparative typology for reconstructing historical particularities. His paper provoked a lively response from a number of
commentators (e.g. 1, 59, 96-98), who suggested that some of his inferences
were too strong for the evidence. Sticking to his guns, Blust has developed the
argument in subsequent papers (34,36,51). The debate has centered on (a) the
precise meaning and antiquity of certain terms and (b) whether specific kinds
of terminologies imply specific norms of social behavior.
Sahlins' influential paper (229) on political types in Oceania is more concemed with structural principles governing the evolution of polities than with
the history of particular Oceanic societies. However, his broad equation of
Polynesia with hereditary chieftainships and of Melanesia with big-man leadership threatened for a time to be taken as implying distinct historical origins
for Polynesian and Melanesian societies. But critics have pointed out that
many Austronesian-speaking societies of Melanesia have hereditary chiefs
(58, 75). Pawley (201) attributes to Proto Oceanic a pair of terms *qa-lapas
'chief, person of chiefly rank' and *qa-riki 'first bom son of chief,' indicating
that a system of hereditary rank was found in the society whose language was
ancestral to all AN languages of Melanesia, Polynesia, and Nuclear Micronesia. Drawing on Malaita cognates, Lichtenberk (167) modifies the forms to
*ta-la(m)pat and *qa ariki for which he offers the more cautious glosses
'leader' and 'oldest child.' It has been argued (143) that a measure of social
stratification was necessary to organize colonizing voyages of the scale associated with the settiement of the Central Pacific. Kirch (158) and Green (131)
have used archaeological evidence to assert that what they term Ancestral
445
Polynesian Society was built in part on an inherited framework of status and

rank.
Rapid Dispersal, Mobility, and Linguistic Divergence

The initial AN expansion in Oceania was the work of sailing people who
appear to have moved quickly. For at least the first few centuries after the
Lapita expansion, some degree of contact was often maintained between settlements along island chains extending up to 600 km (126).
If the initial AN dispersal across Island Southeast Asia followed a similar
pattern, how might this have shaped the pattem of linguistic divergence? The
best contemporary analogs to the pattem of early AN differentiation within
large islands and compact island groups in Southeast Asia may well be found
in certain regions settled quite late by AN speakers. Madagascar (about the
size of Sumatra and larger in land area than the Philippines) and the Hawaiian
Islands (much smaller but scattered) were both probably settled about AD 600,
and New Zealand (about the size of the Philippines) about AD 1000-1200
(242). Madagascar contains a network of dialects, but only at the margins is
mutual intelligibility low, with less than 60% of cognates on the Swadesh
lOO-word list (88, 256). Hawaiian speech shows little regional variation. The
Maori dialects of the North Island of New Zealand are lexically quite diverse
but all dialects have a high degree of mutual intelligibility (22).
These cases indicate that AN colonizers were generally mobile enough to
maintain fairly cohesive dialect networks over large islands and island groups
for up to 1000 years or so. Work on the Fijian and westem Polynesian archipelagos (72, 101, 104, 151, 209, 230) and the disti-ibution of languages in
Polynesia (200) reinforce this view. However, to draw any more precise implications from the Madagascar and New Zealand cases for the early history of
AN we need careful studies of the dialect geography of these two regions.
CORRELATING ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC

