Malay/Indonesian syntax from an Austronesian perspective: An introduction

The articles in this issue of Lingua, with one exception, grow out of presentations at the Tenth International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics (ISMIL 10), which was held at the University of Delaware in April of 2006.1 In celebration of 10 years of ISMIL symposia, the organizers of the symposium invited specialists on the syntax of Austronesian languages other than Malay/Indonesian to make presentations centering around the following questions: What can Malay/Indonesian syntax learn from the study of other Austronesian languages? What can other Austronesian languages learn from Malay/Indonesian that will help us better understand the syntax of Austronesian languages in general? A broad question that motivated the choice of this theme for the symposium was whether the generative comparative approach to syntax, which has proved so productive with respect to Romance and Germanic languages, would lead to significant advances in the study of the Austronesian languages.