| Austro-Tai | |
|---|---|
| (controversial) | |
| Geographic distribution: |
Southeast Asia |
| Linguistic classification: | proposed language family |
| Subdivisions: |
Tai–Kadai (perhaps as a branch of Austronesian)
|
Austro-Tai is a hypothesis that the Tai–Kadai and Austronesian language families of southern China and the Pacific are genealogically related. Related proposals include Austric (Paul K. Benedict) and Sino-Austronesian (Laurent Sagart).
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The Tai–Kadai languages contain numerous similar forms with Austronesian which were noticed as far back as Schlegel in 1901.[1] These are considered to be too many to explain as chance resemblance.[2] The question then is whether they are due to language contact—that is, borrowing—or to common descent—that is, a genealogical relationship.
The first proposal of a genealogical relationship was that of Paul Benedict in 1942, which he expanded upon through 1990. This took the form of an expansion of his Austric phylum, and posited that Tai–Kadai and Austronesian had a sister relationship within Austric. This was not generally received well by linguists for a variety of reasons: Austric as a whole had not been demonstrated; Benedict dealt mostly with typological evidence, which could be explained as areal features; he erroneously included a number of demonstrable Chinese loans in his reconstruction; and his methods of reconstruction were idiosyncratic and considered unreliable. For example, Thurgood (1994) examined Benedict's claims and concluded that since the sound correspondences and tonal developments were irregular, there was no evidence of a genealogical relationship, and the numerous cognates must be chalked up to early language contact.
However, the fact that many of the Austro-Tai cognates are found in core vocabulary, which is generally resistant to borrowing, continued to intrigue scholars. There were later several advances over Benedict's approach: Abandoning the larger Austric proposal; focusing on lexical reconstruction and regular sound correspondences; including data from additional branches of Tai–Kadai, Hlai and Kra; using better reconstructions of Tai–Kadai; and reconsidering the nature of the relationship, with Tai–Kadai possibly being a branch (daughter) of Austronesian.
Ostapirat (2000) reconstructed proto-Kra, one of the least-well attested branches of Tai–Kadai. In (Ostapirat 2005) he presents fifty core vocabulary items found in all five branches of Tai–Kadai, and demonstrated that half of them—words such as child, eat, eye, fire, hand, head, I, you, louse, moon, tooth, water, this, etc.—can be related to proto-Austronesian by regular sound correspondences, a connection which Reid (2006) finds convincing.[3]
Austronesian is characterized by disyllabic roots, whereas Tai–Kadai is predominantly monosyllabic. It appears that in Tai–Kadai, the first vowel reduced and then dropped out, leaving a consonant cluster which frequently reduced further to a single consonant. For example, the proto-Austronesian root *qudip "live, raw" corresponds to proto-Kra (k-)Dep > Laha ktʰop and Tai dip "id." (the *-D- consonant is Ostapirat's voiced plosive of undetermined quality, probably alveolar as opposed to dental articulation [4]).
In proto-Tai–Kadai, there appear to have been three tones in words ending in a sonorant (vowel or nasal consonant), labeled simply A, B, C, plus words ending in an stop consonant, D, which did not have tone. In general, Austronesian words ending in a sonorant correspond to A, and words ending in a stop correspond to D. This accounts for most of the words. There are also a few cognates with B and C tone. From Indic borrowings it appears that tone B was originally a final h in Tai–Kadai, and some of the corresponding Austronesian roots also end in h, such as AN *qəmpah "chaff", Kam–Sui paa-B (Mulam kwaa-B), though there are few examples to go on. Tone C seems to have originally been creaky voice or a final glottal stop. It may correspond to *H, a laryngeal consonant of uncertain manner, in proto-Austronesian (AN *quluH "head", Thai klau-C), but again the number of cognates is too low to draw firm conclusions.
