Subgrouping in linguistics is the division of a language family into its constituent branches. In standard linguistic theory, subgroupings are determined based on shared innovations between languages. [1]
The Algonquian languages are a subfamily of American indigenous languages that include most languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Indigenous Ojibwe language (Chippewa), which is a senior member of the Algonquian language family. The term Algonquin has been suggested to derive from the Maliseet word elakómkwik, "they are our relatives/allies". A number of Algonquian languages, like many other Native American languages, are now extinct.
The Austronesian languages are a language family, widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan. There are also a number of speakers in continental Asia. They are spoken by about 386 million people. This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay, Javanese, and Tagalog (Filipino). According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.
The Central Philippine languages are the most geographically widespread demonstrated group of languages in the Philippines, being spoken in southern Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and Sulu. They are also the most populous, including Tagalog, Bikol, and the major Visayan languages Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Kinaray-a, and Tausug, with some forty languages all together.
The Philippine languages are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi—except Sama–Bajaw and a few languages of Palawan—and form a subfamily of Austronesian languages. Although the Philippines is near the center of Austronesian expansion from Formosa, there is little linguistic diversity among the approximately 150 Philippine languages, suggesting that earlier diversity has been erased by the spread of the ancestor of the modern Philippine languages.
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction:
Saaroa or Hla’alua is a Southern Tsouic language is spoken by the Saaroa (Hla'alua) people, an indigenous people of Taiwan. It is a Formosan language of the Austronesian family.
The Batanic languages are a dialect cluster of the Austronesian language family. They are spoken on Babuyan Island, just north of Luzon; three of the Batanes Islands, between the Philippines and Taiwan; and on Orchid Island of southern Taiwan.
Ópata is either of two closely related Uto-Aztecan languages, Teguima and Eudeve, spoken by the Opata people of northern central Sonora in Mexico and Southeast of Arizona in the United States. It was believed to be dead already in 1930, and Carl Sofus Lumholtz reported the Opata to have become "Mexicanized" and lost their language and customs already when traveling through Sonora in the 1890s. In a 1993 survey by the Instituto Nacional Indigenista fifteen people in the Mexican Federal District self-identified as speakers of Ópata. This may not mean however that the language was actually living, since linguistic nomenclature in Mexico is notoriously fuzzy. Sometimes Eudeve is called Opata, a term which should be restricted to Teguima. Eudeve and Teguima are distinct languages, but sometimes have been considered merely dialects of one single language. The INALI does not count Opata among the currently extant indigenous languages of Mexico.
Robert A. Blust is a prominent linguist in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. Blust specializes in the Austronesian languages and has made major contributions to the field of Austronesian linguistics.
The Greater Binanderean or Guhu-Oro languages are a language family spoken along the northeast coast of the Papuan Peninsula – the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea – and appear to be a recent expansion from the north. They were classified as a branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages by Stephen Wurm (1975) and Malcolm Ross (2005), but removed by Timothy Usher (2020). The Binandere family proper is transparently valid; Ross connected it to the Guhu-Semane isolate based on pronominal evidence, and this has been confirmed by Smallhorn (2011). Proto-Binanderean has been reconstructed in Smallhorn (2011).
The Tibeto-Kanauri languages, also called Bodic, Bodish–Himalayish, and Western Tibeto-Burman, are a proposed intermediate level of classification of the Sino-Tibetan languages, centered on the Tibetic languages and the Kinnauri dialect cluster. The conception of the relationship, or if it is even a valid group, varies between researchers.
The Sumba–Flores languages, which correspond to the traditional "Bima–Sumba" subgroup minus Bima, are a proposed group of Austronesian languages spoken on and around the islands of Sumba and western–central Flores in the Lesser Sundas. The main languages are Manggarai, which has half a million speakers on the western third of Flores, and Kambera, with a quarter million speakers on the eastern half of Sumba Island.
Remontado, also known as Sinauna, Kabalat, Remontado Dumagat, and Hatang-Kayi, is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in Tanay, Rizal, General Nakar, Quezon, Rodriguez, Rizal and Antipolo, in the Philippines. It is one of the Philippine Negrito languages.
The Greater Central Philippine languages are a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian language family. They are spoken in the central and southern parts of the Philippines, and in northern Sulawesi. This subgroup was first proposed by Robert Blust (1991) based on lexical and phonological evidence, and is accepted by most specialists in the field.
The Mamanwa language is a Central Philippine language spoken by the Mamanwa people. It is spoken in the provinces of Agusan del Norte and Surigao del Norte in the Lake Mainit area of Mindanao, Philippines. It had about 5,000 speakers in 1990.
The Central Loloish languages, also known as Central Ngwi, is a branch of Loloish languages in Bradley (1997). It is not used in Lama's (2012) classification. Central Loloish is also not supported in Satterthwaite-Phillips' (2011) computational phylogenetic analysis of the Lolo-Burmese languages.
The Flores–Lembata languages are a group of related Austronesian languages spoken in the Lesser Sundas, on eastern Flores and small islands immediately east of Flores. They are suspected of having a non-Austronesian substratum, for example in Sika, but not to any greater extent than the Central Malayo-Polynesian languages in general.
Old Tagalog, is the earliest form of the Tagalog language during the Classical period. It is the primary language of pre-colonial Tondo, Namayan and Maynila. The language originated from the Proto-Philippine language and evolved to Classical Tagalog, which was the basis for Modern Tagalog. Old Tagalog uses the Tagalog script or Baybayin, one of the scripts indigenous to the Philippines.
The Proto-Philippine language is a reconstructed ancestral proto-language of the Philippine languages, a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian languages which includes all languages within the Philippines as well as those within the northern portions of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Proto-Philippine is not directly attested to in any written work, but linguistic reconstruction by the comparative method has found regular similarities among languages that cannot be explained by coincidence or word-borrowing.
The Malakula languages are a group of Central Vanuatu languages spoken on Malakula Island in central Vanuatu. Unlike some earlier classifications, Lynch (2016) considers the Malakula languages to form a coherent group.
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1957. "The problem of linguistic subgroupings", in Essays in Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.