Malayic languages


The Malayic languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The most prominent member is Standard Malay, which is the national language of Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia; it further serves as basis for Indonesian, the national language of Indonesia. The Malayic branch also includes the local languages spoken by ethnic Malays, further several languages spoken by various other ethnic groups of Sumatra and Borneo. The most probable candidate for the urheimat of the Malayic languages is western Borneo.

History

The term "Malayic" was first coined by in his lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages. Dyen's "Malayic hesion" had a wider scope than the Malayic subgroup in its currently accepted form, and also included Acehnese, Lampung and Madurese. narrowed down the range of Malayic, but included the non-Malayic languages Rejang and Embaloh:
The present scope of the Malayic subgroup, which is now universally accepted by experts in the field, was first proposed by K.A. Adelaar, based on phonological, morphological and lexical evidence.

Languages

Malayic languages are spoken on Borneo, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and on several islands located in the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca.
Borneo
Malay Peninsula
Sumatra
South China Sea/Strait of Malacca

Internal classification

While there is general consensus about which languages can be classified as Malayic, the internal subgrouping of the Malayic languages is still disputed.

Adelaar (1993)

Adelaar classifies the Malayic languages as follows.
*
Based on grammatical evidence, Ross divides the Malayic languages into two primary branches:
This classification is mirrored in the Glottolog.

Anderbeck (2012)

Following, Anderbeck makes a distinction between Malay and Malayic in his discussion about the dialects of the Sea Tribes in Riau Archipelago. He tentatively classifies all Malayic languages as belonging to a "Malay" subgroup, except Ibanic, Kendayan/Selako, Keninjal, Malayic Dayak and the "fairly divergent varieties" of Urak Lawoi' and Duano.
Anderbeck's classification has been adopted in the 17th edition of the Ethnologue, with the sole exception of Duano, which is listed in the Ethnologue among the "Malay" languages.

Smith (2017)

In his dissertation on the languages of Borneo, Smith provides evidence for a subgroup comprising Malayic isolects in western Borneo and southern Sumatra, which he labels "West Bornean Malayic". However, he leaves other isolects unclassified.
The inclusion of the Malayic languages within the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup is undisputed, and there is general consensus that the Chamic languages are closely related to Malayic. The wider affiliations of the Malayic languages are however controversial. There are two major proposals: Adelaar places Malayic within the Malayo-Sumbawan subgroup, which comprises the following languages:
Blust and Smith assign Malayic to the Greater North Borneo subgroup:
The Malayo-Sumbawan hypothesis is mainly based on phonological evidence with a few shared lexical innovations, while the Greater North Borneo hypothesis is based on a large corpus of lexical evidence.

Proto-Malayic

Phonology

Proto-Malayic has a total of 19 consonants and 4 vowels.
There are 2 diphthongs:
Proto-Malayic lexemes are mostly disyllabic, though some have one, three, or four syllables. Lexemes have the following syllable structure:

Citations