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Malagasy linguistic data
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Common questions about Malagasy
What linguistic data does this Malagasy page show?
Word order (VOS), tone, gender count, case marking, adposition direction, syllable structure, consonant inventory traits, vowel system, morphological alignment, script, register stratification, speaker count, and geographic area. Each row is one feature with Malagasy's value visible; you can add other languages to read the same feature side by side.
Where do the Malagasy data points come from?
Typological features are merged from URIEL+ (Mortensen et al.) and a curated set authored against descriptive grammars. Speaker counts come from Ethnologue and Glottolog. Geographic area is computed from the Asher 2007 world language atlas. Similarity scores combine genetic distance, typological overlap, and lexical-borrowing data.
Why is Malagasy related to Indonesian languages?
Linguistic and DNA evidence indicates Madagascar was settled by Austronesian seafarers from southern Borneo around 500-1000 CE — an extraordinary trans-Indian-Ocean migration. Malagasy descends from the language they brought (closest living relative: Ma'anyan, central Borneo), with later layers of Bantu, Arabic, and French lexical borrowing reflecting subsequent contacts.
What is VOS word order?
Verb-Object-Subject order. The verb comes first, the object second, the subject last: 'eats fish the cat' instead of 'the cat eats fish'. VOS is rare globally — around 3% of languages. Most VOS languages are Austronesian (Malagasy, several Philippine languages) or Mesoamerican.
Why does Malagasy cluster with Indonesian or Tagalog on similarity scores?
All three are Austronesian, sharing core typology (predicate-initial tendency, voice/focus marking, no genders), and a chunk of cognate vocabulary inherited from Proto-Austronesian. Malagasy's VOS order and Bantu/Arabic borrowings pull it slightly away from the Southeast Asian Austronesian core. The factor breakdown chip on the row tells you which dimensions contributed most.
Sources for Malagasy
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Keenan, Edward L. and Maria Polinsky (1998). "Malagasy (Austronesian)." In Spencer & Zwicky (eds.), The Handbook of Morphology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
- Paul, Ileana M. (2004). "Malagasy." In Adelaar & Himmelmann (eds.), The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar. London: Routledge.
- Pearson, Matt (2001). "The Clause Structure of Malagasy." UCLA Occasional Papers in Linguistics 20. Los Angeles: UCLA Department of Linguistics.
- Rajaona, Siméon (1972). Structure du Malgache: Étude des Formes Prédicatives. Fianarantsoa: Ambozontany.