Editing Austronesian languages (section)

===Syntax===
[[File:Hawaii Banknote 5 Dollars c 1839.jpg|thumb|A 5 dollar banknote, Hawaii, {{Circa|1839}}, using the [[Hawaiian language]]]]
It is difficult to make generalizations about the languages that make up a family as diverse as Austronesian. Very broadly, one can divide the Austronesian languages into three groups: Philippine-type languages, Indonesian-type languages and post-Indonesian type languages:{{sfnp|Ross|2002|p=453}}
* The first group includes, besides the languages of the [[Philippines]], the Austronesian languages of Taiwan, Sabah, North Sulawesi and Madagascar. It is primarily characterized by the retention of the original system of [[Austronesian alignment|Philippine-type voice alternations]], where typically three or four verb voices determine which [[thematic relation|semantic role]] the "subject"/"topic" expresses (it may express either the actor, the patient, the location and the beneficiary, or various other circumstantial roles such as instrument and concomitant). The phenomenon has frequently been referred to as ''focus'' (not to be confused with the [[focus (linguistics)|usual sense]] of that term in linguistics). Furthermore, the choice of voice is influenced by the [[definiteness]] of the participants. The word order has a strong tendency to be verb-initial.
* In contrast, the more innovative Indonesian-type languages, which are particularly represented in Malaysia and western Indonesia, have reduced the voice system to a contrast between only two voices (actor voice and "undergoer" voice), but these are supplemented by [[applicative voice|applicative]] morphological devices (originally two: the more direct *''-i'' and more oblique *''-an/-[a]kən''), which serve to modify the semantic role of the "undergoer". They are also characterized by the presence of preposed clitic pronouns. Unlike the Philippine type, these languages mostly tend towards verb-second word-orders. A number of languages, such as the [[Batak languages]], [[Old Javanese]], [[Balinese language|Balinese]], [[Sasak language|Sasak]] and several Sulawesi languages seem to represent an intermediate stage between these two types.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Adelaar|first1=K. Alexander|first2=Nikolaus|last2=Himmelmann|year=2005|title=The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar|pages=6–7|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0415681537}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Croft|first=William|year=2012|title=Verbs: Aspect and Causal Structure|page=261|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0199248599}}</ref>
* Finally, in some languages, which Ross calls "post-Indonesian", the original voice system has broken down completely and the voice-marking affixes no longer preserve their functions.