Collins James T. The historical relationships of the languages of Central Maluku, Indonesia

The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific Studies, 1983. — 178 p. — (Pacific Linguistics: Series D 47/Materials in languages of Indonesia 13).As early as 1708, Hadrian Reland observed the linguistic similarities of many languages of the Indonesian archipelago and beyond. By the year 1784, two years before Sir William Jones brought to light the concept of a parent Indo European language, Lorenzo Hervas y Panduro correctly identified and definitely established the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages. This family, today referred to as Austronesian, became an object of intense interest to European scholars. It was at once the most far-flung language family and the most numerous. Member languages are spoken from Madagascar in the west to the Easter Island in the east, that is from the eastern edge of Africa to the western edge of America. With the exception of parts of New Guinea and some nearby islands, all the islands between these two fringe areas are peopled by Austronesian speakers. Most scholars agree that the total number of Austronesian languages ranges between three and five hundred. A few of these languages such as Javanese with its fifty million speakers are large, culturally dominant lan guages with a thousand year old literary tradition, a linguistic chronology with a depth nearly that of English; many others such as Kaitetu with its three hundred speakers are small, minority languages and enclaves which have never known writing.