Austronesian

Austronesian has several primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively on Taiwan.

The name Austronesian was formed from the same roots.

Austronesian, a group of 1,236 languages, is the second largest, after the Niger-Congo.

Austronesian may refer to:

Austronesian: the commune of Kouaoua (1,586 inhabitants).

Ampanang is an Austronesian of Borneo.

Madagascar's population is predominantly of mixed Austronesian (Pacific Islander) and African origin.

Austronesian is characterized by disyllabic roots, whereas Tai-Kadai is predominantly monosyllabic.

Sepa-Teluti is an Austronesian of Seram Island in eastern Indonesia.

However, new data on these languages, along with advances in the reconstruction of Proto-Oceanic, has made it clear that they are in fact Austronesian:

Austronesian : Some basic vocabulary, terminology dealing with agriculture, canoes, the weather, the sky and the sea, some abstract nouns, some verbs.

Asilulu is an Austronesian of Ambon Island in the Mulukus, with some speakers on west Seram.

Some of the Austronesian content, as noted above, is clearly South-East Papuan Austronesian:

Seit-Kaitetu, or Hila-Kaitetu, is an Austronesian of Ambon Island in the Mulukus.

HIMMELMANN, NIKOLAUS P. (2002): Voice in Western Austronesian: An Update.

The apparently cognate words in Tai-Kadai and Austronesian might be explained either as commonly inherited vocabulary, or as loanwords from this hypothetical (but perhaps Malayo-Polynesian) language into proto-Tai-Kadai.

This took the form of an expansion of Wilhelm Schmidt's Austric phylum, and posited that Tai-Kadai and Austronesian had a sister relationship within Austric, which Benedict then accepted.

The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family before the spread of Indo-European in the colonial period, ranging from Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa to Easter Island in the eastern Pacific.

Where loan words from the Western Austronesian (Indonesian, etc.) loans are concerned, it is possible that some such came into the language in pre-European contact days, with the Makassans and similar fishermen/traders who visited northern Australia and Torres Strait.