EVENTS
A set of principles has been proposed for connecting archaeological and linguistic traditions in the Central Pacific or Remote Oceanic region (161, 204).
Geographic isolation of the major islands groups and the fact that colonization
did not begin until about 3000 years ago has favored continuity with gradual
change of the founding archaeological and speech traditions. There is virtually
no doubt that the first humans to enter the Fiji-westem Polynesia region, and
later eastem Polynesia, spoke languages ancestral to the present day languages
of the Central Pacific subgroup.
Between 3600 and 3000 BP variants of the Lapita cultural complex appear
across a wide belt ofthe South Pacific (4, 127, 130, 153, 158, 159, 162, 235,
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PAWLEY & ROSS
237, 239, 240). The principal markers of Lapita sites are elaborate and highly
distinctive dentate-stamped pottery motifs and a variety of vessel shapes, but
these markers are usually associated with other features (127, 130, 159, 162,
240) including large coastal settiements, very often situated on small islands
and always handy to beaches that would provide good launching sites for
boats; a tool kit containing characteristically shaped stone and shell adzes and
scrapers; obsidian and chert flake tools, often imported from remote sources;
one-piece shell trolling hooks; pearlshell knives and scrapers; various kinds of
conus shell disks and pendants; earth ovens; and middens full of bones from
lagoon fish and turtle and containing chicken and pig bones. The earliest
Lapita sites, dating to about 3600 BP, are in the Bismarck Archipelago. There
the complex geometric dentate stamped decorative style appears full blown, in
a variant called Early Westem Lapita. By 3200 BP a slightly modified form of
Lapita was present in Santa Cmz, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia, where it was
evidently the founding culture. By about 3000 BP another variant, Eastem
Lapita, appears in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, and this is clearly ancestral to later
Fijian and Polynesian material cultures (127-129,161).
This swift spread of Lapita culture across Island Melanesia and into westem Polynesia, following a perhaps 400 year period of earlier development in
the Bismarck Archipelago, is consistent with the pattem of Oceanic subgrouping we outlined previously. The subgrouping indicates a period of Oceanic unity, most likely in westem Melanesia, where Oceanic has its immediate
extemal relatives, followed by the breakup of Proto Oceanic into a number of
widely dispersed subgroups that are either coordinate or close to coordinate.
A long period of common development apart from the rest of Oceanic,
perhaps on the order of a thousand years, is indicated by the phonological,
grammatical, and lexical innovations of the Polynesian group. The archaeological record shows a correspondingly long pause between the Lapita horizon in westem Polynesia and the settlement of eastem Polynesia, which appears not to have begun until early in the first millennium AD (10, 128, 161,
204, 242). Irwin (152,153), however, questions whether the pause is real or an
artifact of archaeological sampling and visibility.
The equation of Lapita with intmsive AN languages is less straightforward
in the Bismarck Archipelago, where human settlement goes back more than
30,000 years (3), than it is in the Central Pacific. Countering this equation,
proponents of a predominantly westem Melanesian origin of Lapita (4, 114,
258) point out that no completely satisfactory ancestral tradition for Lapita has
been found either in Southeast Asia or in Melanesia. They argue that some of
the elements of the Lapita complex, including horticulture, lagoon fishing,
inter-island trading of obsidian, and earth ovens predate Lapita in westem
Melanesia. A radical suggestion has been made (245) that in westem Melane-
447
sia, Lapita may be no more than a kind of pottery, widely traded and superimposed on diverse local cultures.
This last suggestion, though perhaps made tongue-in-cheek, raises several
questions: How well are archaeologists able to distinguish between inherited
and intrusive elements in an archaeological tradition? Under what conditions,
if any, does it make sense to speak of genetic relatedness or continuity between
archaeological assemblages, i.e. implying the transmission of a coherent
(though not unchanging) tradition from generation to generation within a
society? The term "culture" is notoriously vague. What assurance do we have
that the archaeologist's "culture" has the same kind of coherence and transmissibility that a language has? Kirch & Green (161) attempt to answer these
questions in the Polynesian context.
Those who think the major elements of Lapita culture originated in Southeast Asia (7, 8, 16, 238, 240) argue that Lapita is not just pots but a coherent
tradition with clear antecedents in Island Southeast Asia. In westem Melanesia
and further east, Lapita sites form a well-defined cultural horizon. These
researchers assert that the continuities with pre-Lapita technology in the Bismarck Archipelago have been exaggerated.
Even if Southeast Asian antecedents are found for Lapita technology, can
we be sure that the technology was spread by the migration of a society of
people rather than by the diffusion of useful elements through trade, etc? Here
the archaeological evidence is suggestive but at present not decisive. Proponents ofthe migration view appeal to linguistic evidence as the clincher: whole
languages do not spread by diffusion. The subgrouping evidence strongly
indicates that Oceanic speakers entered Melanesia from the west, and the mass
of cognate sets for many facets of social and economic life among contemporary AN languages from all regions supports the argument for migration. The
ancestors of the Proto Oceanic speech community may not have brought all
their culture with them but they brought a large part of it. There is an impressive persistence of vocabulary for various cultural domains in some contemporary Oceanic languages of Melanesia, in most of the Nuclear Micronesian
languages, and in all of the Polynesian languages (see references in the previous section on lexical reconstmction). But cognate sets generally do not
indicate the size and layout of settlements or the fine details of technology
motifs, adze forms, etcby which archaeologists often unite or distinguish
traditions.
For much of Island Southeast Asia the archaeological record for the neolithic is sparse. The earliest pottery-bearing sites in the Philippines and Indonesia date to around 5000 BP (236). The earliest sites in Island Southeast Asia,
dating just prior to 5000 BP, are found in Taiwan where they are associated
with the Dapenkeng culture (57, 160, 236). A number of archaeologists favor
Taiwan as the AN dispersal center on the grounds that the pottery and material
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PAWLEY & ROSS
culture tradition is probably derived from cultures that existed in South China
at a slightly earlier date (8, 9, 57, 160, 252). Not all archaeologists, however,
support a Taiwanese dispersal center (178,234).
QUESTIONS OF CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