Sagart (2005) builds on this data with a newly described Kra language, Buyang, which—like many other Kra languages—retains the disyllabic roots characteristic of Austronesian. Some examples are:
| Root | Buyang | Proto-MP |
|---|---|---|
| "to die" | matɛ́ | *matay |
| "eye" | matá | *mata |
| "head" | qaðù | *quluH |
| "eight" | maðû | *walu |
| "bird" | manùk | *manuk |
| "flower" | maŋà | *buŋah |
The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database project[5] included both Buyang and Old Chinese. It found what it identified in Buyang as 16 retentions in common with Proto-Malayo-Polynesian and 21 retentions in common with Proto-Oceanic (as opposed to five loans) out of a sample of 181 etyma.[6] Old Chinese was identified as having 11 retentions in common with Proto Malayo-Polynesian and 10 retentions in common with Proto-Oceanic out of a sample of 197 Old Chinese etyma.[7]
Among scholars who accept the evidence as definitive, there is disagreement as to the nature of the relationship. Benedict attempted to show that Tai–Kadai has features which cannot be accounted for by proto-Austronesian, and that therefore it must be a separate family coordinate with Austronesian (a sister relationship). Ostapirat concluded that these reconstructed linguistic features are spurious. However, he could not rule out the possibility that Tai–Kadai tone cannot be explained, and so leaves the question open pending further reconstruction of proto-Austronesian. He supports the consensus hypothesis of several scholars that proto-Austronesian was spoken on Formosa or adjacent areas of coastal China, and that the likely homeland of proto-Tai–Kadai was coastal Fujian or Guangdong as part of the neolithic Longshan culture. The spread of the Tai–Kadai peoples may have been aided by agriculture, but any who remained near the coast were eventually absorbed by the Chinese.
Sagart, on the other hand, holds that Tai–Kadai is a branch of Austronesian which migrated back to the mainland from northeastern Formosa long after Formosa was settled, but probably before the expansion of Malayo-Polynesian out of Formosa. The language was then largely relexified from what he believes may have been an Austro-Asiatic language. Robert Blust (1999) suggests that proto-Tai–Kadai speakers originated in the northern Philippines and migrated from there to Hainan island (hence the diversity of Tai–Kadai languages on that island[8]), and were radically restructured following contact with Hmong–Mien and Sinitic.
However, Ostapirat maintains that Tai–Kadai could not descend from Malayo-Polynesian in the Philippines, and likely not from the languages of eastern Formosa either. His evidence is in the Tai–Kadai sound correspondences, which reflect Austronesian distinctions that were lost in Malayo-Polynesian and even Eastern Formosan. These are proto-AN *t and *C, also *n and *N, which were distinct in proto-Tai–Kadai but which fell together as *t and *n in proto-MP and Eastern Formosan; and *S, which is *s in proto-Tai–Kadai but *h in proto-MP. There are also Austro-Tai roots which are not attested from Malayo-Polynesian, such as *Cumay "bear". (Western MP has *biRuaŋ.)
Sagart proposes an Eastern Formosan–Malayo-Polynesian connection with Tai–Kadai, based on words such as proto-Tai–Kadai *maNuk and Eastern Formosan *manuk "bird", as compared to proto-Austronesian, where the word for "bird" was *qayam, and *maNuk meant "chicken", and a few other words such as *lima "five" and *-mu "thou" which have not been reconstructed for proto-Austronesian. However, Ostapirat notes Tai–Kadai retains the Austronesian *N in this word, which had been lost from Eastern Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian, and that a change in meaning from "chicken" to "bird" could easily have happened independently, for example among proto-Tai–Kadai speakers when they borrowed the mainland word *ki "chicken" (cognate with Old Chinese *kej and Miao /qai/).
Sagart suggests that Austro-Tai is ultimately related to the Sino-Tibetan languages, forming a Sino-Austronesian family. The Proto-Sino-Austronesian speakers would have originated from the Neolithic communities of the coastal regions of prehistoric North China or East China. Ostapirat, by contrast, sees connections with the Austro-Asiatic languages (in Austric), as Benedict had. Reid notes that the two approaches are not incompatible, if Austric is valid and can be connected to Sino-Tibetan.