Proto-Austroasiatic is the reconstructed ancestor of the

Austroasiatic languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...

. Proto-Mon–Khmer (i.e., all Austroasiatic branches except for Munda) has been reconstructed in Harry L. Shorto's ''Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary'', while a new Proto-Austroasiatic reconstruction is currently being undertaken by

Paul Sidwell Paul James Sidwell is an Australian linguist based in Canberra, Australia who has held research and lecturing positions at the Australian National University. Sidwell, who is also an expert and consultant in forensic linguistics, is most notab ...

. Scholars generally date the ancestral language to 5,000-4,000 B.P. (i.e. 3,000-2,000 BCE) with a

homeland A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethn ...

in southern China or the

Mekong River The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of , discharging of water annual ...

valley. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the

Red River Delta The Red River Delta or Hong River Delta ( vi, Châu thổ sông Hồng) is the flat low-lying plain formed by the Red River and its distributaries merging with the Thái Bình River in northern Vietnam. ''Hồng'' (紅) is a Sino-Vietnamese word ...

area about 4,000-4,500 years before present.

Phonology

Shorto (2006)

The Proto-Mon–Khmer language is the reconstructed ancestor of the

Mon–Khmer languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...

, a purported primary branch of the Austroasiatic language family. However, Mon–Khmer as a taxon has been abandoned in recent classifications, making Proto-Mon–Khmer synonymous with Proto-Austroasiatic;Sidwell, Paul (2009)
The Austroasiatic Central Riverine Hypothesis
Keynote address, SEALS, XIX. the

Munda languages The Munda languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by about nine million people in India and Bangladesh. Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language famil ...

, which are not well documented, and have been restructured through external language contact, have not been included in the reconstructions. Proto-Mon–Khmer as reconstructed by Harry L. Shorto (2006) has a total of 21

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...

s, 7 distinct

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s, which can be lengthened and glottalized, and 3 diphthongs. Proto-Mon–Khmer is rich in

s. The vowels are: * *a, *aa * *e, *ee * *ə, *əə * *i, *-iʔ, *ii, *-iiʔ * *o, *oo * *ɔ, *ɔɔ * *u, *uu, *-uuʔ The diphthongs are: * *iə, *uə, *ai

Sidwell & Rau (2015)

and Felix Rau (2015)Sidwell, Paul and Felix Rau (2015). "Austroasiatic Comparative-Historical Reconstruction: An Overview." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). ''The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages''. Leiden: Brill.Sidwell, Paul. 2018
Austroasiatic Studies: state of the art in 2018
Presentation at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, May 22, 2018. propose the following syllable structure for Proto-Austroasiatic. * *C_i(C_m)VC_f Also possible are more complex forms with prefixes and infixes, as well as presyllable "coda-copying" from main syllables. * *(C_p(n/r/l))C_iVC_f Sidwell & Rau (2015) reconstruct 21-22 Proto-Austroasiatic consonants (the reconstruction of *ʄ is uncertain). All of the Proto-Austroasiatic consonants except for

implosives Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. Ro ...

and voiced stops can occur as syllable finals (C_f). All of the Proto-Austroasiatic unvoiced stops and voiced stops, as well as *m-, *N-, *r-, *l-, and *s-, can occur as presyllables or

sesquisyllable Primarily in Austroasiatic languages (also known as Mon–Khmer), in a typical word a minor syllable is a reduced (minor) syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the form or , with a reduced vowel, as ...

s (C_p). Medial consonants (C_m) are *-w -, *-r -, *-l -, *-j -, and *-h-. Sidwell & Rau (2015) reconstructs 8 Proto-Austroasiatic vowels, for which there is vowel length contrast. A long vowel will be appended with triangular colon (ː) instead of doubling. Proto-Austroasiatic diphthongs are *iə and *uə, and possibly *ie and *uo.

