Proto-Austronesian Phonology with Glossary

This work, divided into two volumes, is the study of the history of words in the Austronesian (An) languages—their origin in Proto-Austronesian (PAn) or at later stages and how they developed into the forms that are attested in the current An languages. A study of their history entails the reconstruction of the sound system (phonology) of PAn and an exposition of the sound laws (rules) whereby the original sounds changed into those attested in the current An languages. The primary aim of this work is to examine exhaustively the forms that can be reconstructed for PAn and also for the earliest stage after the An languages began to spread southward from Taiwan. For the later stages—that is, forms that can be traced no further back than to the proto-languages of late subgroups, we do not attempt to be exhaustive but confine ourselves to only some of the forms that are traceable to those times, treating those that figure prominently in the literature on historical An linguistics or those that have special characteristics important for understanding in general how forms arose and the processes that led to change. In short, the aim of this study is not just to reconstruct protomorphemes and order the reflexes according to the entries they fit under, but rather to account for the history of each fom1 that is attested and explain what happened historically to yield the attestations.

John U. Wolff is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Cornell University.

We have before us a study of unprecedented proportions. Presentation of Wolff's Proto-Austronesian phonology is continued by thirty-seven chapters detailing the evolution of the system—regularities and irregularities—into as many languages (Dempwolff's eleven, plus twenty-six 'new' languages, including nearly all the Austronesian languages currently spoken in Taiwan; several known to him from personal fieldwork); this is followed by a Glossary of c. 2000 reconstructed etyma (about half of thema ssigned to a level above Malayo-Polynesian), with full supporting evidence, notes and cross-references to relevant sections in the Proto-Austronesian phonology chapter. The book ends with all the indexes, registers, and finder lists the most exacting reader could wish for.