This page attempts to address some of the issues related to the study of Austric.
In Wilhelm Schmidt's original vision of 1906, Austric is composed of only two language families: Austroasiatic and Austronesian. This is the position the writer currently endorses.
After Paul K. Benedict set up the Austro-Tai phylum with Austronesian as a member language in 1966, the question was raised as to how Austric fits into this taxonomic arrangement. Benedict rejected Austric himself in 1975 and in fact later declared it dead. But his conclusion was based on his inability to discover the lexical evidence needed to corroborate the Austric hypothesis, and since the writer has now provided ample lexical evidence for the validity of the hypothesis, Benedict's conclusion about Austric's death can itself be declared dead.
If Austronesian belongs correctly in Austro-Tai, then Austroasiatic must also, and it would appear that the appropriate sequential action is to declare that Austric is a subgroup of Austro-Tai. This is essentially the position the writer has taken.
However, other researchers have been busily devising new schemes for what Austric is. Merrit Ruhlen reportedly presented a taxonomic classification in 1987 according to which Austric comprises Austroasiatic, Austro-Tai (Austronesian and Kadaic), and Miao-Yao. The writer has not seen Ruhlen's book containing this classification, hence is not familiar with his arguments and/or evidence for it.
Ilya Pejros reportedly proposes a similar arrangement, with Austric composed of two primary subgroups, Miao-Austroasiatic (Austroasiatic and Miao-Yao) and Austro-Tai (Austronesian and Kadaic). The writer has not seen the publication(s) in which this concept is presented, hence is also unfamiliar with Pejros's arguments and/or evidence in favor of it.
Thus, an important issue for Austric studies is the question of its composition. The writer feels on the basis of the evidence he has seen that only Schmidt's vision of Austric is correct and that any different concept of Austric remains to be proven.
Where was the Austric homeland? There is to the writer's knowledge no empirical evidence that would permit us to answer that question with any degree of scientific certitude. Austronesianists propose that Austronesian originated on the island of Taiwan or in nearby southeastern China. Austroasiatic is spoken in certain areas of southern China, and a variety of evidence indicates that the domain of its speakers once extended into southeastern China. Thus, the most likely location of the Austric homeland would appear to be southern or southeastern China.
Robert Blust, an Austronesianist, has proposed that the Austric homeland was in the three rivers area of southwestern China (the three rivers being the Mekong, Salween, and Yangtze) and the AA homeland in nearby northern Burma. The writer knows of no evidence that would support these locations and suspects that Blust was misled into making this untenable proposal by a certain Austroasiaticist.
Can a sufficient quantity of credible lexical evidence be found to support the Austric unity? On the Austric page, the lexical evidence problem was introduced, and it was stated that the unconvincing nature of the lexical evidence presented by Schmidt and the inability of subsequent scholars to discover a significant amount of additional lexical evidence has precluded acceptance of Austric as a generally recognized language grouping. Even though this writer has presented 458 comparisons in his published articles, including 96 in the basic vocabulary area, some observers remain unconvinced that the writer's lexical evidence is any more convincing than Schmidt's and/or that adequate lexical evidence even exists to confirm the validity of Austric.
Their reluctance to be convinced comes in the writer's opinion from two causes. First, they have not read all of the writer's articles on Austric, and second, they have little or no understanding of the nature of the Austric comparison. This comparison faces difficulties which are probably not unique in the annals of historical linguistics, but they certainly pose a gigantic obstacle to discovering and presenting the convincing lexical evidence the doubters wish to see.
These difficulties arise primarily because of the specific nature of the AA diachronic evolution, which the writer will try to describe briefly here. It appears that in Proto-Austroasiatic, the lexical word was composed of one or more lexical stems or roots and a variety of affixes. The most common type of word was thus polysyllabic. It also appears that Proto-Austroasiatic had a stress system, with stress on the lexical stem or one of them, if two or more were involved in a lexical word. This lexical structure has been affected over time by two major patterns of change: 1) stress shift and 2) phonological reduction.
The stress shift phenomenon remains little understood, but it appears that at least two major shifts have taken place, one towards the word initial and a second towards the word final. Neither shift seems to have been universal; hence, they were probably conditioned by factors which remain to be identified. The stress shifts undoubtedly conditioned most of the phonological reduction. This reduction has involved attrition of initial, medial, and final elements of the lexical word. In some cases, entire syllables dropped out; in others, syllables were reduced and their remnants often compressed into the remainder of the lexical word. Over all, the trend has been to convert originally polysyllabic languages into monosyllabic ones. This trend has been fully realized in only a few languages, such as Vietnamese, for example. The Munda languages are still polysyllabic to large extent, but examination of their lexicon reveals that much phonological reduction has occurred.
As a result of those patterns of diachronic change, it is rare that exact one-on-one correspondence between modern AA and reconstructed AN lexical forms is found. Austronesian has not undergone the massive reduction experienced by Austroasiatic, and the canonic form of AN proto-forms is predominantly bi- and trisyllabic. When lexical correspondence can be established, it is usually partial. Monosyllabic AA forms or main syllables of AA bisyllabic forms may correspond to different syllables of the AN proto-forms in different comparisons. This correlation is perfectly understandable in terms of the AA diachronic evolution, but rather mysterious to those who are still unfamiliar with that evolution, which gives cause for criticism and doubt about the validity of the proposed lexical correspondence.
But there is an even greater problem with the Austric comparison that the writer has not yet been able to introduce and discuss in print. Proto-Austric was apparently a language of great grammatical invention and flexibility, and its daughter languages inherited that quality in some as yet unknown measure. Any stem could appear in a great number of morphological variants which expressed semantic nuances that largely escape our present understanding. Some of the variants were formed by affixation and stem composition, but systems of consonant and vowel alternation were apparently also part of the Austric morphological arsenal. Accordingly, a lexical stem such as pak (a hypothetical example) could have the variants pik, puk, bik, buk, pig, pug, big, bug, to cite only a partial listing.
It is unlikely that all of the lexical variants which the Austric grammatical system made possible were present in both Proto-Austroasiatic and Proto-Austronesian. Whatever identical variants did occur in both languages, one can anticipate additionally that not all of them were retained in their descendants. The upshot of this situation is that one is forced to compare lexical forms which do not really correspond directly. Using the hypothetical example, one may find only reflexes of pik in Austroasiatic, only of bug in Austronesian, and while these reflexes are technically not direct correspondents, they are all the data that is available and must be compared, if any comparing is to be done at all. But such comparisons with their inherent irregularities appear odd and unconvincing to the uninitiated and further cause for criticism, etc.
It should also be said that learning how to compare Austroasiatic and Austronesian has been the first task of the Austric comparison, and it is a job which is still far from completion. Lexical evidence for the Austric unity does exist and in great quantity, but discovering and presenting it has been and still is hindered by the above-described problems resulting from the nature of the AA diachronic evolution.
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