This is the first single-authored book that attempts to describe the Austronesian language family in its entirety. It includes chapters or chapter sections on: the physical and cultural background in which these languages are embedded, official and national languages, largest and smallest languages in all major geographical regions, speech levels and respect language, male/female speech differences, vituperation and profanity, secret languages, ritual languages, language contact, a survey of the sound systems of both typical and atypical languages in all major geographical regions, numerals and numeration, colour terminology, demonstratives, locatives and directions, pronouns, metaphor, language names and greetings, semantic change, lexical change, linguistics paleontology, morphology, syntax, the history of scholarship on Austronesian languages, a critical assessment of the reconstruction of Proto Austronesian phonology, a survey of types of sound change, a critical assessment of claims regarding the external relations of the Austronesian languages, subgrouping, size of the scholarly community and major centres of Austronesian scholarship, periodic meetings and periodic publications, landmarks of scholarship with regard to other language families, a survey of bibliographies of Austronesian linguistics, and an extensive list of references to the published literature.