Morphology

Common structures include *CV(C) and *CCV(C) roots. *CVC roots can also be affixed either via prefixes or infixes, as in *C-CVC or *CVC (Shorto 2006). Sidwell (2008) gives the following phonological shapes for two types of stems. * Monosyllabic - C(R)V(V)C * Sesquisyllabic - CCV(V)C ''Note'': R is one of the optional medial consonants /r, l, j, w, h/. Sidwell (2008) considers the two most morphologically conservative Mon–Khmer branches to be Khmuic and Aslian. On the other hand,

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

morphology is far more similar to that of

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

and the

Tai languages The Tai or Zhuang–Tai languages ( th, ภาษาไท or , transliteration: or ) are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including Standard Thai or Si ...

and has lost many morphological features found in Proto-Mon–Khmer. The following Proto-Mon–Khmer affixes, which are still tentative, have been reconstructed by

(Sidwell 2008:257-263). * Nominalizing *-n- (instrumental in Kammu, resultative in Khmu) * Nominalizing agentive *-m- * Nominalizing iterative (expressive of repetitiveness/numerousness) *-l-/*-r- * Nominalizing instrumental *-p- * Causative *p(V)- (allomorphs: ''p-, pn-, -m-'') * Reciprocal *tr-/*t(N)- * Stative *h-/*hN- (?)

Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and work ...

(2012) notes that Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan share many similarities regarding word structure, particularly nominal affixes (otherwise known as

s or minor syllable prefixes). Blench (2012) 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.

Syntax

Like the

, Proto-Mon–Khmer has an SVO, or verb-medial, order. Proto-Mon–Khmer also makes use of noun classifiers and

serial verb construction The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.Tallerman, M. (1998). ''Understanding Syntax''. London: ...

s (Shorto 2006). However,

(2018) suggests that Proto-Austroasiatic may have in fact been verb-initial, with SVO order occurring in

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

due to convergence in the

Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighbou ...

. Various modern-day Austroasiatic languages display verb-initial word order, including Pnar and Wa (Jenny 2015). Nicobarese also displays verb-initial word order.

Lexicon

Pronouns

Proto-Austroasiatic personal pronouns as follows, with reconstructions from Sidwell & Rau (2015) and Shorto (2006).

Determiners

Particles

Branch reconstructions

Austroasiatic branch-level reconstructions include: *Proto- Munda: Sidwell & Rau (2015) (

list A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: People * List (surname) Organizations * List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America * SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...

) *Proto- Khasic:

(2012)
list
*Proto-

Palaungic The nearly thirty Palaungic or Palaung–Wa languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages. Phonological developments Most of the Palaungic languages lost the contrastive voicing of the ancestral Austroasiatic consonants, with the disti ...

: Paul Sidwell (2010, 2015)
list 1
list 2) *Proto- Khmuic: Paul Sidwell (2013)
list
*Proto- Pakanic: Andrew Hsiu (2016) (

) *Proto-

Vietic The Vietic languages are a branch of the Austroasiatic language family, spoken by the Vietic peoples in Laos and Vietnam. The branch was once referred to by the terms ''Việt–Mường'', ''Annamese–Muong'', and ''Vietnamuong''; the term '' ...

Michel Ferlus Michel Ferlus (born 1935) is a French linguist whose special study is in the historical phonology of languages of Southeast Asia. In addition to phonological systems, he also studies writing systems, in particular the evolution of Indic scripts in ...

(2007) *Proto- Katuic: Paul Sidwell (2005)
list
*Proto- Bahnaric: Paul Sidwell (2011)
list
*Proto- Khmeric: Sidwell & Rau (2015), based on Ferlus (1992) (

) *Proto- Pearic: Sidwell & Rau (2015); Robert Headley (1985)Headley, Robert K. 1985.
Proto-Pearic and the classification of Pearic
" In Suriya Ratanakult et al (eds.), ''Southeast Asian Linguistic Studies Presented to Andre-G. Haudricourt''. Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University. pp. 428-478. (

) *Proto- Monic:

Gérard Diffloth Gérard Diffloth (born in Châteauroux, France, 1939) is a French linguist who is known as a leading specialist in the Austroasiatic languages. As a retired linguistics professor, he was former employed at the University of Chicago and Cornell Univ ...

(1984)
list
*Proto- Aslian: Timothy Phillips (2012)Phillips, Timothy C. 2012. ''Proto-Aslian: towards an understanding of its historical linguistic systems, principles and processes''. Ph.D. thesis, Institut Alam Dan Tamadun Melayu Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi. (

) *Proto- Nicobarese: Paul Sidwell (2018) (

)

Origin and dispersal

Theories of the Austroasiatic homeland and dispersal have evolved rapidly in the 21st century. Proto-Austroasiatic migration

(2009) suggested that the likely homeland of Austroasiatic is in the

region, and that the family is not as old as frequently assumed, dating to perhaps 2,000 BCE. However, 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 the

Yangtze The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows ...

