Are Austronesian languages tonal?

Unusually for an Austronesian language, Tsat has developed into a tonal language, probably as a result of areal linguistic effects and contact with the diverse tonal languages spoken on Hainan including varieties of Chinese such as Hainanese and Standard Chinese, Tai–Kadai languages such as the Hlai languages, and …

What language do Austronesians speak?

Major Austronesian languages include Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicol, Waray-Waray, Kapampangan, and Pangasinan of the Philippines; Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Minangkabau, the Batak languages, Acehnese, Balinese, and Buginese of western Indonesia; and Malagasy of Madagascar.

Is Japanese related to Austronesian?

Japanese language is part of the Japonic language family. Mostly all linguists agree that Japanese has elements from both Altaic and Austronesian. A new research about this topic suggests that in ancient times in the Liaoning province (Manchuria), Austronesian farmers mixed or assimilated Altaic nomads.

How does vowel harmony develop?

Probably the most common explanation of how vowel harmony starts is that it’s a grammaticalization of the phonetic effect of coarticulation, where the properties of one segment influence how the speaker articulates surrounding segments.

Is Samoan an Austronesian language?

Austronesian languages are spoken in Brunei, Cambodia, Chile, China, Cook Islands, East Timor, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Indonesia, Kiribati, Madagascar, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Mayotte, Micronesia, Myanmar, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines.

Is Korean Sino Tibetan?

Other than borrowed words, Korean and Japanese are both more similar to Altaic although they are no longer considered part of the Altaic language family. So other than borrowed words, neither Korean nor Japanese are related to Sino-Tibetan language.

Do all languages have vowel harmony?

Vowel harmony is found in many agglutinative languages. The given domain of vowel harmony taking effect often spans across morpheme boundaries, and suffixes and prefixes will usually follow vowel harmony rules.

Does French have vowel harmony?

Vowel harmony in French is described as a word-level anticipatory process affecting non-final mid vowels that assimilate in height to the final tonic vowel. Vowel harmony is sometimes portrayed as being sen- sitive to morphological factors, although there seems to be no general agreement on this point.

How many sounds are there in the Austronesian language?

Around 90\% of the Austronesian languages have inventories of 19-25 sounds (15-20 consonants and 4-5 vowels), thus lying at the lower end of the global typical range of 20-37 sounds. However, extreme inventories are also found, such as Nemi ( New Caledonia) with 43 consonants, or Northwest Mekeo ( Papua New Guinea) with only 7 consonants.

What is the phoneme inventory of the Austronesian languages?

The Austronesian languages overall possess phoneme inventories which are smaller than the world average. Around 90\% of the Austronesian languages have inventories of 19-25 sounds (15-20 consonants and 4-5 vowels), thus lying at the lower end of the global typical range of 20-37 sounds.

How did the Austronesian language family get its name?

The Austronesian language family has been established by the linguistic comparative method on the basis of cognate sets, sets of words similar in sound and meaning which can be shown to be descended from the same ancestral word in Proto-Austronesian according to regular rules. Some cognate sets are very stable.

What is the canonical root type of Proto-Austronesian?

The canonical root type in Proto-Austronesian is disyllabic with the shape CV (C)CVC (C = consonant; V = vowel), and is still found in many Austronesian languages. In most languages, consonant clusters are only allowed in medial position, and often, there are restrictions for the first element of the cluster.