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The origin of Malagasy DNA is half African and half Indonesian, nevertheless the Malagasy language, spoken by the entire population, belongs to the Austronesian family. The language most closely related to Malagasy is Maanyan (Greater Barito East group of the Austronesian family), but related languages are also in Sulawesi, Malaysia and Sumatra. For this reason, and because Maanyan is spoken by a population which lives along the Barito river in Kalimantan and which does not possess the necessary skill for long maritime navigation, the ethnic composition of the Indonesian colonizers is still unclear. There is a general consensus that Indonesian sailors reached Madagascar by a maritime trek, but the time, the path and the landing area of the first colonization are all disputed. In this research we try to answer these problems together with other ones, such as the historical configuration of Malagasy dialects, by types of analysis related to lexicostatistics and glottochronology which draw upon the automated method recently proposed by the authors cite{Serva:2008, Holman:2008, Petroni:2008, Bakker:2009}. The data were collected by the first author at the beginning of 2010 with the invaluable help of Joselin`a Soafara Nere and consist of Swadesh lists of 200 items for 23 dialects covering all areas of the Island.
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The dialects of Madagascar belong to the Greater Barito East group of the Austronesian family and it is widely accepted that the Island was colonized by Indonesian sailors after a maritime trek which probably took place around 650 CE. The language most closely related to Malagasy dialects is Maanyan but also Malay is strongly related especially for what concerns navigation terms. Since the Maanyan Dayaks live along the Barito river in Kalimantan (Borneo) and they do not possess the necessary skill for long maritime navigation, probably they were brought as subordinates by Malay sailors. In a recent paper we compared 23 different Malagasy dialects in order to determine the time and the landing area of the first colonization. In this research we use new data and new methods to confirm that the landing took place on the south-east coast of the Island. Furthermore, we are able to state here that it is unlikely that there were multiple settlements and, therefore, colonization consisted in a single founding event. To reach our goal we find out the internal kinship relations among all the 23 Malagasy dialects and we also find out the different kinship degrees of the 23 dialects versus Malay and Maanyan. The method used is an automated version of the lexicostatistic approach. The data concerning Madagascar were collected by the author at the beginning of 2010 and consist of Swadesh lists of 200 items for 23 dialects covering all areas of the Island. The lists for Maanyan and Malay were obtained from published datasets integrated by authors interviews.
Using the official data and aware of the uncertain source and insufficient number of samples, we present a first and (for the moment) unique attempt to study the first two months spread of COVID-19 in Madagascar. The approach has been tested by predicting the number of contaminated persons for the next week after fitting the inputs data collected within 7 or 15 days using standard least $chi^2$-fit method. Encouraged by this first test, we study systematically during 67 days , 1-2 weeks new data and predict the contaminated persons for the coming week. We find that the first month data are well described by a linear or quadratic polynomial with an increase of about (4-5) infected persons per day. Pursuing the analysis, one note that data until 46 days favour a cubic polynomial behaviour which signals an eventual near future stronger growth as confirmed by the new data on the 48th day. We complete the analysis until 67 days and find that the data until 77 days confirm the cubic polynomial behaviour which is a remarkable feature of the pandemic spread in Madagascar. We expect that these results will be useful for some new model buildings. A comparison with some other SI-like models predictions is done.These results may also be interpreted as the lowest values of the real case due to the insufficient number of samples (12907 for 27 million habitants on 05/06/20). The data analysis of the absolute number of cured persons until 67 days shows an approximate linear behaviour with about 3 cured persons per day. However, the number of percentage number of cured persons decreases above 42-46 days indicating the limits of the hospital equipment and care to face the 2nd phase of the pandemic for the 67th first days. Some comments on the social, economical and political impacts of COVID-19 and confinement for Madagascar and, in general, for Worldwide are shortly discussed.
The Malagasy language belongs to the Greater Barito East group of the Austronesian family, the language most closely connected to Malagasy dialects is Maanyan (Kalimantan), but Malay as well other Indonesian and Philippine languages are also related. The African contribution is very high in the Malagasy genetic make-up (about 50%) but negligible in the language. Because of the linguistic link, it is widely accepted that the island was settled by Indonesian sailors after a maritime trek but date and place of landing are still debated. The 50% Indonesian genetic contribution to present Malagasy points in a different direction then Maanyan for the Asian ancestry, therefore, the ethnic composition of the Austronesian settlers is also still debated. In this talk I mainly review the joint research of Filippo Petroni, Dima Volchenkov, Soren Wichmann and myself which tries to shed new light on these problems. The key point is the application of a new quantitative methodology which is able to find out the kinship relations among languages (or dialects). New techniques are also introduced in order to extract the maximum information from these relations concerning time and space patterns.
A simple review by a linguist, citing many articles by physicists: Quantitative methods, agent-based computer simulations, language dynamics, language typology, historical linguistics
The words of a language are randomly replaced in time by new ones, but it has long been known that words corresponding to some items (meanings) are less frequently replaced than others. Usually, the rate of replacement for a given item is not directly observable, but it is inferred by the estimated stability which, on the contrary, is observable. This idea goes back a long way in the lexicostatistical literature, nevertheless nothing ensures that it gives the correct answer. The family of Romance languages allows for a direct test of the estimated stabilities against the replacement rates since the proto-language (Latin) is known and the replacement rates can be explicitly computed. The output of the test is threefold:first, we prove that the standard approach which tries to infer the replacement rates trough the estimated stabilities is sound; second, we are able to rewrite the fundamental formula of Glottochronology for a non universal replacement rate (a rate which depends on the item); third, we give indisputable evidence that the stability ranking is far from being the same for different families of languages. This last result is also supported by comparison with the Malagasy family of dialects. As a side result we also provide some evidence that Vulgar Latin and not Late Classical Latin is at the root of modern Romance languages.
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