Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction:
31-542: Proto-Austroasiatic is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austroasiatic languages . 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 . Scholars generally date the ancestral language to c. 3000 BCE – c. 2000 BCE with
62-655: A homeland in southern China or the Mekong River valley. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area around c. 2500 BCE – c. 2000 BCE . Genetic and linguistic research in 2015 about ancient people in East Asia suggest an origin and homeland of Austroasiatic in today southern China or even further north. 500 Proto-Austroasiatic etyma were published by Paul Sidwell in 2024. The Proto-Mon–Khmer language
93-470: A root in the proto-language is reconstructed is a reflex . More generally, a reflex is the known derivative of an earlier form, which may be either attested or reconstructed. A reflex that is predictable from the reconstructed history of the language is a 'regular' reflex. Reflexes of the same source are cognates . First, languages that are thought to have arisen from a common proto-language must meet certain criteria in order to be grouped together; this
124-410: 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) proposes that
155-537: A result of intensive contact in an area between northern Vietnam, Laos, and northeast Myanmar. Like the Tai languages , Proto-Mon–Khmer has an SVO , or verb-medial, order. Proto-Mon–Khmer also makes use of noun classifiers and serial verb constructions (Shorto 2006). However, Paul Sidwell (2018) suggests that Proto-Austroasiatic may have in fact been verb-initial, with SVO order occurring in Indochina due to convergence in
186-406: Is a process called subgrouping. Since this grouping is based purely on linguistics, manuscripts and other historical documentation should be analyzed to accomplish this step. However, the assumption that the delineations of linguistics always align with those of culture and ethnicity must not be made. One of the criteria is that the grouped languages usually exemplify shared innovation. This means that
217-596: Is sometimes called sesquisyllabic (lit. 'one and a half syllables'), a term coined by the American linguist James Matisoff in 1973 (Matisoff 1973:86). Although the term may be applied to any word with an iambic structure, it is more narrowly defined as a syllable with a consonant cluster whose phonetic realization is [CǝC]. Sometimes minor syllables are introduced by language contact. Many Chamic languages as well as Burmese have developed minor syllables from contact with Mon-Khmer family. In Burmese, minor syllables have
248-605: Is somewhere in southern China. He suggested that the region around the Pearl River (China) 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. Laurent Sagart (2011) and Peter Bellwood (2013) supported
279-504: Is the reconstructed ancestor of the Mon–Khmer languages , 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; the Munda languages , which are not well documented, and have been restructured through external language contact, have not been included in
310-423: Is the observation that if a cognate set displays a certain pattern (such as a repeating letter in specific positions within a word), it is likely that this pattern was retained from its mother language. The Most Natural Development Principle states that some alterations in languages, diachronically speaking, are more common than others. There are four key tendencies: The Majority Principle is applied in identifying
341-571: 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. Sidwell (2023) proposes a nine-vowel system for Proto-Austroasiatic, with short and long vowels as follows. 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 (Shorto 2006). Sidwell (2008) gives
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#1732851437788372-608: The Iron Age about 2,500 B.P., relatively young Austroasiatic branches in Indochina such as Vietic , 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
403-551: The Lingnan area of southern 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 the Neolithic transition 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
434-613: The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area . Various modern-day Austroasiatic languages display verb-initial word order, including Pnar and Wa (Jenny 2015). Nicobarese also displays verb-initial word order. Below are some Proto-Austroasiatic words relating to animals, plants, agriculture, and material culture from Sidwell (2024). Numerals are as follows: Proto-Austroasiatic personal pronouns determiners, and particles are as follows, with reconstructions from Sidwell & Rau (2015) and Shorto (2006). Sidwell (2024) revises
465-465: The Iron Age. Paul Sidwell (2018) 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
496-498: 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
527-402: The cognate with the stop [k] is older than the cognate with the fricative [ʃ] and so the former is most likely to more closely resemble the original pronunciation. 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
