0:04
We turn now to discussion
of genetics and the impact
of the Austronesian expansion.
0:12
One important point to keep in mind
is that Austronesian
refers specifically
to a language family,
and the Austronesian expansion
is an expansion of languages.
You will undoubtedly hear about
or read about
Austronesian archaeology,
Austronesian fossils.
I will probably mention
Austronesian genes.
But anytime we make that sort
of inference,
it is really an inference; it is not a direct examination of the evidence.
So we're somehow trying to make
a correspondence
between these other types
of data and the languages.
But the fossils don't speak,
the archaeology doesn't speak,
and the genes don't speak,
so it's all by way of inference
that we try to relate
other types of evidence
to what is going on
with the languages.
So that is an important point
to keep in mind.
And again,
as this slide illustrates,
the reason why we're interested
in this expansion
is because it has such a large
and profound impact
on the languages of this part
of the world.
We find Austronesian languages
in Taiwan.
We find them throughout the Philippines,
throughout Indonesia,
along coastal New Guinea,
through the main chain of the Solomon Islands,
other offshore islands
of New Guinea,
and then all of the languages
of Remote Oceania,
the old areas referred to
as Micronesia and Polynesia,
those are all Austronesian languages, so this is the most widespread
language family in the world,
and it has had a major impact
on this part of the world.
Using classical methods of historical linguistic reconstruction,
linguists have traced the origin of the Austronesian language family
to Taiwan as the probable location.
