Austro-Asiatic languages

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Austro-Asiatic Austroasiatic
Geographic distribution:	South and Southeast Asia
Genetic classification:	One of the world's major language families
Subdivisions:	Nuclear Mon-Khmer Khasi-Khmuic Munda
ISO 639-5:	aav

The Austro-Asiatic languages are a large language family of Southeast Asia, and 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 Vietnamese, Khmer, 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, but two recent classifications have abandoned Mon-Khmer as a valid node, albeit tentatively 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. There are, for example, Austro-Asiatic words in the Tibeto-Burman languages of eastern Nepal. Some linguists have attempted to prove that Austro-Asiatic languages are related to Austronesian languages, thus forming the Austric superfamily.

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Gérard Diffloth (2005)

Diffloth compares reconstructions of various clades, and attempts to classify them based on shared innovations. As a schematic, we have:

Or in more detail,

• Munda languages (India)

• Koraput: 7 languages
• Core Munda languages

• Kharian-Juang: 2 languages
• North Munda languages

Korku

Kherwarian: 12 languages

• Khasi-Khmuic languages (Northern Mon-Khmer)

• 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

• Nuclear Mon-Khmer languages

• 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.

[edit] 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.

• Nicobarese
• Munda-Khmer
  • Munda
  • Mon-Khmer
    • Khasi
    • Nuclear Mon-Khmer
      • Mangic (Mang + Palyu) (perhaps in Northern MK)
      • Vietic (perhaps in Northern MK)
      • Northern Mon-Khmer
        • Palaungic
        • Khmuic'
      • Central Mon-Khmer
        • Khmer dialects
        • Pearic
        • Asli-Bahnaric
          • Aslian
          • Mon-Bahnaric
            • Monic
            • Katu-Bahnaric
              • Katuic
              • Bahnaric

[edit] 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.

• Munda
  • North Munda
    • Korku
    • Kherwarian
  • South Munda
    • Kharia-Juang
    • Koraput Munda
• Mon-Khmer
  • Eastern Mon-Khmer
    • Khmer (Cambodian)
    • Pearic
    • Bahnaric
    • Katuic
    • Vietic (includes Vietnamese)
  • Northern Mon-Khmer
    • Khasi (Meghalaya, India)
    • Palaungic
    • Khmuic
  • Southern Mon-Khmer
    • Mon
    • Aslian (Malaya)
    • Nicobarese (Nicobar Islands)

[edit] Protolanguage

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

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.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} 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.

[edit] References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (December 2008)

• Adams, K. L. (1989). Systems of numeral classification in the Mon-Khmer, Nicobarese and Aslian subfamilies of Austroasiatic. Canberra, A.C.T., Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 0858833735
• Byomkes Chakrabarti, A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali, 1994
• Filbeck, D. (1978). T'in: a historical study. Pacific linguistics, no. 49. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 0858831724
• Hemeling, K. (1907). Die Nanking Kuanhua. (German language)
• Peck, B. M., Comp. (1988). An Enumerative Bibliography of South Asian Language Dictionaries.
• Peiros, Ilia. 1998. Comparative Linguistics in Southeast Asia. Pacific Linguistics Series C-142. Canberra, Australian National University.
• Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 0-85883-570-3
• Shorto, H. L. Bibliographies of Mon-Khmer and Tai Linguistics. London oriental bibliographies, v. 2. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.
• Sidwell, Paul (2005) "Proto-Katuic Phonology and the Sub-grouping of Mon-Khmer Languages". In Sidwell, ed., SEALSXV: papers from the 15th meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistic Society.
• Zide, Norman H., and Milton E. Barker. (1966) Studies in Comparative Austroasiatic Linguistics, The Hague: Mouton (Indo-Iranian monographs, v. 5.).

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Austro-Asiatic languages

• Mon-Khmer.com: Lectures by Paul Sidwell
• Ethnologue classification
• Mon-Khmer languages at SEAlang