558-1040: The following phonological shapes for two types of stems. Hiroz (2024) proposes disyllabic forms for some Proto-Austroasiatic etyma. A few tentative reconstructions are: Sidwell (2008) considers the two most morphologically conservative Mon–Khmer branches to be Khmuic and Aslian . On the other hand, Vietnamese morphology is far more similar to that of Chinese and the Tai 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 by Paul Sidwell (Sidwell 2008:257-263). Roger Blench (2012) notes that Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan share many similarities regarding word structure, particularly nominal affixes (otherwise known as sesquisyllables 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
589-614: The form / C ə/ or /Cə N / , with a reduced vowel , as in colloquial Khmer , or of the form /CC/ with no vowel at all, as in Mlabri /kn̩diːŋ/ 'navel' (minor syllable /kn̩/ ) and /br̩poːŋ/ 'underneath' (minor syllable /br̩/ ), and Khasi kyndon /kn̩dɔːn/ 'rule' (minor syllable /kn̩/ ), syrwet /sr̩wɛt̚/ 'sign' (minor syllable /sr̩/ ), kylla /kl̩la/ 'transform' (minor syllable /kl̩/ ), symboh /sm̩bɔːʔ/ 'seed' (minor syllable /sm̩/ ) and tyngkai /tŋ̩kaːɪ/ 'conserve' (minor syllable /tŋ̩/ ). This iambic pattern
620-519: The homeland of Austroasiatic is somewhere near the Yangtze . He suggests the Sichuan 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. George van Driem (2011) proposed that the homeland of Austroasiatic
651-411: The languages must show common changes made throughout history. In addition, most grouped languages have shared retention. This is similar to the first criterion, but instead of changes, they are features that have stayed the same in both languages. Because linguistics, as in other scientific areas, seeks to reflect simplicity, an important principle in the linguistic reconstruction process is to generate
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#1732851437788682-481: The least possible number of phonemes that correspond to available data. This principle is again reflected when choosing the sound quality of phonemes, as the one which results in the fewest changes (with respect to the data) is preferred. Comparative Reconstruction makes use of two rather general principles: The Majority Principle and the Most Natural Development Principle. The Majority Principle
713-730: The locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red 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 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. Linguistic reconstruction Texts discussing linguistic reconstruction commonly preface reconstructed forms with an asterisk (*) to distinguish them from attested forms. An attested word from which
744-402: The most likely pronunciation of the predicted etymon, the original word from which the cognates originated. The Most Natural Development Principle describes the general directions in which languages appear to change and so one can search for those indicators. For example, from the words cantar (Spanish) and chanter (French), one may argue that because phonetic stops generally become fricatives,
775-705: 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) 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
806-446: The personal pronouns as follows. Austroasiatic branch-level reconstructions include: Paul Sidwell (2009) suggested that the likely homeland of Austroasiatic is in the Mekong River region, and that the family is not as old as frequently assumed, dating to perhaps 2,000 BCE. However, Ilia Peiros (2011) criticized Sidwell's 2009 riverine dispersal hypothesis heavily and claimed many contradictions. He showed with his analysis that
837-466: The presence of agriculture in northern Indochina (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 , whose speakers had
868-545: The reconstructions. Proto-Mon–Khmer as reconstructed by Harry L. Shorto (2006) has a total of 21 consonants , 7 distinct vowels , which can be lengthened and glottalized, and 3 diphthongs . Proto-Mon–Khmer is rich in vowels . The vowels are: The diphthongs are: Paul Sidwell and Felix Rau (2015) propose the following syllable structure for Proto-Austroasiatic. Also possible are more complex forms with prefixes and infixes, as well as presyllable "coda-copying" from main syllables. The Proto-Austroasiatic word template
899-494: The theory of an origin of Austroasiatic along the Yangtze river 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 or even further north. Integrating computational phylogenetic linguistics with recent archaeological findings, Paul Sidwell (2015) further expanded his Mekong riverine hypothesis by proposing that Austroasiatic had ultimately expanded into Indochina from
930-559: The western periphery of the Pearl River watershed of Lingnan , which would have been either a coastal route down the coast of Vietnam, or downstream through the Mekong River via Yunnan . 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
961-634: Was later revised as follows by Sidwell (2023). Sidwell & Rau (2015) reconstruct 21-22 Proto-Austroasiatic consonants (the reconstruction of *ʄ is uncertain). Sidwell (2024) adds *ɕ. All of the Proto-Austroasiatic consonants except for implosives 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 sesquisyllables (C p ). Medial consonants (C m ) are *-w -, *-r -, *-l -, *-j -, and *-h-. Sidwell & Rau (2015) reconstructs 8 Proto-Austroasiatic vowels, for which there