We tum fmally to questions of continuity and change: Why have some AN
languages been extremely conservative and others extremely innovative? Why
have AN languages virtually taken over Island Southeast Asia, with the partial
exception of the eastem islands of Indonesia, while in westem Melanesia they
show a much more restricted distribution? And does continuity of language
necessarily imply continuity of community?
Language change is most easily quantified in the domain of basic vocabulary. Blust (37) shows that Malayo-Polynesian languages vary enormously in
their retention of forms for meanings on a 200-item basic vocabulary list. (His
study does not include Formosan languages.) Stmctural change is harder to
quantify, but there is no doubt that some languages have been more conservative than others in phonology (47, 71, 73) and morphology (195, 196, 219,
221).
Island Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and the larger islands in the Bismarck
Archipelago and the Solomons have been occupied by Homo sapiens for at
least 40,000 years (3, 4, 9). As AN speakers colonized Island Southeast Asia
and westem Melanesia they undoubtedly encountered established populations.
These populations are perhaps best represented today by the Negrito groups
scattered through the Philippines, the Malaysia/Thailand border area, and the
Andaman Islands, and by the Papuan-speaking peoples of eastem Indonesia
and westem Melanesia (8). No indigenous non-AN languages survive today in
Taiwan, the Philippines, or westem Indo-Malaysia. By contrast, in eastem
Indonesia and westem Melanesia numerous non-AN languages (conventionally referred to as "Papuan") continue to be spoken along probable AN migration routes.
There seems to be a rough correlation between the degree to which AN
languages have replaced previous languages in a region and their degree of
lexical and structural conservatism. Lexically, the most conservative MalayoPolynesian languages are concentrated in the Philippines and the westem part
of the Indo-Malaysian archipelago (centered in Malaysia, Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi). The most innovative languages are concentrated in eastem
Indonesia (Halmahera and Irian Jaya) and Melanesia. In terms of grammatical
stmcture, the most conservative languages are concentrated in Formosa, the
Philippines, Madagascar, and to a lesser extent, in the westem part of the
Indo-Malaysian archipelago. Within Oceanic one can also distinguish between
conservative and innovative languages (121, 125). The most conservative
449
languages, lexically and grammatically, are concentrated in Fiji, westem Polynesia, the westem Carolines, the southeast Solomons, northem Vanuatu, the
northem coast of New Britain, and the nearby Bali-Vitu islands. Within Melanesia, the more innovative languages are found mainly on the northem coast of
the New Guinea mainland and in the Markham Valley and Huon Gulf hinterlands, in southem New Britain, southem Vanuatu, and New Caledonia.
If there is a single dynamic behind these two sets of facts, what might it be?
It probably has to do with the nature of the populations encountered by
immigrant AN speakers. From linguistic and ethnographic evidence, Reid
(213,214) reconstmcts a scenario for early Negrito/AN contact in Luzon in the
northem Philippines. He concludes that the Luzon Negritos were hunter-gatherers, relatively few in number, and readily dominated by the AN agriculturalists. He infers that they shifted at an early date to AN languages, since the AN
languages spoken by the Negritos today, although ultimately subgrouped with
other Luzon languages, are not closely related to any of them. Some Negritos
retained much of their distinctive way of life after the language shift. In other
cases they were absorbed into non-Negrito AN-speaking communities. One
can assume that what happened in the northem Philippines was repeated in
westem Indo-Malaysia, although in this case all non-AN speakers ultimately
either shifted to AN languages or died out. Either way, the pre-AN population
lacked the demographic and economic muscle to have much impact on AN
languages in this region.
The situation in New Guinea was quite different. Evidence indicates that
pre-AN populations in New Guinea were in many cases horticulturalists, cultivating a number of root and tree crops (109, 110, 268). They were probably
more numerous and sedentary and therefore much less readily dominated by
immigrants than hunter-gatherers would have been. There were probably substantial populations in the hinterlands of the northem coast of New Guinea and
on all the large islands of westem Melanesia when AN speakers arrived (4).
There is little evidence for pre-AN horticulture in the Bismarck Archipelago
but the proximity to New Guinea suggests that horticulture may have been
there. AN immigrants, who traditionally exploited coastal resources, would
not have competed strongly for territory far from the coast; indeed, the Lapita
people seem to have largely skirted the New Guinea mainland, keeping to
offshore islands.
The distribution of early Lapita sites in westem Melanesia and the dates for
their eastward spread suggests that some of the Lapita people of westem
Melanesia were for a few centuries able to keep their distance from the nonAN peoples inhabiting the main islands. Before long one or more groups of
these Lapita island dwellers moved east. Their descendants who reached Fiji,
Polynesia, and Micronesia had the whole field to themselves and retained it
until European contact. It appears that they also found Vanuatu and New
450
PAWLEY & ROSS
Caledonia uninhabited, although a degree of doubt remains in these cases

