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by
Charles Randriamasimanana
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Abstract:
Introduction:
Malagasy is the westernmost branch of the Malayo-Polynesian family
of languages. The linguistic evidence in favor of such a view is
overwhelming. The purpose of this paper is to briefly review some of
the major linguistic arguments supporting such a claim.
Previous Literature:
There exist a wide range of rich materials, both published and
unpublished, which analyze linguistic evidence pointing to a Malayo-
Polynesian origin for Malagasy.
This gave the impetus for further work by Gabriel Ferrand in his book,
Essai de phontique compare du malais et des dialectes malgaches4.
1909 and Joseph Razafintsalama in a first manuscript, La langue
malgache, Volume I - Le fond initial du vocabulaire malgache (Etude
de Vocabulaire)5. 1928 to be followed by a second manuscript La
langue malgache et les origines malgaches. (Essai d'analyse
linguistique) 6.1929. Then in 1938 Otto Christian Dahl published his
article 'Les convergences phontiques entre le malgache et le maanjan
de Borno'. Subsequently in1951 his book Malgache et Maanjan. Une
comparaison linguistique7 was released.
Tone Languages:
Malagasy is not a tone language, unlike many East African Bantu
languages such as Haya, Luganda, Chichewa and so on. Specifically,
tones are not part of the phonological system of Malagasy whereas they
play a crucial role in the phonology of many if not most East African
Bantu languages. Publications such as Haya Grammatical Structure,
Byarushengo et al., editors providing a detailed description of the
structure of Haya, for example, illustrate the crucial and pervasive role of
tonal systems in the grammars of East African languages.
The Vocabulary:
The predominantly Malayo-Polynesian origins of Malagasy are quite
apparent in the vocabulary of the language even though borrowings
from other sources are also apparent. Thus, Fukazawa in his article
entitled 'Madagascar: Its unity and diversity' Madagascar: Perspectives
from the Malay world notes the Malagasy words vary 'rice' and ovy
'potatoe' are manifestly related respectively to the Javanese pari (bahli in
other Indonesian languages) and ubi. On the other hand, the Malagasy
word omby 'cattle' or its variant aomby comes from the Bantu ngombe,
whereas amboa 'dog' comes from Swahili mbwa. Finally, the writer
notes that Malagasy alika 'dog' is related to Sanskrit alaka.
It is also worth noting from Dahl (1951) that it is not just the Merina
dialect spoken in the central highlands which have words derived from
Malayo-Polynesian; other dialects do also. Thus, Dahl (1951:102)
notes that the Merina word sandry bras (English 'arm'), which in
Sakalava ma-toe (fruit) which has reached full maturity , raza matoe
ancestor who has reached the state of becoming a member of the
society of the dead from Proto-Indonesian *tuha, *tuva old.
About null subjects, Dahl (1951:125) writes 'In the two languages the
subject is often left out when it is evident from the context, for example,
Maanjan Dami wising, hanje tolak when full, he left' (DFE, p 175),
Merina Rehefa voky izy dia lasa when full = he, left. During the
presentation by the author of this chapter of a paper entitled 'Null
Subjects in Malagasy' given at the First International Symposium on
Austronesian Studies at Udayana University, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia,
August 14-17, 1994 several native speakers of different Indonesian
languages in the audience noted that in many of their languages the
subject is often left out. One factor which was mentioned in this context
was of a pragmatic nature, probably along lines envisaged by Dahl.
First, let us consider the prefix i- based on the following examples taken
from Paul Schachter and Fe F. Otanes Tagalog Reference Grammar.
With an actor focus type of utterance, we obtain B-um-ili ako ng damit
para sa bata ( B-um infix-buy I clothes for the child) I bought some
clothes for the child whereas with a benefactive focus, we have I-b-in-ili
ko ng damit ang bata (Prefix i-b-passive infix in-buy I clothes the
child) I bought some clothes for the child. Recall that an actor focus
structure is one where the agent carrying out the activity described by
the predicate surfaces as the grammatical subject of the sentence. On the
other hand, a benefactive structure is one where the beneficiary of the
activity described by the predicate becomes the grammatical subject.
Note that the benefactive verb is i-bili buy for with the prefix i- and
that Tagalog has an infix -um- showing up inside the verb in the actor
focus construction. Presumably in the utterance with b-um-ili , the actor
or agent shows up as the grammatical subject, whereas in the other
instance, it is the oblique argument for the child, which shows up as the
grammatical subject of the sentence.
