The origin of Mayan languages from Formosan language group of Austronesian

TL;DR

This study investigates the origins of Mayan languages by analyzing basic body-part names and their cognates, concluding that Mayan is most closely derived from the Formosan subgroup of Austronesian languages.

Contribution

It provides extensive comparative analysis of body-part name cognates, demonstrating that Mayan languages likely originated from the Formosan branch of Austronesian.

Findings

Mayan BBPNs have significant cognate similarities with Formosan languages.

Statistical tests show a higher frequency of Formosan cognates in Mayan.

Mayan languages are concluded to be derived from Formosan of Austronesian.

Abstract

Basic body-part names (BBPNs) were defined as body-part names in Swadesh basic 200 words. Non-Mayan cognates of Mayan (MY) BBPNs were extensively searched for, by comparing with non-MY vocabulary, including ca.1300 basic words of 82 AN languages listed by Tryon (1985), etc. Thus found cognates (CGs) in non-MY are listed in Table 1, as classified by language groups to which most similar cognates (MSCs) of MY BBPNs belong. CGs of MY are classified to 23 mutually unrelated CG-items, of which 17.5 CG-items have their MSCs in Austronesian (AN), giving its closest similarity score (CSS), CSS(AN) = 17.5, which consists of 10.33 MSCs in Formosan, 1.83 MSCs in Western Malayo-Polynesian (W.MP), 0.33 in Central MP, 0.0 in SHWNG, and 5.0 in Oceanic [i.e., CSS(FORM)= 10.33, CSS(W.MP) = 1.88, ..., CSS(OC)= 5.0]. These CSSs for language (sub)groups are also listed in the underline portion of every section of (Section1 - Section 6) in Table 1. Chi-squar test (degree of freedom = 1) using [Eq 1] and [Eqs.2] revealed that MSCs of MY BBPNs are distributed in Formosan in significantly higher frequency (P < 0.001) than in other subgroups of AN, as well as than in non-AN languages. MY is thus concluded to have been derived from Formosan of AN. Eskimo shows some BBPN similarities to FORM and MY.