The Austroasiatic languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon–Khmer, are a large language
family of continental Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India, Bangladesh, and
the southern border of China. The name Austroasiatic comes from the Latin words for "south" and
"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. The rest of the
languages are spoken by minority groups. Ethnologue identifies 168 Austroasiatic languages. These
form thirteen established families, which have traditionally been grouped into two,
as Mon–Khmer and Munda. However, one recent classification posits three groups while another
has abandoned Mon–Khmer as a taxon altogether, making it synonymous with the larger family.
Austroasiatic languages have a disjunct distribution across India, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia,
separated by regions where other languages are spoken. They appear to be the autochthonous
languages of Southeast Asia, with the neighboring Indic, Tai, Dravidian, Austronesian, and Tibeto-Burman
languages being the result of later migrations.
Typology The Austroasiatic languages are well known
for having a "sesquisyllabic" pattern, with basic nouns and verbs consisting of a reduced
minor syllable plus a full syllable. Many of them also have infixes. The Austroasiatic
languages are further characterized as having unusually large vowel inventories and employing
some sort of register contrast, either between modal voice and breathy voice or between modal
voice and creaky voice. Languages in the Pearic branch and some in the Vietic branch can have
a three- or even four-way voicing contrast. However, some Austroasiatic languages have
lost the register contrast by evolving more diphthongs or in a few cases, such as Vietnamese,
tonogenesis. Proto-language
Much work has been done on the reconstruction of Proto-Mon–Khmer in Harry L. Shorto's
Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary. Little work has been done on the Munda languages,
which are not well documented; with their demotion from a primary branch, Proto-Mon–Khmer
becomes synonymous with Proto-Austroasiatic. Paul Sidwell reconstructs the consonant inventory
of Proto-Mon–Khmer as follows: This is identical to earlier reconstructions
except for *ʄ. *ʄ is better preserved in the Katuic languages, which Sidwell has specialized
in. Sidwell suggests that the likely homeland of Austroasiatic is the middle Mekong, in
the area of the Bahnaric and Katuic languages, and that the family is not as old as frequently
assumed, dating to perhaps 2000 BCE. Classification
Linguists traditionally recognize two primary divisions of Austroasiatic: 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. Each of the families that is written in boldface
type below is accepted as a valid clade. By contrast, the relationships between these
families within Austroasiatic is debated. In addition to the traditional classification,
two recent proposals are given, neither of which accept traditional "Mon–Khmer" as
a valid unit. However, little of the data used for competing classifications has ever
been published, and therefore cannot be evaluated by peer review.
In addition, there are suggestions that additional branches of Austroasiatic might be preserved
in substrata of Acehnese in Sumatra, the Chamic languages of Vietnam, and the Land Dayak languages
of Borneo. Sidwell
Paul Sidwell, in a lexicostatistical comparison of 36 languages which are well-known enough
to exclude loan words, finds little evidence for internal branching, though he did find
an area of increased contact between the Bahnaric and Katuic languages, such that languages
of all branches apart from the geographically distant Munda and Nicobarese show greater
similarity to Bahnaric and Katuic the closer they are to those branches, without any noticeable
innovations common to Bahnaric and Katuic. He therefore takes the conservative view that
the thirteen branches of Austroasiatic should be treated as equidistant on current evidence.
Sidwell & Blench discuss this proposal in more detail, and note that there is good evidence
for a Khasi–Palaungic node, which could also possibly be closely related to Khmuic.
If this would the case, Sidwell & Blench suggest that Khasic may have been an early offshoot
of Palaungic that had spread westward. Sidwell & Blench suggest Shompen as an additional
branch, and believe that a Vieto-Katuic connection is worth investigating. In general, however,
the family is thought to have diversified too quickly for a deeply nested structure
to have developed, since Proto-Austroasiatic speakers are believed by Sidwell to have radiated
out from the central Mekong River valley relatively quickly.
