| Proto-Austroasiatic | |
|---|---|
| Proto-Mon–Khmer | |
| Reconstruction of | Austroasiatic languages |
| Region | Southern China or northern Southeast Asia |
| Era | c. 3000 BCE – c. 2000 BCE |
| Lower-order reconstructions | |
Proto-Austroasiatic is thereconstructed ancestor of theAustroasiatic languages. Proto-Mon–Khmer (i.e., all Austroasiatic branches except for Munda) has been reconstructed inHarry L. Shorto'sMon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary, while a new Proto-Austroasiatic reconstruction is currently being undertaken byPaul Sidwell.[1]
Scholars generally date the ancestral language toc. 3000 BCE – c. 2000 BCE with ahomeland in southern China or theMekong River valley. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in theRed River Delta area aroundc. 2500 BCE – c. 2000 BCE.[2]
500 Proto-Austroasiatic etyma were published byPaul Sidwell in 2024.[3]
Earlier work sought to reconstruct the ancestor of theMon–Khmer languages, viewed as a primary branch of the Austroasiatic language family alongside theMunda languages. This bifurcate model has been abandoned in favour of a flatter classification since around 2000.[4] Nevertheless, the Munda, Khasi and Nicobarese languages, whose phonologies are more innovative, are less useful for the reconstruction of PAA phonology, though were relied upon to recognize archaic etyma.[5]
A total of 21 or 23consonants are reconstructed for Proto-Austroasiatic.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Stop | unvoiced | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ||
| implosive | ɓ | ɗ | (ʄ) | |||
| Fricative | s | (ɕ) | h | |||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||
| Trill | r | |||||
To account for contrasts found inKatuic languages,Paul Sidwell tentatively added *ʄ to the inventory reconstructed byHarry L. Shorto in 2006.[6] Sidwell (2024) adds *ɕ.[7]
Sidwell & Rau (2015) reconstruct 8 Proto-Austroasiaticvowels, each of which can occur short or long.[8]
| Height | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | ɛ | a | ɔ |
This differs from Shorto's inventory, based on correspondences between Mon and Khmer only, in adding*ɛ.[9]Sidwell (2023) adds a close central vowel*ɨ.[10]
Proto-Austroasiaticdiphthongs are more difficult, though*iə and*uə are generally recognized.Shorto also reconstructed some forms using*ɯə and*ai, but Sidwell accounts for these using long vowels*aː,*ɛː and*iː.[8]Sidwell tentatively suggests*ie and*uo.[11]
Common word structures in Proto-Austroasiatic include *CV(C) and *CCV(C) roots. *CVC roots can also be affixed either via prefixes or infixes, as in *C-CVC or *C⟨C⟩VC.[12] Sidwell and Rau (2015) propose the following syllable structure for Proto-Austroasiatic.[13][14]
Medial consonants (Cm) are *-w -, *-r -, *-l -, *-j -, and *-h-.All of the Proto-Austroasiatic consonants except forimplosives andvoiced stops can occur as syllable finals (Cf).[15]
Also possible aresesquisyllables:
All of the Proto-Austroasiatic unvoiced stops and voiced stops, as well as *m-, *N-, *r-, *l-, and *s-, can occur as presyllables (Cp).[16]These may arise from prefixes and infixes.[17]Several daughter languages feature presyllable "coda-copying" from main syllables, which may have been a feature of Proto-Austroasiatic.[18]
The Proto-Austroasiatic word template was later revised as follows by Sidwell (2023).[10]
Hiroz (2024) proposes disyllabic forms for some Proto-Austroasiatic etyma. A few tentative reconstructions are:[19]
Sidwell (2008) considers the two most morphologically conservative Mon–Khmer branches to beKhmuic andAslian. On the other hand,Vietnamese morphology is far more similar to that ofChinese and theTai languages and has lost many morphological features found in Proto-Mon–Khmer.
