Austric languages
Encyclopedia
The Austric language superfamily is a large hypothetical grouping of languages primarily spoken in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

, the Pacific, and the eastern Indian subcontinent
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...

. It includes the Austronesian
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...

 language family of Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, the Malay Archipelago
Malay Archipelago
The Malay Archipelago refers to the archipelago between mainland Southeastern Asia and Australia. The name was derived from the anachronistic concept of a Malay race....

, Pacific Islands
Pacific Islands
The Pacific Islands comprise 20,000 to 30,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands are also sometimes collectively called Oceania, although Oceania is sometimes defined as also including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago....

, and Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

, as well as the Austro-Asiatic
Austro-Asiatic languages
The Austro-Asiatic languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon–Khmer, are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. The name Austro-Asiatic comes from the Latin words for "south" and "Asia", hence "South Asia"...

 language family of mainland Southeast Asia
Indochina
The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

, Eastern India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, and Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

. The hypothesis of a genetic relationship between these two language families is not widely accepted among linguists.

Related proposals include Sino-Austronesian
Sino-Austronesian languages
-See also:*Classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages*Austric languages*Austro-Tai languages*Dené–Caucasian languages*Austronesian languages*Sino-Tibetan languages*Old Chinese language*Tibeto-Burman languages*Haplogroup O *Languages of China...

 (Laurent Sagart
Laurent Sagart
Laurent Sagart is a director of research at the Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale unit of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique . Born at Paris in 1951, he earned his Ph.D. in 1977 at the University of Paris 7 and his Doctorat d'Etat in 1990 at University of...

), Austro-Tai
Austro-Tai languages
Austro-Tai is a hypothesis that the Tai–Kadai and Austronesian language families of southern China and the Pacific are genealogically related. Related proposals include Austric and Sino-Austronesian .-Origins:...

 (Paul K. Benedict
Paul K. Benedict
Paul K. Benedict was an American linguist who specialized in languages of East and Southeast Asia. He is well-known for his 1942 proposal of the Austro-Tai language family and also his reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Proto-Tibeto-Burman.-References:...

), and Dené–Caucasian (Sergei Starostin
Sergei Starostin
Dr. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin was a Russian historical linguist and scholar, best known for his work with hypothetical proto-languages, including his work on the reconstruction of the Proto-Borean language, the controversial theory of Altaic languages and the formulation of the Dené–Caucasian...

).

History

The Austric superfamily was first proposed by the German missionary Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906. He showed phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

, morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

, and lexical
Lexical semantics
Lexical semantics is a subfield of linguistic semantics. It is the study of how and what the words of a language denote . Words may either be taken to denote things in the world, or concepts, depending on the particular approach to lexical semantics.The units of meaning in lexical semantics are...

 evidence to support the existence of an Austric superfamily, but the lexical evidence was considered to be tenuous by the larger linguistic community. Consequently, the Austric hypothesis has never gained wide acceptance. In 1942, Paul K. Benedict extended the Austric hypothesis to include the Tai–Kadai languages and the Hmong–Mien (Miao–Yao) languages.

Despite the tenuous lexical evidence, the relationship of Austronesian with either Austro-Asiatic or Tai–Kadai has many proponents to this day, mostly on morphological grounds. Some believe that recently discovered morphological similarities between Nicobarese
Nicobarese languages
The Nicobarese languages form an isolated group of half a dozen closely related Austro-Asiatic languages, spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands of India. They have a total of about 30,000 speakers...

 and Austronesian constitute solid proof of a genetic relationship. Other researchers are still searching for the missing lexical link between Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic or Tai–Kadai. A good summary of the present state of the Austric hypothesis may be found in Reid 2005.

Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann is an American physicist and linguist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles...

, Ilia Peiros, and Georgiy Starostin
Georgiy Starostin
Georgiy Sergeevich Starostin is a Russian linguistics researcher at the Center of Comparative Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and a participant at the Santa Fe Institute's Evolution of Human Languages project...

 maintain that the Austric hypothesis is less well supported than several other linguistic macrofamilies, including Sino-Caucasian, Eurasiatic
Eurasiatic languages
Eurasiatic is a language macrofamily proposed by Joseph Greenberg that includes many language families historically spoken in northern Eurasia. The eight branches of Eurasiatic are Etruscan, Indo-European, Uralic–Yukaghir, Altaic, Korean-Japanese-Ainu, Gilyak, Chukotian, and Eskimo–Aleut, spoken in...

, and Afroasiatic since "no detailed proto-Austric glossaries or equally detailed tables of correspondences between the various daughter branches of Austric have been produced." An expanded Greater-Austric has been suggested to include the Ainu languages
Ainu languages
The Ainu languages were a small language family spoken on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, an island chain that stretches from Hokkaidō to the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. They are alternately considered a...

 and possibly the Nihali language
Nihali language
Nihali, also known as Nahali or erroneously as Kalto, is a language isolate spoken in west-central India by around 2,000 people out of an ethnic population of 5,000...

 though this is currently not a mainstream view. A relationship with the Ongan languages (but not other Andamanese languages) has also been suggested (Blevins 2007).

Classification schemes

The following classification scheme, proposed by Paul K. Benedict, is the most commonly accepted one. Hmong–Mien languages are occasionally included, but are often rejected from the Austric super-family.
Sergei Starostin
Sergei Starostin
Dr. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin was a Russian historical linguist and scholar, best known for his work with hypothetical proto-languages, including his work on the reconstruction of the Proto-Borean language, the controversial theory of Altaic languages and the formulation of the Dené–Caucasian...

