After extensive review, it has been determined that 462 AA lexical comparisons have been presented in the writer's published articles. AN correspondents have been found for 459 of them, but one of these matches has been rejected. For the other three, AT correspondents are cited for two, no correspondents for the third. Thus, 458 Austric comparisons are presented in this glossary. The lexical data evidentiating these comparisons and the accompanying lexical reconstructions (proto-forms) had to be kept at a minimum level in the published articles due to space limitations. In most cases, this data consists of no more than one or two AA and AN proto-forms and three lexical examples from the modern AA languages. In some cases, that is all the modern data that is available, but in others, a larger amount is available in the writer's comparative database. This database contains 1,171 comparisons with perhaps 15,000 lexical entries.
That database would make a fine foundation for a published comparative dictionary, and perhaps such a dictionary can be prepared some day. In the interim, the published comparisons and reconstructions will be presented here in the hope that they will be of benefit to those who are interested in this material, and they will be accompanied by all available lexical examples. This data should also help bolster the writer's case that Austric is a viable taxonomic entity comprising the AA and AN language families.
The AA reconstruction essayed by the writer is based primarily on a high-level comparison of modern AA lexical data with the AN proto-forms reconstructed by Otto Dempwolff and his successors. This is not the orthodox or traditional method of historical linguistic comparison, according to which one begins at the lowest levels of a taxonomic hierarchy and works one's way upwards. Such conventional methodology is not yet possible in this case, for little reconstructive work has been done at any level of Austroasiatic. Thus, the writer's approach is an attempt to overcome this obstacle by by-passing it. Hot-wiring the system in this manner introduces a certain degree of inaccuracy and unreliability into the reconstruction, but the writer feels that the overall progress made will more than adequately compensate for those deficiencies, which can in any case be corrected at a later date.
As one may see from the writer's published articles and also from the glossary, Austroasiatic has undergone a radical transformation since it evolved from an Austric dialect group several thousand years ago. Detecting the many phonological, morphological, and semantic changes involved is akin to peeling an onion: finding and removing one layer of diachronic changes only exposes a new layer, and one repeatedly learns that one didn't know quite as much as previously thought. As a result, some of the published proto-forms need to be revised, and that need will be met by presenting revised reconstructions in the glossary, as well as variant forms which could not be introduced in the writer's articles due to the space limitations. Due to the recurrent need for revision as research progresses, this glossary is and will remain for some time a work in progress. Interested parties should check back periodically to see what changes have been made to it.
The AA data in the glossary is divided into MK (Mon-Khmer) and Munda subsections, then broken down into numbered groups, each of which represents an apparently different evolution of a cited AA proto-form. The proto-form antecedent to the glosses in the group is cited at the beginning of each group listing, but these antecedent forms are not necessarily identical to the AA proto-forms given at the top of the section. They may exhibit various differences; the main one is affixation that is not necessarily reconstructible at the PAA level.
Alphabetical Index to Glossary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T V W Y
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