(131).
This separation between immigrants and indigenes in westem Melanesia
was not maintained for long. AN languages remain dominant in Island Melanesia, but on the New Guinea mainland there is evidence that communities
have occasionally shifted from an AN to a neighboring Papuan language.
Dutton (76,77) documents an area of southeastern Papua where such shifts are
in progress. In AN languages spoken on and close to the New Guinea mainland, contacts between AN and Papuan speakers have at times led to profound
structural changes and to heavy lexical borrowing (53,55,171,218,246,247).
There are numerous AN languages and groups on or near mainland Papua
New Guinea that show features attributable to Papuan contact: verb-final word
order (replacing Proto Oceanic verb-medial or verb-initial word order), preposed possessors, postpositions, and loss of Proto Oceanic derivational morphology. Only in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomons, where there is
no firm evidence for agriculture in pre-Lapita times and where communities
were therefore probably smaller than on the New Guinea mainland, might we
regularly expect to find shifts from a Papuan to an AN language or AN-induced structural change. Madak on New Ireland is an AN language whose
speakers appear to have once been Papuan speakers (224). Papuan languages
have partly held their ground in New Britain and Bougainville. In other parts
of westem Melanesia, Papuan languages have been almost completely replaced by AN languages. In general, we do not know how the replacements
were effected.
The precondition for contact-induced structural change is widespread biUngualism. When a substantial number of speakers are bilingual in the language
that is emblematic of their own ethnicity and in the language of neighbors with
whom they have frequent contact, the linguistic effects of this contact are often
far more radical than those of a culturally dominant language (that is often
spoken by only a small minority of the dominated). The less extreme outcome
of such bilingualism is contact-induced change in the emblematic language
toward the norms of the neighbor language. The more extreme outcome, as
noted above, is language shift: the emblematic language is relinquished in
favor of the neighbor language.
After bilingualism is established as a social norm, bilingual speakers seem
to construct meanings in increasingly similar ways in both their languages.
This convergence probably has both a cognitive and a social foundation. On
one hand, bilinguals tend to integrate the different conceptual resources offered by their two languages into a single intellectual system. On the other
hand, when foreigners talk to each other, they adapt to each other's usages,
choosing common ground and chopping off the noncongruent edges. Bilingualism in premodem societies has received little scholarly attention, despite
451
an upsurge of interest in it in metropolitan settings. Exceptions are Grace's

