Title: Contact between Austronesian and African
languages: a short overview
Speakers: Professor Alexander Adelaar, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (visiting professor)

Date: June 12 (Fri.), 2015, 13:00 – 15:00
Place: Hakubi Center, 2nd floor seminar room, Kyoto University

Abstract:
Contact between Austronesian and African languages took many forms.
Most noticeable is the Bantu element in Malagasy. It mainly consists of influence
from coastal East Bantu languages, and more particularly from languages belonging to
the Sabaki group. Kiswahili had a major lexical impact as an important trade language
and the vehicular language for the introduction of Islam in Madagascar’s Northwest.
Comorian languages were also a source of lexical influence, being spoken on islands
constituting the gateway from Madagascar to the African mainland, and therefore to
some extent to the external world in general. Earlier, there may have been other forms
of Sabaki involved (closely related to Kiswahili and Comorian languages but not
identical to them). As to non-Sabaki Bantu languages, Makhuwa became a lingua franca
among East African slaves in Madagascar (a large proportion of whom came from
Mozambique). Its impact on Malagasy was apparently limited.
There may also be a substratum from a non-Austronesian and non-Bantu language
in Malagasy, which would support the theory that Madagascar already had a population
prior to the arrival of Austronesian speakers.
Finally, the Austronesian languages Malagasy and Malay also left their traces in
Bantu languages (a fact which has been systematically underestimated among
Africanists).

About the speaker:
Alexander Adelaar is a Visiting Professor at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and a
Principal Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. 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 currently involved in a study of the
linguistic and migration history of Madagascar with a grant from the Australian Research
Council.
Dr Adelaar is the author of Proto-Malayic. The reconstruction of its phonology and parts of
its morphology and lexicon (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1992), Salako or Badameà. Sketch
grammar, texts and lexicon of a Kanayatn dialect of West Borneo (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
2005), and Siraya. Retrieving the phonology, grammar and lexicon of a dormant Formosan
language (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011). He is also co-editor of The Austronesian
languages of Asia and Madagascar (Routledge Language Family Series, London, 2005).

Moderator: Nathan Badenoch and Noa Nishimoto