Endangered Languages of Austronesia (review)

Margaret Florey is well-known among fellow Austronesianists for her continuing and successful efforts to defend the linguistic rights of communities whose languages are truly small and often very endangered. This book fully meets the expectations that her name raises.

The book contains four parts. Part 1 is an overview, with an introduction by Florey and a chapter on language documentation in the West Austronesian world and Vanuatu by Alexander Adelaar. Part 2 discusses linguistic vitality, while part 3 contains information on several initiatives related to capacity building and revitalization. Part 4 focuses on pedagogical approaches to revitalization and maintenance.

In her introduction, Florey notes that she coined the term "Austronesia" to refer to insular Southeast Asia and Oceania, where most Austronesian languages are spoken, with Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa added as a kind of Austronesian exclave. Adelaar's chapter shows that it would be a mistake to interpret the term as implying a geographical unity, since "Austronesia" covers a multitude of different nations with different traditions and perceptions. Adelaar introduces the Austronesian language family and provides a concise overview of projects on endangered languages in the Austronesian-speaking world—from the island of Madagascar east of Africa to the island republic of Vanuatu east of Australia. So many different languages cannot possibly be covered in one chapter; Adelaar confines himself to projects for which information was accessible either through the Internet sites of their funders or through publications by their project members. No attention is given to mainland Southeast Asia, where Austronesian languages are a minority, although Adelaar does provide information about Austronesian language projects in Sri Lanka, the Comoros, the Netherlands, and Surinam.

Adelaar discusses the major organizations involved in language documentation, many of which are based outside of the Austronesian-speaking regions. Although he mentions the efforts undertaken by the Indonesian National Language Center, he overlooks the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, NWO), which Margaret Florey and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann quote in their contribution and which has a long and successful tradition of cooperation with the Language Center on endangered language research in Indonesia, as evidenced by the many publications of the Indonesian Linguistics Development Projects (ILDEP).

Adelaar summarizes the state of the art in endangered language documentation in Madagascar, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, the Philippines, East Timor, and Vanuatu. He gives somewhat more extended coverage to the diaspora, since the case studies come from a variety of places around the world, and, of course, to Indonesia, due to its geographical size.

Part 2 treats the theory of linguistic vitality and its assessments and challenges. Three of its chapters discuss languages in Indonesia, and the fourth discusses Negrito languages in the Philippines.

Nikolaus P. Himmelmann's chapter is one of the most significant contributions for understanding the process for language endangerment and loss. He introduces the term "language endangerment scenario," by which he means "a specific and complex constellation of varied factors of language endangerment" (p. 45). He distinguishes symptoms and factors of language endangerment. He introduces two endangerment scenarios, the immigration scenario and the emigration scenario, using the Tomini-Tolitoli languages of Sulawesi Island as an example. He goes on to distinguish "moribund" from "endangered" and "long-term endangered" languages. He compares his characterizations of language endangerment with the information on Buru in the subsequent chapter, which confirms the usefulness of the scenario approach for endangered language research. Himmelmann concludes that a typology of endangerment scenarios is required that enables a systematization of the arrays of factors that lead to large scale language shift.

Charles E. Grimes approaches language death in Eastern Indonesia by detailed consideration of two languages, Hukumina and Kayeli, spoken on Buru Island in the Indonesian province of Maluku. He grounds his examination of how these languages became extinct in a discussion of the history and present-day language ecology on the island, including a short anthropological digression on power and place on the island; he then seeks similar scenarios elsewhere in Central Maluku. Finally...