Endangered languages of Austronesia (review)

As described by the editor, this book ‘canvasses a range of language endangerment scenarios encountered across Austronesia’ (4). Though not explicitly acknowledged, the volume was clearly inspired by the International Conference on Austronesian Endangered Language Documentation, held June 2007 in Taiwan. Four papers from that conference appear in this volume: those by Florey and Himmelmann, Thieberger, Sercombe, and Rau and Yang. An additional eleven papers from that conference were published in a proceedings volume (Rau & Florey 2007). The paper by Rau and Yang appears in both volumes. Most of the papers appear to have been prepared in 2007, as no works later than that date are cited in the list of references.

The fourteen individual chapters discuss language situations in Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, and Vanuatu. The coverage is by no means even across the region. Five of the fourteen chapters focus on languages of Indonesia, while two of them are devoted to Vanuatu. This unevenness is perhaps best summed up by Adelaar’s overview of language documentation efforts, which refers to the ‘West Austronesian world and Vanuatu’ (12). This West Austronesian, or more specifically Indonesian, bias obscures variations in language policy across the region. While there are clearly interesting points of comparison to be drawn within the Indonesian context, language policies and the endangerment context are largely similar. Much could be gained by comparing the Indonesian situation with that in other Austronesian states to the east. In this regard the absence of studies from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Hawaii, and New Zealand is particularly notable. In each of those places Austronesian languages are under different kinds of threats.

The title of the book refers to Austronesia rather than Austronesian. The choice of the geographic term Austronesia seems to imply a focus on a geographic rather than linguistic region, but given that all of the languages discussed in the volume belong to the Austronesian family, it is not clear that any substantive difference is intended by this choice of terminology. The seemingly opportunistic coverage in this volume leads one to ask whether the endangered languages of Austronesia form any kind of coherent grouping. In other words, what is it about the endangered languages of this region that is unique and different from endangered languages in other parts of the world? It is not at all clear that shared linguistic history correlates in any way with endangerment status or pathways of language decay. Political and social history would seem a much better correlate.

Florey justifies the focus on endangered Austronesian languages by drawing parallels with other recent works devoted to endangered languages of particular regions. Yet, this comparison sells the book short, since such works are focused for the most part either (i) on languages within a particular sociopolitical context (e.g. Australia, Canada) or (ii) on linguistic descriptions of languages within a region that happen to be endangered (cf. Wetzels 2007). The current volume differs from these in two important ways. First, it is not a survey; it makes no claim to be representative. The strength of this approach is that it permits the contributors to provide detailed descriptions of community responses to endangerment scenarios. Understanding language endangerment requires a long view. While language documentation can be undertaken in a period of months or years, understanding language endangerment, shift, maintenance, and revitalization often requires decades of fieldwork. We are unlikely to have such detailed information from every language in a family, but where we do have it, it is very useful. A second and even more important feature of this volume is its focus on endangerment rather than endangered languages per se. Many recent volumes that purport to be about language endangerment turn out instead to be areal studies of languages from a particular region or family. This volume is different: it is not merely a set of linguistic descriptions of Austronesian languages that happen also to be endangered; rather, the focus is on why and how these languages have become endangered, and on what is being done to address...