, however, splits Austric into two main branches. The Austric branch would be considered to be most closely related to Dené–Caucasian, forming a Dene-Daic super-family.:

Distributions

See also

  • Austro-Tai languages
    Austro-Tai languages
    Austro-Tai is a hypothesis that the Tai–Kadai and Austronesian language families of southern China and the Pacific are genealogically related. Related proposals include Austric and Sino-Austronesian .-Origins:...

  • Haplogroup O (Y-DNA)
    Haplogroup O (Y-DNA)
    In human genetics, Haplogroup O is a Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. Haplogroup O is a close cladistic brother group with Haplogroup N, and is one of several descendants of Haplogroup K ....

  • Classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages
    Classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages
    Below is a list of different classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages. Language families represented include:*Tai–Kadai*Austronesian*Austro-Asiatic*Hmong–Mien*Sino-Tibetan-Macrofamilies:...


Relevant papers

  • Benedict, Paul K. 1976. Austro-Thai and Austroasiatic. In: Philip N. Jenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta, eds., Austroasiatic Studies, Part I, pp. 1–36. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
  • Blazhek, Vaclav. 2000. Comments on Hayes "The Austric Denti-alveolar Sibilants". Mother Tongue V:15-17.
  • Blevins, Juliette (2007). "A Long Lost Sister of Proto-Austronesian? Proto-Ongan, Mother of Jarawa and Onge of the Andaman Islands". Oceanic Linguistics 46 (1): 154–198.
  • Blust, Robert
    Robert Blust
    Robert A. Blust is a prominent linguist in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. Blust specializes in the Austronesian languages and has made major contributions to the field of Austronesian linguistics....

    . 1996. Beyond the Austronesian homeland: The Austric hypothesis and its implications for archaeology. In: Prehistoric Settlement of the Pacific, ed. by Ward H.Goodenough, ISBN 978-0-87169-865-0 DIANE Publishing Co, Collingdale PA, 1996, pp. 117–137. (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 86.5. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society).
  • Blust, Robert. 2000. Comments on Hayes, "The Austric Denti-alveolar Sibilants". Mother Tongue V:19-21.
  • Diffloth, Gerard F. 1989. What Happened to Austric? Mon–Khmer Studies XVI-XVII:1-9.
  • Diffloth, Gerard. 1994. The lexical evidence for Austric so far. Oceanic Linguistics 33(2):309-321.
  • Fleming, Hal. 2000. LaVaughn Hayes and Robert Blust Discuss Austric. Mother Tongue V:29-32.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 1992. On the Track of Austric, Part I: Introduction. Mon–Khmer Studies XXI:143-77.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 1997. On the Track of Austric, Part II: Consonant Mutation in Early Austroasiatic. Mon–Khmer Studies XXVII:13-41.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 1999. On the Track of Austric, Part III: Basic Vocabulary Correspondence. Mon–Khmer Studies XXIX:1-34.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 2000. The Austric Denti-alveolar Sibilants. Mother Tongue V:1-12.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 2000. Response to Blazhek's Comments. Mother Tongue V:33-4.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 2000. Response to Blust's Comments. Mother Tongue V:35-7.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 2000. Response to Fleming's Comments. Mother Tongue V:39-40.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 2001. On the Origin of Affricates in Austric. Mother Tongue VI:95-117.
  • Hayes, La Vaughn H. 2001. Response to Sidwell. Mother Tongue VI:123-7.
  • Reid, Lawrence A. 1994. Morphological evidence for Austric. Oceanic Linguistics 33(2):323-344.
  • Reid, Lawrence A. 1996. The current state of linguistic research on the relatedness of the language families of East and Southeast Asia. In: Ian C. Glover and Peter Bellwood, editorial co-ordinators, Indo-Pacific Prehistory: The Chiang Mai Papers, Volume 2, pp . 87-91. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 15. Canberra: Australian National University.
  • Reid, Lawrence A. 1999. New linguistic evidence for the Austric hypothesis. In Selected Papers from the Eighth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, ed. by Elizabeth Zeitoun and Paul Jen-kuei Li, pp. 5–30. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
  • Reid, Lawrence A. 2005. The current status of Austric: A review and evaluation of the lexical and morphosyntactic evidence. In The peopling of East Asia: putting together archaeology, linguistics and genetics, ed. by Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas. London: Routledge Curzon.
  • Schmidt, Wilhelm. 1906. Die Mon–Khmer-Völker, ein Bindeglied zwischen Völkern Zentralasiens und Austronesiens [The Mon–Khmer Peoples, a Link between the Peoples of Central Asia and Austronesia]. Archiv für Anthropologie, Braunschweig, new series, 5:59-109.
  • Schmidt, Wilhelm. 1930. Die Beziehungen der austrischen Sprachen zum Japanischen [The Connections of the Austric Languages to Japanese]. Wien Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik 1:239-51.
  • Shorto, H. L. 1976. In Defense of Austric. Computational Analyses of Asian and African Languages 6:95-104.
  • Sidwell, Paul. 2001. Comments on La Vaughn H. Hayes' "On the Origin of Affricates in Austric". Mother Tongue VI:119-121.
  • Van Driem, George. 2000. Four Austric Theories. Mother Tongue V:23-27.

External links



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