Furthermore, it turns out that Malagasy also has the infix -um- written -
om- (although rarely used), as seen in the predicate s-om-ary 'look like'
derived from the noun sary 'picture' In Malagasy, the equivalent of
benefactive focus construction is N-i-vidi-ana-ko akanjo ilay ankizy
(past-passive i-buy-ana-by me clothes the child) I bought some
clothes for the child. In Randriamasimanana (1986: 420-421) the
elements i....an(a) are labelled a circumfix. Both are necessary in the
same way as Tagalog prefix i- and the passive infix -in-, as shown in the
benefactive focus example above.
In connection with the Tagalog infix -in-, let us note that Malagasy also
has a passive suffix -in-, which is presumably rare. Nevertheless it does
exist and can be found in cases like tapaka 'cut' or alternatively t-in-
apaka 'cut', as in hevitra tinapaka 'decisions reached'; or vaky 'broken vs
v-in-aky 'broken, as in placenames such as Ambatovinaky, a section of
the capital city, literally 'the place where stones were broken' from a
combination of the morphemes an 'at-location' + vato 'stone' + v-in-aky
'broken'.
But the similarities are not confined to Indonesian languages like Toba
Batak. It extends to Polynesian languages such as Western Samoan.
Thus, the following examples from Ulrike Mosel & Even Hovdhaugen
inSamoan Reference Grammar (Their 7.108) Ua mai le fafina. (Perf
sick art woman) The woman is sick/pregnant. (Their 6.276) ni
The same type of result was obtained for Malagasy from the data shown
on Table 4 above. A male student received an average of 32.3 percent of
passives in three of his letters written in Malagasy from home as
opposed to only 26 percent for a female student, who received letters
from her husband back home in Madagascar. If we assume that a wife is
closer to her husband than an already married male student to his
parents, then we have a plausible explanation for the difference in that in
Malagasy the passive is used in a more formal type of situation. If so,
then the four individual cases touched upon in this section illustrate the
more formal use of the passive in Indonesian languages, including
Malagasy.
Conclusions:
Four different types of linguistic evidence have been presented to
substantiate the claim that Malagasy has its roots in the Malayo-
Polynesian family of languages, probably from an area located between
the Philippines and Indonesia.
The second type of evidence taken mainly from Dahl (1951) relates to
different possible sources for Malagasy vocabulary: Malayo-
Polynesian, Sanskrit, Bantu and Swahili, among other languages.
However, a close inspection of lexical items referring to the human
body, bodily functions and labels for family members indicates that
Maanjan, an Indonesian language spoken on Kalimantan (Borneo)
shows very intimate affinities with Malagasy.
The third type of arguments based on Dahl's work has to do with the
existence in both Maanjan and Malagasy of almost identical predicate
roots as well as similarities involving the causative, the reciprocal affix,
the perfective aspect marker tafa, the form of the basic passive in both
languages, the presence within the two linguistic systems of the so-
called circumstantial passive using very similar forms, the existence in
both languages of adjectives comprising the same prefix ma- or similar
suffixes -en in Maanjan and i-na/ana in Malagasy.
The above are by no means the only similarities between Malagasy and
Malayo-Polynesian languages: Like Javanese, Malagasy distinguishes
between bound morphemes/clitics denoting personal pronouns and
independent morphemes; like Toba Batak definite article i...i, Malagasy
has the demonstrative ity...ity; and like Samoan, Malagasy also displays
a distinction between a singular definite article ilay and a plural definite
article ny.
Last but not least, not only do lexical items and functional words found
in Malagasy resemble very closely those found in many Malayo-
Polynesian languages, a description of language use based on frequency
counts as well as considerations of functional uses of passive in
Malagasy suggests a similarity in patterns of use between Malagasy and
Malayo-Polynesian languages found in the Philippine/Indonesia area
more so than those in the Polynesian triangle, i.e. the geographical area
stretching from Hawaii to the north, Easter Islands to the east and New
Zealand to the south.
In fact, even a cursory comparison between passive in Philippine type
languages and passive in Indonesian type languages leads to the
conclusion that Malagasy has structurally a lot more in common with
Philippine languages such as Tagalog and that as a direct consequence it
would not be too far fetched to surmise that the original home of
Malagasy must be somewhere to the north of Java, for instance, on
Kalimantan, where as it turns out Maanjan is spoken. That is precisely
the theme developed by Otto Christian Dahl in his book, Migration
from Kalimantan to Madagascar.
It is hoped that the above illustrations will set the record straight once
and for all with regard to the Malayo-Polynesian origins of Malagasy
and that even English-speaking scholars who cannot read French --the
late Otto Christian Dahl's work appeared mainly in French-- will be in a
position to take the linguistic arguments presented above into
consideration.
Footnotes
References