The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia

This volume presents the most wide-ranging treatment available today of the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia and their outliers, a group of more than 800 languages belonging to the wider Austronesian family. It brings together leading scholars and junior researchers to offer a comprehensive account of the historical relations, typological diversity, and varied sociolinguistic issues that characterize this group of languages, including current debates in their prehistories and descriptive priorities for future study.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I deals with historical linguistics, including discussion of human genetics, archaeology, and cultural history. Chapters in Part II explore language contact between Malayo-Polynesian and unrelated languages, as well as sociolinguistic issues such as multilingualism, language policy, and language endangerment. Part III provides detailed overviews of the different groupings of Malayo-Polynesian languages, while Part IV offers in-depth studies of important typological features across the whole linguistic area. The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia will be an essential reference for students and researchers specializing in Austronesian languages and for typologists and comparative linguists more broadly.

Alexander Adelaar, Principal Fellow, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Antoinette Schapper, Senior Lecturer, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

Alexander Adelaar is Key Researcher in the Sinophon Project at Palacky University in Olomouc (Czech Republic) and Principal Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities Australia and the Académie Malgache. His research is on the structure and history of Austronesian languages, with emphasis on varieties of Malay and the languages of Borneo, Madagascar, and Taiwan. He is the author of Proto-Malayic (Pacific Linguistics, 1992), and Siraya (a dormant Formosan language; De Gruyter Mouton, 2011) and co-editor of The Austronesian Languages of South East Asia and Madagascar (Routledge, 2005).

Antoinette Schapper is Senior Lecturer at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and Researcher at Lacito, CNRS. She is a comparative linguist and writer of grammars specializing in the description and typology of Melanesian languages, particularly within Wallacea. She is currently the principal investigator in the ERC-funded OUTOFPAPUA project looking at the linguistic prehistory of the Bird’s Head region of Indonesia.