books (121, 124), which are based on the author's experience as a field linguist
in the Pacific.
Contact-induced changes form a progression that begins with the adoption
of discourse-level markers (for example, aria 'O.K.,' 'Let's go,' in both AN
and Papuan languages of the Madang area) and a tendency for "the way things
are worded" (124) in the two languages to become increasingly similar. Thurston (246, 247) provides several complex examples of wording convergences
in both AN and Papuan languages in northwestern New Britain. Similarity of
wording then leads to increasing similarity in morphosyntactic structure. The
Bel languages, a group of AN languages spoken around Madang on the northem coast of Papua New Guinea, have adopted the clause structure of neighbor
Papuan languages (218, 226).
AN-Papuan contacts over several millennia in parts of Melanesia must have
produced changes in many domains of culture, from economics and kinship to
cosmology. Such changes often show linguisdc traces in the form of borrowed
words and formulae; yet there have been few systematic studies attempting to
establish directions of cultural borrowing or convergence from linguistic evidence.
There are two other varieties of contact that have changed AN languages.
The first may be encompassed under the rubric "foreign domination," and the
second entails contact and bilingualism in two (or more) AN languages. Foreign domination, which takes the form of political or cultural domination by
speakers of another language, u
.sually manifests itself in the shape of lexical borrowings, but if these
borrowings are sufficiently intense, changes in morphology and phonology
also take place. A glance through the etymologies in the Comparative Austronesian Dictionary (250) reveals the pervasive effects of Sanskrit and Arabic
borrowings in westem Indo-Malaysian languages through first Indie, then
Islamic, cultural dominance, as well as considerable borrowing from the languages of European colonizers. Intense Sanskrit borrowing has introduced a
contrast between dental/alveolar /t, d/ and retroflex /2t, Idl into
Madurese, Javanese, and Balinese (212, 223). Cases of pervasive borrowing
from a politically or culturally dominant language have also been documented
in a number of pre-contact societies in Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia
(20, 105, 139,148,191).
The most detailed study of AN contact-induced change is Pallesen's (192)
examination of contact between Tausug, a Meso-Philippine language, and
various Sama dialects (whose genetic affiliations lie somewhere in westem
Indonesia) in the Sulu Archipelago. Most other studies of contact-induced
change in AN languages concern Oceanic cases. Rotuman has been reshaped
by extensive borrowing, at two different periods, from two Polynesian Ian-
452
PAWLEY & ROSS
guages (20). Labu, an AN language spoken at the mouth of the Markham

