Austro-Asiatic languages

Austro-Asiatic
Austroasiatic
Geographic
distribution:		 South and Southeast Asia
Linguistic Classification: One of the world's major language families
Subdivisions:
Munda
ISO 639-5: aav
Austro-Asiatic languages

The Austro-Asiatic languages are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. The name comes from the Latin word for "south" and the Greek name of Asia, hence "South Asia." Among these languages, only Khmer, Vietnamese, and Mon have a long established recorded history, and only Vietnamese and Khmer have official status (in Vietnam and Cambodia, respectively). The rest of the languages are spoken by minority groups. Ethnologue identifies 168 Austro-Asiatic languages. These are traditionally divided into two families, Mon-Khmer and Munda. Two recent classifications have abandoned Mon-Khmer as a valid node, although this is tentative and not generally accepted.

Austro-Asiatic languages have a disjunct distribution across India, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia, separated by regions where other languages are spoken. It is widely believed that the Austro-Asiatic languages are the autochthonous languages of Southeast Asia and the eastern Indian subcontinent, and that the other languages of the region, including the Indo-European, Kradai, Dravidian and Sino-Tibetan languages, are the result of later migrations of people.

The Austro-Asiatic languages are well known for having a "sesqui-syllabic" pattern, with basic nouns and verbs consisting of a reduced minor syllable plus a full syllable. Many of them also have infixes.

Contents

Classification

Linguists traditionally recognize two primary divisions of Austro-Asiatic: the Mon-Khmer languages of Southeast Asia, Northeast India and the Nicobar Islands, and the Munda languages of East and Central India and parts of Bangladesh. However, no evidence for this classification has ever been published, and it is possible that the linguistic classification has been influenced by researchers' subjective perception of a racial dichotomy between the speakers of languages that have traditionally been classified as Mon-Khmer and those that have traditionally been classified as Munda.

Each of the families that is written in boldface type below is accepted as a valid clade. However, the relationships between these families within Austro-Asiatic is debated; in addition to the traditional classification, two recent proposals are given, neither of which accept traditional Mon-Khmer as a valid unit. It should be noted that little of the data used for competing classifications has ever been published, and therefore cannot be evaluated by peer review.

Gérard Diffloth (2005)

Diffloth compares reconstructions of various clades, and attempts to classify them based on shared innovations (although these claims must be treated as doubtful until the evidence of these clades is published or otherwise made available for scholars to assess). As a schematic, we have:

Austro- 
Asiatic 
 Munda 


Remo


Savara




Kharian-Juang



Korku


Kherwarian




 Khasi- 
 Khmuic 


Khmuic



Pakanic


Palaungic




Khasian


 (Nuclear)  Mon-Khmer 



Vietic


Katuic ?[1]




Bahnaric



Khmer


Pearic






Nicobarese



Aslian


Monic





Or in more detail,

  • Koraput: 7 languages
  • Core Munda languages
  • Kharian-Juang: 2 languages
  • North Munda languages
Korku
Kherwarian: 12 languages
  • Khasian: 3 languages of eastern India and Bangladesh
  • Palaungo-Khmuic languages
  • Khmuic: 13 languages of Laos and Thailand
  • Palaungo-Pakanic languages
Pakanic or Palyu: 4 or 5 languages of southern China and Vietnam
Palaungic: 21 languages of Burma, southern China, and Thailand
  • Khmero-Vietic languages (Eastern Mon-Khmer)
  • Vieto-Katuic languages ?[1]
Vietic: 10 languages of Vietnam and Laos, including the Vietnamese language, which has the most speakers of any Austro-Asiatic language. These are the only Austro-Asiatic languages to have highly developed tone systems.
Katuic: 19 languages of Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand.
  • Khmero-Bahnaric languages
  • Bahnaric: 40 languages of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
  • Khmeric languages
The Khmer dialects of Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Pearic: 6 languages of Cambodia.
  • Nico-Monic languages (Southern Mon-Khmer)
  • Nicobarese languages: 6 languages of the Nicobar Islands, a territory of India.
  • Asli-Monic languages
Aslian: 19 languages of peninsular Malaysia] and Thailand.
Monic: 2 languages, the Mon language of Burma and the Nyahkur language of Thailand.

Ilia Peiros (2004)

Peiros is a lexicostatistic classification, based on percentages of shared vocabulary. This means that a language may appear to be more distantly related than it actually is due to language contact, so it is only a starting point for a proper genealogical classification.

Diffloth (1974)

Diffloth's widely cited original classification, now abandoned by Diffloth himself, is used in Encyclopædia Britannica and—except for the breakup of Southern Mon-Khmer—in Ethnologue.

Protolanguage

Sidwell (2005) reconstructs the consonant inventory of proto-Mon Khmer as follows:

*p *t *c *k *ʔ
*b *d *ɟ *ɡ
*ɓ *ɗ *ʄ
*m *n *ɲ *ŋ
*w *l, *r *j
*s *h

This is identical to earlier reconstructions except for *ʄ, which is better preserved in the Katuic languages which Sidwell specializes in than in other branches of Austro-Asiatic.

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sidwell (2005) casts doubt on Diffloth's Vieto-Katuic hypothesis, saying that the evidence is ambiguous, and that it is not clear where Katuic belongs in the family.

References

External links