Talk:Proto-Austronesian language

Language of the Ta-Pe'n-K'eng culture

Has not the Proto-Austronesians been identified with the Ta-Pe'n-K'eng culture on Taiwan? I have not managed to find the name of this culture anywhere on Wikipedia. To make sure that I have spelled it correctly I have used the same spelling as the British archaelogist Ted Oaks.

2013-12-31 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

A Proto-Austronesian phonological concordance?

Austronesian historical phonology is confusing because of the many competing schemes. A concordance would be extremely helpful and useful, even if it would result in an extremely sprawling table. The table could be split along the lines of Formosan languages#Sound changes, I suppose. Anyway, the table would ideally include all the major phonemes postulated for Proto-Austronesian, splitting or leaving those separately for which there are important/notable disagreements whether they constitute a single phoneme or several different ones (and adding important combinations such as the diphthongs), listing the symbols and conjectured phonetic values in IPA advanced by the various scholars, and the outcomes in various languages (and proto-languages), so that there are correspondence sets that allow the reader to see on exactly what evidence the proposed reconstructions are based. There could be columns like Dempwolff, Dyen, Tsuchida, Dahl, Ross (1992), Blust (2009), Wolff (2010), and for various Formosan languages or uncontroversial proto-stages (if there is no uncontroversial reconstruction – or no reconstruction at all, of course – for any subgroup/major branch, the reflexes of individual languages would have to be listed, or at least one notable representative for each group), and at least for PMP (since its phonology seems to be largely uncontroversial) if not for individual languages or proto-languages which might provide historically crucial evidence, such as Javanese (ideally, we would have prominent single languages such as Malay or proto-languages such as Proto-Malayic, but that would overwhelm an already overcrowded table only further – even Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Polynesian would probably have to be left off). No idea whether this is feasible, but it would be ideal. That said, why is Proto-Malayo-Polynesian language empty? All the discussion about the reconstruction of PMP phonology and the further development into Proto-Oceanic (and Proto-Polynesian, although that topic could be moved further to Proto-Oceanic language) could be moved there. And considering the complexity of the subject of Austronesian historical phonology, perhaps it would be a good idea to split Proto-Austronesian phonology off into its own separate article and leave only a summary here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:15, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

@Austronesier: If you have time, maybe you can help a bit.

By the way, I've also noticed that the Austronesian tree used in Wiktionary contains a number of controversial nodes (see, for example, here); expert input would be valuable there too. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke: That's a tough job, but will certainly help to bring some structure into the unreadable subsection "Other reconstructions". Basically, Ross (1992) could serve as a start, since Blust's and Wolff's reconstructions haven't changed that much since then. Inclusion of Dyen and Tsuchida is hardcore, because they took the neogrammarian principle to the extreme and posited one proto-sound for each correspondent set, even if there is just one representative etymon, and most sober comparatists would treat this as an irregularity that requires a better explanation than blowing up the phonological system of the proto-language. Dyen's PAN was more complex than Ubykh. I'll put it on my to-do list. –Austronesier (talk) 09:38, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I know, it's a huge undertaking, but look what you can do. Maybe better leave Dyen and Tsuchida out for the start, then; they can always be included later, but if their schemes would likely overwhelm the reader anyway (let's imagine a curious linguistics student as the target group, perhaps?), that's not an urgent desideratum. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Masjawad99: Are you interested in this challenging task? It will be rewarding beyond WP: reading your way through the necessary lit essentially equals what you can learn in one full term in historical-comparative AN linguistics. :D –Austronesier (talk) 09:30, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I will try, but as of now I'm not that familiar with many of the schemes other than those of Blust and Ross, so I don't know how much time it will take ahaha. Masjawad99^💬 22:39, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Time depth?

How far back are we talking here? Was Proto-Austronesian spoken around 2,000 years ago? 4,000? 10,000? Some ballpark-ish indication of the time depth would be welcome. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:39, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr: Thanks, that's a good suggestion. I have added an estimated date based on Robert Blust in the lede. –Austronesier (talk) 11:28, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

*x?

In § Historical overview of reconstructions for Proto-Austronesian, what does "Dyen's S X x" mean?

In § Interrogatives and case markers, what does the *x in *pijax mean? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Wolff's "palatal" series

Wolff does not reconstruct a palatal series, he reconstructs a dental or denti-alveolar series with emphasis on the fact that *c *j and *ɬ are pronounced further forward in the mouth than *t *d and *l respectively. I assume he grouped *y with the three because there is a tendency in some unrelated groups to palatalize the *c *j *ɬ series, but he doesn't seem to reconstruct them as being palatalized. BinaryPrime (talk) 18:09, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

This is discussed on pg. 34 and expanded on later in section A3.3.1, A3.3.2, A3.3.33, and A3.3.4, for anyone who wants to double check. BinaryPrime (talk) 18:16, 20 March 2025 (UTC)