Gérard Diffloth Diffloth compares reconstructions of various
clades, and attempts to classify them based on shared innovations, though like other classifications
the evidence has not been published. As a schematic, we have:
Or in more detail, Munda languages
Koraput: 7 languages Core Munda languages
Kharian–Juang: 2 languages North Munda languages
Korku Kherwarian: 12 languages
Khasi–Khmuic 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
Nuclear Mon–Khmer languages
Khmero-Vietic languages
Vieto-Katuic languages ? Vietic: 10 languages of Vietnam and Laos,
including the Vietnamese language, which has the most speakers of any Austroasiatic language.
These are the only Austroasiatic 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
Nicobarese: 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.
This family tree is consistent with recent studies of migration of Y-Chromosomal haplogroup
O2a1-M95. However, the dates obtained from by Zhivotovsky method DNA studies are several
times older than that given by linguists. The route map of the people with haplogroup
O2a1-M95, speaking this language can be seen in this link. Other geneticists criticise
the Zhivotovsky method. Ilia Peiros
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. Indeed, when Sidwell replicated Peiros's study with languages known
well enough to account for loans, he did not find the internal structure below.
Nicobarese Munda–Khmer
Munda Mon–Khmer
Khasi Nuclear Mon–Khmer
Mangic Vietic
Northern Mon–Khmer Palaungic
Khmuic
Central Mon–Khmer Khmer dialects
Pearic Asli-Bahnaric
Aslian Mon–Bahnaric
Monic Katu–Bahnaric
Katuic Bahnaric
Diffloth 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 Pearic
Bahnaric Katuic
Vietic
Northern Mon–Khmer Khasi
Palaungic Khmuic
Southern Mon–Khmer Mon
Aslian Nicobarese
Writing systems Other than Latin-based alphabets, many Austroasiatic
languages are written with the ancient Khmer alphabet, Thai alphabet and Lao alphabet.
Vietnamese divergently had an indigenous script based on Chinese logographic writing. This
has since been supplanted by the Latin alphabet in the 20th century.
Chữ Nôm Khmer alphabet
Ol Chiki alphabet Sorang Sompeng alphabet
Varang Kshiti Khom script
See also Austric languages
Notes
References Adams, K. L.. 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 0-85883-373-5 Bradley, David. "Languages and Language Families
in China", in Rint Sybesma, Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics.
Chakrabarti, Byomkes.. A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali.
Diffloth, Gérard. "The contribution of linguistic palaeontology and Austro-Asiatic". in Laurent
Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, eds. The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together
Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. 77–80. London: Routledge Curzon. ISBN 0-415-32242-1
Filbeck, D.. T'in: a historical study. Pacific linguistics, no. 49. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics,
Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 0-85883-172-4
Hemeling, K.. Die Nanking Kuanhua. Peck, B. M., Comp.. An Enumerative Bibliography
of South Asian Language Dictionaries. Peiros, Ilia. 1998. Comparative Linguistics
in Southeast Asia. Pacific Linguistics Series C, No. 142. Canberra: Australian National
University. Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul,
Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian. 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. "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.
Sidwell, Paul. The Austroasiatic Central Riverine Hypothesis. Keynote address, SEALS, XIX.
Sidwell, Paul. Classifying the Austroasiatic languages: history and state of the art. LINCOM
studies in Asian linguistics, 76. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Zide, Norman H., and Milton E. Barker. Studies in Comparative Austroasiatic Linguistics,
The Hague: Mouton. External links
Swadesh lists for Austro-Asiatic languages Austro-Asiatic at the Linguist List MultiTree
Project: Genealogical trees attributed to Sebeok 1942, Pinnow 1959, Diffloth 2005, and
Matisoff 2006 Mon–Khmer.com: Lectures by Paul Sidwell
Mon–Khmer Languages Project at SEAlang Further Reading
Mann, Noel, Wendy Smith and Eva Ujlakyova. 2009. Linguistic clusters of Mainland Southeast
Asia: an overview of the language families. Chiang Mai: Payap University.