The following Proto-Mon–Khmer affixes, which are still tentative, have been reconstructed byPaul Sidwell.[20]
Roger Blench (2012) notes that Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan share many similarities regarding word structure, particularly nominal affixes (otherwise known assesquisyllables or minor syllable prefixes). Blench does not make any definitive conclusions about how these similarities could have arisen, but suggests that this typological diffusion might have come about as a result of intensive contact in an area between northern Vietnam, Laos, and northeast Myanmar.[21]
Sidwell & Rau (2014) notice that theSora-stylenoun incorporation is also found outside of the Munda branch. Sidwell & Jenny & Alves (2020) further added, that the Munda noun incorporation system and referent indexation in predicates show internal head-first, verb-initial order, which can be taken as more archaic than the verb-final structures at clause/sentence level.[22]
Sora (Sora-Gorum,South Munda):
paŋ-sum-t-am
carry-spirit-NPST-2SG.OBJ
'spirit will carry you away' (literally 'you will be spirit-carried')
ɬjittsu
kill.dog
ɬjittsu
kill.dog
'kill dog'
Like theTai languages, Proto-Mon–Khmer has anSVO, or verb-medial, order. Proto-Mon–Khmer also makes use ofnoun classifiers andserial verb constructions (Shorto 2006).
However,Paul Sidwell (2018) suggests that Proto-Austroasiatic may have in fact been verb-initial, with SVO order occurring inIndochina due to convergence in theMainland Southeast Asia linguistic area.[14] Various modern-day Austroasiatic languages display verb-initial word order, includingPnar andWa (Jenny 2015).[23]Nicobarese also displays verb-initial word order.[14]
Below are some Proto-Austroasiatic words relating to animals, plants, agriculture, and material culture from Sidwell (2024).[24]
Numerals are as follows:
Proto-Austroasiatic personal pronouns determiners, and particles are as follows, with reconstructions from Sidwell & Rau (2015) and Shorto (2006).
| Pronoun | English gloss | Proto-Austroasiatic |
|---|---|---|
| 1s. | 'I' | *ʔaɲ |
| 1p. (incl.) | 'we (incl.)' | *ʔiːʔ |
| 1p. (excl.) | 'we (excl.)' | *ʔjeːʔ |
| 2s. | 'you (sg.)' | *miːʔ/*mi(ː)ʔ |
| 2p. | 'you (pl.)' | *piʔ |
| 3s./3p. | 'third person' | *gi(ː)ʔ |
| Interrogative (animate) | 'who' | *mVh |
| Interrogative (inanimate) | 'what' | *məh/*m(o)ʔ; *m(o)h |
| English gloss | Proto-Austroasiatic |
|---|---|
| 'that (distal)' | *tiːʔ |
| 'that (medial)' | *tɔʔ |
| 'this (proximal)' | *niʔ/*neʔ |
| 'here' | *nɔ(ː)ʔ |
| English gloss | Proto-Austroasiatic |
|---|---|
| 'used up, finished, lacking' | *ʔət; *ʔəːt; *[ʔ]it |
| 'not' | *ʔam |
Sidwell (2024) revises the personal pronouns as follows.[25]
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | – | *hiːˀ ~ *hɛːˀ |
| 2nd person | *miːʔ ~ *meːʔ | *pɛːʔ |
| 3rd person | *ʔan | *giːʔ |
Austroasiatic branch-level reconstructions include:
Paul Sidwell (2009)[4] suggested that the likelyhomeland of Austroasiatic is in theMekong River region, and that the family is not as old as frequently assumed, dating to perhaps 2,000 BCE.[38]
However,Ilia Peiros (2011) criticized Sidwell's 2009 riverine dispersal hypothesis heavily and claimed many contradictions. He showed with his analysis that the homeland of Austroasiatic is somewhere near theYangtze. He suggests theSichuan Basin as likely homeland of proto-Austroasiatic before they migrated to other parts of central and southern China and then into Southeast Asia. He further suggests that the family must be as old as proto-Austronesian and proto-Sino-Tibetan or even older.[39]
George van Driem (2011) proposed that the homeland of Austroasiatic was in theBrahmaputra basin. He further suggested, based on genetic studies, that the migration ofKra–Dai people from Taiwan replaced the original Austroasiatic language but the effect on the people was only minor. Local Austroasiatic speakers adopted Kra-Dai languages and partially their culture.[40]
Laurent Sagart (2011) andPeter Bellwood (2013) supported the theory of an origin of Austroasiatic along theYangtze river in southern China.[citation needed]
Genetic and linguistic research in 2015 about ancient people in East Asia suggest an origin and homeland of Austroasiatic in todaysouthern China or even further north.[41]
