Tai-Kadai languages

Tai-Kadai Kadai, Daic, Kradai
Geographic distribution:	Southern China, Southeast Asia, Hainan
Linguistic Classification:	One of the world's primary language families, with proposed affinities to Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan
Subdivisions:	Hlai Kra Kam-Sui Ong Be Tai
ISO 639-2 and 639-5:	tai
Distribution of the Kadai language family.      Kra      Kam-Sui      Bê      Hlai      Northern Tai      Central Tai      Southwestern Tai

The Tai-Kadai languages, also known as Daic, Kadai, Kradai, or Kra-Dai, are a language family of highly tonal languages found in southern China and Southeast Asia. They include Thai and Lao, the national languages of Thailand and Laos respectively.

The diversity of the Tai-Kadai languages in southeastern China, especially on Hainan, suggests that this is close to their homeland. The Tai branch moved south into Southeast Asia only in historic times, founding the nations that later became Thailand and Laos in what had been Austroasiatic territory.

External relationships

The Tai-Kadai languages were formerly considered to be part of the Sino-Tibetan family, but outside of China they are now classified as an independent family. They contain large numbers of words that are similar in Sino-Tibetan languages. However, these are seldom found in all branches of the family, and do not include basic vocabulary, indicating that they are old loan words (Ostapirat 2005).

Several Western scholars have presented suggestive evidence that Tai-Kadai is related to or a branch of the Austronesian language family. There are a number of possible cognates in the core vocabulary. Among proponents, there is yet no agreement as to whether they are a sister group to Austronesian in a family called Austro-Tai, a backmigration from Taiwan to the mainland, or a later migration from the Philippines to Hainan during the Austronesian expansion.

In China, they are called Zhuang-Dong languages and are generally considered to be related to Sino-Tibetan languages along with the Miao-Yao languages. It is still a matter of discussion among Chinese scholars whether Kra languages such as Gelao, Qabiao, and Lachi can be included in Zhuang-Dong, since they lack the Sino-Tibetan similarities that are used to include other Zhuang-Dong languages in Sino-Tibetan.

Internal classification

Tai-Kadai consists of five well established branches, Hlai, Kra, Kam-Sui, Tai, and the Ong Be (Bê) language:

• Ong Be (Hainan; Lin'gao in Chinese)
• Kra languages (called Kadai in Ethnologue and Ge-Yang in Chinese)
• Kam-Sui languages (mainland China; Dong-Shui in Chinese)
• Hlai languages (Hainan; Li in Chinese)
• Tai languages (southern China and Southeast Asia)

Based on the large number of vocabulary they share, the Kam-Sui, Be, and Tai branches are often classified together. (See Kam-Tai.) However, this is negative evidence, possibly due to lexical replacement in the other branches, and morphological similarities suggest instead that Kra and Kam-Sui be grouped together as Northern Kadai on the one hand, and Hlai with Tai as Southern Kadai on the other (Ostapirat 2006).

The position of Ong Be in this proposal is undetermined.

The name "Tai-Kadai" comes from an obsolete bifurcation of the family into two branches, Tai and Kadai (all else). Since this Kadai can only be a valid group if it includes Tai, it is sometimes used to refer to the entire family; on the other hand, some references narrow its usage to the Kra branch of the family.

Origin and migrations

The study of over 100 East Asian populations including 30 Kadai-speaking peoples had reached the following conclusions.

1. The Tai-Kadai-speaking populations show a great deal of genetic similarity although admixture with local populations did occur after its expansion.
2. A significant proportion of southern Chinese populations carry a signature of Tai-Kadai-speaking populations.
3. Taiwanese Aborigines are more similar to Tai-Kadai-speaking populations than they are to the other Austronesian populations, that is, the Malayo-Polynesians.
4. The clustering of subfamilies of Tai-Kadai-speaking populations correlates well with that based on their genetic similarity indicating limited gene flow between them after their separation.

Tai-Kadai-speaking populations originated in the southern part of East Asia and then migrated northwards and eastwards with Kam-Sui probably being the oldest.

References

• Edmondson, J.A. and D.B. Solnit eds. 1997. Comparative Kadai: the Tai branch. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. ISBN 0-88312-066-6
• Blench, Roger. 2004. Stratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archaeology? Paper for the Symposium "Human migrations in continental East Asia and Taiwan: genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence". Geneva June 10–13, 2004. Université de Genève.
• Sagart, Laurent. 2004. The higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai. Oceanic Linguistics 43. 411–440.
• Ostapirat, Weera. 2005. "Kra-Dai and Austronesian: Notes on phonological correspondences and vocabulary distribution", pp. 107–131 in Sagart, Laurent, Blench, Roger & Sanchez-Mazas, Alicia (eds.), The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. London/New York: Routledge-Curzon.

Further reading

• Diller, A., J. Edmondson, & Yongxian Luo, ed., (2005). The Tai-Kadai languages. London [etc.]: Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1457-X
• Edmondson, J. A. (1986). Kam tone splits and the variation of breathiness.
• Edmondson, J. A., & Solnit, D. B. (1988). Comparative Kadai: linguistic studies beyond Tai. Summer Institute of Linguistics publications in linguistics, no. 86. [Arlington, Tex.]: Summer Institute of Linguistics. ISBN 0-88312-066-6
• Ostapirat, W. (2000). Proto-Kra. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 23 (1), 1–251.
• Somsonge Burusphat, & Sinnott, M. (1998). Kam-Tai oral literatures: collaborative research project between. Salaya Nakhon Pathom, Thailand: Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University. ISBN 974-661-450-9

Notes