Is Puyuma a primary branch of Austronesian ?

International audienceMalcolm Ross's new theory of early Austronesian phylogeny is examined. The author describes evidence that *-en served to mark verbs in undergoer voice, patient subject in a language ancestral to Puyuma, as well as evidence that * marks undergoer voice, patient subject perfective in one sociolect of Nanwang Puyuma. This evidence falsifies the claim that Puyuma reflects an early Austronesian stage at which *‑en and * had not yet been reinterpreted from nominalizers into voice markers. It also falsifies the phylogeny which takes that putative innovation as its central event. A hypothetical scenario is offered to account for the replacement of the *‑en, *‑an and *Si‑ (or *Sa‑) series of voice markers by the series now found in Puyuma independent verbs