Integrating computational phylogenetic linguistics with recent archaeological findings, Paul Sidwell (2015)[11] further expanded his Mekong riverine hypothesis by proposing that Austroasiatic had ultimately expanded intoIndochina from theLingnan area ofsouthern China, with the subsequent Mekong riverine dispersal taking place after the initial arrival of Neolithic farmers from southern China. He tentatively suggests that Austroasiatic may have begun to split up 5,000 years B.P. during theNeolithic transition era ofmainland Southeast Asia, with all the major branches of Austroasiatic formed by 4,000 B.P. Austroasiatic would have had two possible dispersal routes from the western periphery of thePearl River watershed ofLingnan, which would have been either a coastal route down the coast of Vietnam, or downstream through theMekong River viaYunnan.[11] Both the reconstructed lexicon of Proto-Austroasiatic and the archaeological record clearly show that early Austroasiatic speakers around 4,000 B.P. cultivated rice andmillet, kept livestock such dogs, pigs, and chickens, and thrived mostly in estuarine rather than coastal environments.[11] At 4,500 B.P., this "Neolithic package" suddenly arrived in Indochina from the Lingnan area without cereal grains and displaced the earlier pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer cultures, with grain husks found in northern Indochina by 4,100 B.P. and in southern Indochina by 3,800 B.P.[11] However, Sidwell found that iron is not reconstructable in Proto-Austroasiatic, since each Austroasiatic branch has different terms for iron that had been borrowed relatively lately from Tai, Chinese, Tibetan, Malay, and other languages. During theIron Age about 2,500 B.P., relatively young Austroasiatic branches in Indochina such asVietic,Katuic,Pearic, andKhmer were formed, while the more internally diverseBahnaric branch (dating to about 3,000 B.P.) underwent more extensive internal diversification.[11] By the Iron Age, all of the Austroasiatic branches were more or less in their present-day locations, with most of the diversification within Austroasiatic taking place during the Iron Age.[11]
Paul Sidwell (2018)[42] considers the Austroasiatic language family to have rapidly diversified around 4,000 years B.P. during the arrival of rice agriculture in Indochina, but notes that the origin of Proto-Austroasiatic itself is older than that date. The lexicon of Proto-Austroasiatic can be divided into an early and late stratum. The early stratum consists of basic lexicon including body parts, animal names, natural features, and pronouns, while the names of cultural items (agriculture terms and words for cultural artifacts, which are reconstructable in Proto-Austroasiatic) form part of the later stratum.
Roger Blench (2018)[43][44] suggests that vocabulary related to aquatic subsistence strategies (such as boats, waterways, river fauna, and fish capture techniques) can be reconstructed for Proto-Austroasiatic. Blench (2018) finds widespread Austroasiatic roots for 'river, valley', 'boat', 'fish', 'catfish sp.', 'eel', 'prawn', 'shrimp' (Central Austroasiatic), 'crab', 'tortoise', 'turtle', 'otter', 'crocodile', 'heron, fishing bird', and 'fish trap'. Archaeological evidence for the presence of agriculture in northernIndochina (northern Vietnam, Laos, and other nearby areas) dates back to only about 4,000 years B.P. (2,000 B.C.), with agriculture ultimately being introduced from further up to the north in the Yangtze valley where it has been dated to 6,000 B.P.[43] Hence, this points to a relatively late riverine dispersal of Austroasiatic as compared toSino-Tibetan, whose speakers had a distinct non-riverine culture. In addition to living an aquatic-based lifestyle, early Austroasiatic speakers would have also had access to livestock, crops, and newer types of watercraft. As early Austroasiatic speakers dispersed rapidly via waterways, they would have encountered speakers of older language families who were already settled in the area, such as Sino-Tibetan.[43]
Sidwell (2021)[45] proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in theRed River Delta area about 4,000-4,500 years before present. Austroasiatic dispersed coastal maritime routes and also upstream through river valleys. Khmuic, Palaungic, and Khasic resulted from a westward dispersal that ultimately came from theRed River valley. Based on their current distributions, about half of all Austroasiatic branches (including Nicobaric and Munda) can be traced to coastal maritime dispersals.
