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Introduction
The Austroasiatic (AA) language family includes two subfamilies: Mon-Khmer and Munda. The Munda languages are spoken in east-central India and Nepal. The Mon-Khmer languages are spoken in northeastern India, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, two provinces of southern China, and the Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean (as well as in emigrant communities in a number of other countries across the world). The best known AA language is Vietnamese, spoken by around 70,000,000 people. The second best known is Cambodian or Khmer, spoken by perhaps 7,000,000. A list of all the languages belonging to the AA family can be seen in the Ethnologue section of the Summer Institute of Linguistics web site.
The date and place of the origin of Austroasiatic is still unknown. The place was probably southern or southeastern China; the date was at least circa 2-2,500 B.C. and possibly much earlier. From that location, AA speakers moved south into the Indo-China peninsula and west into India. Their southern-most expansion was the Nicobar Islands and the southern tip of Malaysia; some may have penetrated Sumatra and other islands, but this is uncertain. Their western-most expansion is unknown, but some argue that it extended into modern Pakistan.
At one time, the AA domain probably extended unbroken from China to India to Malaysia, but invasion by speakers of other languages split the AA community and divided it into enclaves. The Dravidians and Indo-Aryans invaded India and overran much of the Munda territory, doubtlessly reducing the AA population and certainly leaving the Munda languages scattered in small groups. The Tibeto-Burmans and Tais invaded Indo-China and split the AA domain in two. The Chams and Malays invaded Vietnam and Malaysia, respectively. The Chinese occupied northern Vietnam for nearly a millenium, and an Indian aristocracy apparently ruled parts of modern Cambodia and Thailand for some time. As a result of such incursions, few nation states ever developed in the AA domain, the Khmer, Mon, and Vietnamese empires being the exceptions, and most of the AA speakers have lived and still live in small tribal groups.
All of these events had an impact on the AA languages, and for that reason, these languages exhibit an uncommon diversity that makes tracing their diachronic development extremely difficult. The Munda family has been influenced by a synthesizing, non-tonal Indian Sprachbund, the Mon-Khmer by an isolating, tonal Sinitic Sprachbund. In short, the two AA subfamilies have been pulled and consequently have evolved in different directions, which makes reconstituting their original phonology and grammar a problem for historical linguists. Due to such difficulties and the inaccessibility of many of the tribal groups, AA studies have not proceeded apace with those of neighboring language families. Comparatively speaking, little historical work has been done, and the proto-languages of the family, the subfamilies, and most of the subfamily branches remain to be reconstructed.
In his published articles, the writer has proposed a reconstruction of the PAA phonology, which is depicted in the following table. The consonants are in the writer's opinion accurate, the vowels much less so. Additional vowels may have existed.
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The primary characteristic of AA morphology is formation of derivative lexical forms by affixation (prefixation, infixation, suffixation). This morphological process is now largely defunct in the MK subfamily, but still very active in Munda. It is believed that affixation dates back to the PAA era.
In Austric I, a model of the PAA morphology was proposed. This model envisions the PAA word as consisting of a lexical stem and one or more of three affix complexes. The prefix complex took the form (C/)(V/)(R/) where C = Consonant, V = Vowel, and R = Resonant. The infix complex took the form /(V)(/R/)C/, and was inserted into the accented syllable after the initial consonant of that syllable. The suffix complex took the form (/N/)...(/C)(/V)(/C) where N = Nasal and “...” represents the final consonant of the stem.
Other aspects of PAA morphology are less clear, but it appears that stem composition occurred and that consonantal and vocalic alternation was used to distinguish grammatical differences. It is difficult to draw firm conclusions about the ancient morphology because phonological changes have tended to destroy much of the ancient morphological structure and to transform much of the remainder in such manner that the historical linguist cannot be sure exactly what that structure was.
Introduction
Austric
Austronesian
Austro-Tai