Proto-Palaungic is the reconstructed

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattest ...

of the

Palaungic languages 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 ...

mainland Southeast Asia 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 ...

.Sidwell, Paul. 2015.
The Palaungic Languages: Classification, Reconstruction and Comparative Lexicon
'. München: Lincom Europa.

Homeland

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 notable ...

(2015) suggests that the

Urheimat In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...

(homeland) of Proto-Palaungic was in what is now the border region of

Laos Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist ...

and

Sipsongpanna Xishuangbanna, Sibsongbanna or Sipsong Panna ( Tham: , New Tai Lü script: ; ; th, สิบสองปันนา; lo, ສິບສອງພັນນາ; shn, သိပ်းသွင်ပၼ်းၼႃး; my, စစ်ဆောင်� ...

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, 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 ...

, China. The Khmuic homeland was adjacent to the Palaungic homeland, resulting in many lexical borrowings among the two branches due to intense contact. Sidwell (2014) suggests that the word for 'water' (Proto-Palaungic *ʔoːm), which

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 ...

had used as one of the defining lexical innovations for his Northern Mon-Khmer branch, was likely borrowed from Palaungic into Khmuic.

Reconstructed forms

The following list of Proto-Palaungic reconstructions, organized by semantic category, is from Sidwell (2015: 100-111). ;Personal pronouns ;Demonstratives * *nɔʔ ‘this (prox.)’ * *neʔ ‘this’ * *tVj ‘that (dist.)’ ;Numerals ;Cereal cultivation ;Agriculture and village economy ;Fruits and plant products ;Domesticated animals ;Invertebrates ;Housing and infrastructure

Lexical similarities with Khmuic

Sidwell (2015) notes that Palaungic and Khmuic share many lexical items, but considers this phenomenon to be a result of

lexical diffusion Lexical diffusion is the hypothesis that a sound change is an abrupt change that spreads gradually across the words in a language to which it is applicable. It contrasts with the Neogrammarian view that a sound change results from phonetically-cond ...

due to intense

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

. Sidwell (2015:112-113) lists the following Proto-Palaungic forms as having diffused from Palaungic into Khmuic. ;Palaungic > Khmuic lexical forms * *ʔɔːt ‘wipe’ * *ʔiɛk ‘armpit’ * *ɓɤs ‘carry on head/back’ * *bliɛs ‘spear’ * *cəˀŋam ‘clear, clean’ * *criːl ‘gold’ * *gɔːʔ ‘friend; relative’ * *kərɗi(ː)ŋ ‘navel’ * *kɤːŋ ‘to dig’ * *kʋɤj ‘above, upper part’ * *laj ‘to trade’ * *mɔk ‘to fell’ * *(ʰ)ɲɤk ‘sticky’ * *tjaːk ‘ sambar deer’ Sidwell (2015:113) lists the following Proto-Palaungic forms as having diffused from Khmuic into Palaungic. ;Khmuic > Palaungic lexical forms * *ɟɤːl ‘light in weight’ * *kla(ː)w ‘testicles’ Sidwell (2015:114) lists the following Proto-Palaungic forms that are also shared with Khmuic but not with other Austroasiatic branches, and is unsure of whether they diffused from Palaungic to Khmuic or vice versa. * *-daːk ‘palm, sole’ * *-jaːŋ ‘female’ * *kəlɔːŋ ‘seed’ * *krlaːŋ ‘planet’ * *-nuːs ‘mouth’ * *tɤːʔ ‘smoke’ * *sŋɔːʔ ‘paddy rice’

References

*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
Proto Palaungic phonology: reconstructing vowel lengths and qualities in a partially restructured system
* Shorto, Harry L. Sidwell, Paul, Doug Cooper and Christian Bauer, eds. 2006. ''A Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary''. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. . {{Austro-Asiatic languages Palaungic languages

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 ...

Homeland

Reconstructed forms

Lexical similarities with Khmuic

See also

References