Rục is a
Vietic language spoken by the
Ruc people of
Tuyên Hóa district,
Quảng Bình province
Quảng Bình was formerly a southern coastal Provinces of Vietnam, province in the North Central Coast region, the Central Vietnam, Central of Việt Nam, Vietnam. It borders Hà Tĩnh province, Hà Tĩnh to the north, Quảng Trị province, ...
, Vietnam. ''Rục'' literally means 'underground spring', and is a critically endangered language spoken by a small ethnic group that practiced a hunter-gatherer lifestyle until the late 20th century.
History
Ruc speakers were hunter-gatherers until the late 1970s, when they were relocated into sedentary villages by the Vietnamese government. The 1985 Soviet-Vietnamese Linguistic Expedition found that there were no more than 200 Ruc people. Half of the Ruc died from a
cholera
Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...
epidemic in the late 1980s. Today, the Ruc live together with the
Sach in villages close to the Laotian border.
[ Ruc settlements include Yên Hợp and Phú Minh.
]
Phonology
Unlike Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...
, Rục allows for presyllables with a minor vowel, such as ''cakuː4'' 'bear' (cf. Vietnamese ''gấu''). Rục is notable for preserving many prefixes that have been lost in Vietnamese, including prefixes (such as *k.-) in archaic Chinese loanwords that are crucial for the reconstruction of Old Chinese
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...
Morphosyntax
Ruc is an isolating language
Social isolation, Isolation is the near or complete lack of social contact by an individual.
Isolation or isolated may also refer to:
Sociology and psychology
*Social isolation
*Isolation (psychology), a defense mechanism in psychoanalytic theo ...
with no inflection
In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...
used in verbs and nouns at all, and a general drift towards analytic grammar is evident. In terms of derivational morphology
Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as For example, ''unhappy'' and ''happiness'' derive from the root word ''happy.''
It is differentiat ...
, Ruc retains several forms of affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...
ations that have been lost in other Vietic languages like Vietnamese, but their semantics are largely eroded. The transformation of archaic Vietic morphosyntax like Ruc from an Austroasiatic
The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority popu ...
inflectional form to a newer analytical one is currently happening irreversibly and accelerating, with some Vietic languages having already finished the process.
Under intense interactions with speakers of other more analytic languages
An analytic language is a type of natural language in which a series of root/stem words is accompanied by prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers, using affixes very rarely. This is opposed to synthetic languages, which synthes ...
such as Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...
and Lao, in the future, Ruc's older form of morphology may have been lost and replaced with a new one as seen in many Mainland Southeast Asian languages with affixes being less syntactically functional or no longer used.
Case
There are few recognizable grammatical cases in Ruc and they only utilize prefixes
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed.
Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...
. The dative prefix ''pa-'' of Ruc has been cited by some linguists as supporting evidence for the Austric languages
The Austric languages are a proposed language family that includes the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Madagascar, as well as Kra–Dai and Austroasiatic languages spoken in Mainland Sout ...
hypothesis.
Syntax
Like other Vietic languages, Ruc has all similar characteristics: SVO structure, word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...
, noun phrase
A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...
structure, topic-comment
In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally ...
, uses of particles
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
, auxiliary verb
An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or ...
s, markers, classifiers, numbers
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
, and modifiers
In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which ''modifies'' the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", provi ...
. However, Ruc grammar will slightly differ with Vietnamese in cases of Ruc verbs that causative affixes are used.[
]
Morphology
In word formation, Ruc and archaic Vietic languages can employ three strategies: compounding
In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of custom medications to fit unique needs of patients that cannot be met with mass-produced formulations. This may be done, for example, to provide medic ...
, reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The cla ...
, and derivational affixation
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation'', ''anti-'', ''pre-'' et ...
, though Vietic affixation in general is nonproductive and much of it appears fossilized.
Compounding
Ruc compounding is similar to those seen in other Austroasiatic languages:
Noun-Verb: ɲa:2 (house) + ɉo:n1 (tall) → ɲa:2 ɉo:n1 ‘house on stilts’
Verb-Noun: pɨə2 (suitable) + kudəl1 (stomach) → pɨə2 kudəl1 ‘to be satisfied’
Verb-Verb: ti2 (go) + luh1 (exit) → ti2 luh1 ‘to exit’
Verb-Verb/Adjective: khik3 (healthy) + kitəɲ3 (young) → khik3 kitəɲ3 ‘robust’
Approx. 16% of Ruc words are compounds while 84% are simple words according to a 1996 analysed corpus data.[Solntsev V. (1996). ''Some remarks on the Ruc language.'' Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences.]
Reduplication
Like other Vietic languages, reduplication in Ruc can be either full reduplication ( monomorphemic words) or segment alternation (with polymorphemic roots). For examples,
pu35 (‘to suckle’) → pu35pu35 (‘to be suckling’)
lɛɲ1 (‘up’) → lɛɲ1 lɤaw4 (‘agile’)
kərßeːŋ → kərßeːŋ1 kərßiːt2 (‘to hang about’)
Derivational affixation
Affixation in Ruc creates lexicalized forms of words utilizing prefixes and infixes, while suffixes are almost lacking.
Vocabulary
In term of basic vocabulary, Ruc shares 52% with Vietnamese, 92% with May
May is the fifth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days.
May is a month of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, May in the Southern Hemisphere is the ...
, 98% with Sach, and around 33~37% with Katuic languages
The fifteen Katuic languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages spoken by about 1.5 million people in Southeast Asia. People who speak Katuic languages are called the Katuic peoples. Paul Sidwell is the leading specialist on the Katuic ...
.[Alves, Mark J. (2003)]
Ruc and Other Minor Vietic Languages: Linguistic Strands Between Vietnamese and the Rest of the Mon-Khmer Language Family
In ''Papers from the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society'', ed. by Karen L. Adams et al. Tempe, Arizona, 3–19. Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies. Ruc also has few loan words originated from Old Chinese
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...
, mostly in disyllabic form.
References
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Vietic languages
Languages of Vietnam
Endangered Austroasiatic languages