The Proto-Austronesian language (PAN) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. However, Ross (2009) notes that what may be the most divergent languages, Tsou, Rukai, and Puyuma, are not addressed by the reconstructions, which therefore cannot claim to be the protolanguage of the entire family. He calls the unit which has been reconstructed Nuclear Austronesian. Lower-level reconstructions have also been made, and include Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Oceanic, and Proto-Polynesian. Recently, linguists such as Malcolm Ross and Andrew Pawley have built large lexicons for Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Polynesian.
Read more about Proto-Austronesian Language: Phonology, Sound Changes, Morphology, Monosyllabic Roots, See Also
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“The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the language he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader’s eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.”
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