A comparative study of Malagasy with Malay: on the evolution of Malagasy phonological systems

Abstract

Madagascar has a population whose ancestry dates back from the 5th through to the 13th century and were immigrants from Southeast Asia. Therefore, the Malagasy language belongs to the Western Indonesian subgroup of the Austronesian family, and Madagascar preserves elements of South-east Asian culture to this day. Similarities between Malagasy and languages in Southeast Asia have been recognized since the 1600s in Houtman's word lists (Houtman 1603), which compared Malagasy with Malay. This study aims to examine the dialectal variation of Malagasy by focusing on phonetic and phonological aspects of each dialect, and then comparing those aspects with Malay vocabulary. The data analyzed in this study are drawn from my field research of nine months that was conducted in Madagascar. We will briefly describe phonetic variations in the Eastern and the Western dialects of Malagasy. Word endings known as weak final syllables, such as -ka, -tra and -na, take different forms in different dialects, e.g., -ka, -tra and-na, as it is used in the Merina dialect and -ke, -tse and –ñe, as it is used in the Antandroy dialect. This variation in the weak final syllables is a reflection of the fact that they are a product of a default vowel lal that was added to the end of historically consonant-final words as part of rome development toward the modern CV structure of Malagasy (e.g., volona, 'moon', developed from bulan) (Rasoloson and Rubino 2005). This study begins with an observation of Malagasy phonetics and phonology, and briefly discusses the dialectal variations of Malagasy in the social and geographical context and concludes with a discussion of the evolution of Malagasy by focusing on the historical contact comparing v Southeast Asian languages.