Malayo-Polynesian Languages

(Austronesian languages), a language family that includes the languages of four traditionally distinct groups: Indonesian, Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian. Despite the paucity of knowledge about these languages, there is no doubt as to the existence of an Austronesian family, although its limits in certain areas, notably among the Melanesian languages, have not been precisely determined.

The Malayo-Polynesian languages (or, more precisely, their basic nucleus) are united by a large number of etymological roots; they are not uniform grammatically. These languages have polysyllabic (more often disyllabic) roots, agglutination (affixes in various positions), and an analytic syntax. In addition to independent personal pronouns, there are usually short, pronominal morphemes which perform various functions (possessive suffix, subject or object indicator with a verb).

The first detailed linguistic classification of the entire family was the lexicostatistical classification proposed by the American scholar I. Dyen in 1965. For Dyen, the terms “Malayo-Polynesian languages” and “Austronesian languages” are not synonymous. In his system Malayo-Polynesian is the largest subdivision of the Austronesian family and includes most Indonesian languages, all the Polynesian languages, and some Melanesian languages. However, there is as yet no generally accepted genealogical classification of the Malayo-Polynesian languages.