. He suggests the

Sichuan Basin The Sichuan Basin (), formerly transliterated as the Szechwan Basin, sometimes called the Red Basin, is a lowland region in southwestern China. It is surrounded by mountains on all sides and is drained by the upper Yangtze River and its tributar ...

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. Georg van Driem (2011) proposed that the homeland of Austroasiatic is somewhere in southern China. He suggested that the region around the

Pearl River (China) The Pearl River, also known by its Chinese name Zhujiang or Zhu Jiang in Mandarin pinyin or Chu Kiang and formerly often known as the , is an extensive river system in southern China. The name "Pearl River" is also often used as a catch-al ...

is the likely homeland of the Austroasiatic languages and people. He further suggested, based on genetic studies, that the migration of Kra–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. The linguists Sagart (2011) and Bellwood (2013) supported the theory of an origin of Austroasiatic along the

Yangtze river The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest list of rivers of Asia, river in Asia, the list of rivers by length, third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in th ...

in southern China. Genetic and linguistic research in 2015 about ancient people in East Asia suggest an origin and homeland of Austroasiatic in today

southern China South China () is a geographical and cultural region that covers the southernmost part of China. Its precise meaning varies with context. A notable feature of South China in comparison to the rest of China is that most of its citizens are not n ...

or even further north. Integrating computational phylogenetic linguistics with recent archaeological findings, Paul Sidwell (2015)Sidwell, Paul. 2015. ''Phylogeny, innovations, and correlations in the prehistory of Austroasiatic''. Paper presented at the workshop ''Integrating inferences about our past: new findings and current issues in the peopling of the Pacific and South East Asia'', 22–23 June 2015, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany. further expanded his Mekong riverine hypothesis by proposing that Austroasiatic had ultimately expanded into

from the Lingnan area of

, 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 the

Neolithic transition The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an inc ...

era of mainland 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 the

Pearl River The Pearl River, also known by its Chinese name Zhujiang or Zhu Jiang in Mandarin pinyin or Chu Kiang and formerly often known as the , is an extensive river system in southern China. The name "Pearl River" is also often used as a catch-a ...

watershed of Lingnan, which would have been either a coastal route down the coast of Vietnam, or downstream through the

via

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the C ...

. Both the reconstructed lexicon of Proto-Austroasiatic and the archaeological record clearly show that early Austroasiatic speakers around 4,000 B.P. cultivated rice and millet, kept livestock such dogs, pigs, and chickens, and thrived mostly in estuarine rather than coastal environments. 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. 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 the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

about 2,500 B.P., relatively young Austroasiatic branches in Indochina such as

, Katuic, Pearic, and Khmer were formed, while the more internally diverse Bahnaric branch (dating to about 3,000 B.P.) underwent more extensive internal diversification. 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. Paul Sidwell (2018)Sidwell, Paul. 2018. ''Austroasiatic deep chronology and the problem of cultural lexicon''. Paper presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, held May 17–19, 2018 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. 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.

(2018)Blench, Roger. 2018
Waterworld: lexical evidence for aquatic subsistence strategies in Austroasiatic
In ''Papers from the Seventh International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics'', 174-193. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society Special Publication No. 3. University of Hawaii Press.Blench, Roger. 2017.
Waterworld: lexical evidence for aquatic subsistence strategies in Austroasiatic
'. Presented at ICAAL 7, Kiel, Germany. 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 northern

(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. Hence, this points to a relatively late riverine dispersal of Austroasiatic as compared to

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

, 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. Sidwell (2021)
Video presentation)
/ref> proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the

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 the Red River valley. Based on their current distributions, about half of all Austroasiatic branches (including Nicobaric and Munda) can be traced to coastal maritime dispersals.

References

* Shorto, Harry L. Sidwell, Paul, Doug Cooper and Christian Bauer, eds. 2006. ''A Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary''. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. . * Sidwell, Paul. 2008. "Issues in the morphological reconstruction of Proto-Mon–Khmer." In Bowern, Claire, et al. (eds). ''Morphology and language history: in honour of Harold Koch''. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Mon–Khmer.com: Lectures by Paul Sidwell

External links

Mon–Khmer languages at SEAlangMon–Khmer languages
at Ethnologue

{{DEFAULTSORT:Proto-Austroasiatic Language *

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...