River in Papua New Guinea, has been radically restructured on the model of
Bukawa, a member of a different AN subgroup (148). West Uvean, a Polynesian language in the Loyalty Islands, has added several new consonant phonemes as a result of borrowing lexical items from its radically different AN
neighbor, Iaai (191). The phonological complexity of a number of languages
in New Caledonia and the difficulty of applying the comparative method to
them has been attributed to massive contact-induced change among divergent
AN languages (122, 123,125,141, 217).
CONCLUSION
The problem of culture history is that it is an interdisciplinary enterprise, but
the methods and data used by each of its major constituent disciplines are not
readily comparable. Nonetheless such comparisons are necessary in order to
evaluate competing hypotheses within disciplines and to gain a more complete
picture of the past than any single method can provide. The AN-speaking
region offers exceptionally favorable conditions for such interdisciplinary research. Until recently, most prominent hypotheses about the culture history of
the AN-speaking regions originated in the data of comparative linguistics or
comparative ethnography, with scholars from these two disciplines generally
working independently. Archaeology has been a vigorous latecomer. Early
attempts at integrating linguistic and archaeological evidence concentrated on
centers and directions of AN dispersal, with archaeology providing a chronological framework for linguistically-based scenarios. Currently, the focus of
culture historical syntheses is shifting toward comparisons of the lexicons of
reconstructed languages with the content and environmental contexts of various archaeological assemblages. There has been no serious attempt to square
the recent findings of historical human biology with those of other disciplines,
but there are signs that this too is under way (11,131,146).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to Lois Carrington for carefully checking and editing the text
and references; to Roger Green and Matthew Spriggs for providing detailed
comments on a draft; and to Robert Blust, Ross Clark, James Eox, Paul
Geraghty, Jeff Marck, Matthew Pawley, and Lawrence Reid for many useful
criticisms and suggestions.
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Austronesian Culture and History

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Armu. Rev. Anthropol. 1993.

PAWLEY & ROSS

scattered around two thirds of the earth's circumference, from Madagascar to

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

PAWLEY & ROSS

ideologies cissociated with types of terminologies. Many anthropologists and

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

A NOTE ON RECENT GROWTH IN AUSTRONESIAN

PAWLEY & ROSS

particularly in Melanesia and eastem Indonesia, remained poorly known to

THE GENETIC COMPARATIVE METHOD OE

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

PAWLEY & ROSS

The genetic method has strict limitations. It is only secondarily concemed

AUSTRONESIAN SUBGROUPING AND DISPERSAL

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

The Oceanic Hypothesis

PAWLEY & ROSS

Challenges to the Oceanic Hypothesis

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Recent Proposals about High Order Subgroups

PAWLEY & ROSS

Figure J Subgrouping of Austronesian languages after Blust.

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Halmahera. Oceanic remains, but it has been demoted to something like a

Some Rival Hypotheses

PAWLEY & ROSS

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

The Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Hypothesis and the Intemal

PAWLEY & ROSS

Figure 2 A partial subgrouping of Oceanic languages.

Dispersal Centers: TheAge-Area Method

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

LEXICAL RECONSTRUCTION AND CULTURE HISTORY

PAWLEY & ROSS

Dispersal Centers: The Evidence of Lexical Reconstructions

Technology and the Austronesian Dispersal

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Austronesian Social Organization

PAWLEY & ROSS

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Polynesian Society was built in part on an inherited framework of status and

Rapid Dispersal, Mobility, and Linguistic Divergence

CORRELATING ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC

PAWLEY & ROSS

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

PAWLEY & ROSS

QUESTIONS OF CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

PAWLEY & ROSS

Caledonia uninhabited, although a degree of doubt remains in these cases

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

an upsurge of interest in it in metropolitan settings. Exceptions are Grace's

PAWLEY & ROSS

guages (20). Labu, an AN language spoken at the mouth of the Markham

its Morphology. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, C-l 19. 253 pp.

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

PAWLEY & ROSS

Indonesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics,

AUSTRONESIAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Conf. Austronesian Linguist. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, C-94. 463 pp.

PAWLEY & ROSS

change? (More on "aberrant" languages).