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 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/ ).
18-670: Kintaq , or Kentaq Bong , is an Austroasiatic language spoken in Malaysia and Thailand . It belongs to the Northern Aslian sub-branch of the Aslian languages. The small number of speakers is decreasing. This Austroasiatic language -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Austroasiatic languages The Austroasiatic languages ( / ˌ ɒ s t r oʊ . eɪ ʒ i ˈ æ t ɪ k , ˌ ɔː -/ OSS -troh-ay-zhee- AT -ik, AWSS- ) are
36-561: A lexicostatistical comparison of 36 languages which are well known enough to exclude loanwords, finds little evidence for internal branching, though he did find an area of increased contact between the Bahnaric and Katuic languages, such that languages of all branches apart from the geographically distant Munda and Nicobarese show greater similarity to Bahnaric and Katuic the closer they are to those branches, without any noticeable innovations common to Bahnaric and Katuic. He therefore takes
54-645: A Vieto-Katuic connection is worth investigating. In general, however, the family is thought to have diversified too quickly for a deeply nested structure to have developed, since Proto-Austroasiatic speakers are believed by Sidwell to have radiated out from the central Mekong river valley relatively quickly. Subsequently, Sidwell (2015a: 179) proposed that Nicobarese subgroups with Aslian , just as how Khasian and Palaungic subgroup with each other. Munda Khasian Palaungic Khmuic Mang Pakanic Vietic Katuic Bahnaric Khmer Pearic Monic Minor syllable This iambic pattern
72-588: A few specialized exceptions in other Austroasiatic branches. The Austroasiatic languages are further characterized as having unusually large vowel inventories and employing some sort of register contrast, either between modal (normal) voice and breathy (lax) voice or between modal voice and creaky voice . Languages in the Pearic branch and some in the Vietic branch can have a three- or even four-way voicing contrast. However, some Austroasiatic languages have lost
90-535: A large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia , South Asia and East Asia . These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia , and by minority populations scattered throughout parts of Thailand , Laos , India , Myanmar , Malaysia , Bangladesh , Nepal , and southern China . Approximately 117 million people speak an Austroasiatic language, of which more than two-thirds are Vietnamese speakers. Of
108-479: A stressed, full syllable. This reduction of presyllables has led to a variety of phonological shapes of the same original Proto-Austroasiatic prefixes, such as the causative prefix, ranging from CVC syllables to consonant clusters to single consonants among the modern languages. As for word formation, most Austroasiatic languages have a variety of derivational prefixes, many have infixes , but suffixes are almost completely non-existent in most branches except Munda, and
126-769: A taxon altogether, making it synonymous with the larger family. Scholars generally date the ancestral language to c. 3000 BCE – c. 2000 BCE with 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. The name Austroasiatic
144-641: Is better preserved in the Katuic languages , which Sidwell has specialized in. Linguists traditionally recognize two primary divisions of Austroasiatic: the Mon–Khmer languages of Southeast Asia , Northeast India and the Nicobar Islands , and the Munda languages of East and Central India and parts of Bangladesh and Nepal . However, no evidence for this classification has ever been published. Each of
162-601: 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
180-859: The Chamic languages of Vietnam, and the Land Dayak languages of Borneo (Adelaar 1995). Diffloth 's widely cited original classification, now abandoned by Diffloth himself, is used in Encyclopædia Britannica and—except for the breakup of Southern Mon–Khmer—in Ethnologue . Peiros is a lexicostatistic classification, based on percentages of shared vocabulary. This means that languages can appear to be more distantly related than they actually are due to language contact . Indeed, when Sidwell (2009) replicated Peiros's study with languages known well enough to account for loans, he did not find
198-679: The Austroasiatic languages, only Vietnamese , Khmer , and Mon have lengthy, established presences in the historical record. Only two are presently considered to be the national languages of sovereign states: Vietnamese in Vietnam, and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand, while the Wa language is a "recognized national language" in
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#1732773334617216-535: The conservative view that the thirteen branches of Austroasiatic should be treated as equidistant on current evidence. Sidwell & Blench (2011) discuss this proposal in more detail, and note that there is good evidence for a Khasi–Palaungic node, which could also possibly be closely related to Khmuic. If this would the case, Sidwell & Blench suggest that Khasic may have been an early offshoot of Palaungic that had spread westward. Sidwell & Blench (2011) suggest Shompen as an additional branch, and believe that
234-590: The de facto autonomous Wa State within Myanmar. Santali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India . The remainder of the family's languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status. Ethnologue identifies 168 Austroasiatic languages. These form thirteen established families (plus perhaps Shompen , which is poorly attested, as a fourteenth), which have traditionally been grouped into two, as Mon–Khmer, and Munda . However, one recent classification posits three groups (Munda, Mon-Khmer, and Khasi–Khmuic ), while another has abandoned Mon–Khmer as
252-658: The families that is written in boldface type below is accepted as a valid clade. By contrast, the relationships between these families within Austroasiatic are debated. In addition to the traditional classification, two recent proposals are given, neither of which accepts traditional "Mon–Khmer" as a valid unit. However, little of the data used for competing classifications has ever been published, and therefore cannot be evaluated by peer review. In addition, there are suggestions that additional branches of Austroasiatic might be preserved in substrata of Acehnese in Sumatra (Diffloth),
270-505: The internal (branching) structure below. Diffloth compares reconstructions of various clades, and attempts to classify them based on shared innovations, though like other classifications the evidence has not been published. As a schematic, we have: Remo Savara Kharia – Juang Korku Kherwarian Khmuic Pakanic Palaungic Khasian Vietic Katuic Bahnaric Khmer Pearic Nicobarese Aslian Monic Or in more detail, Paul Sidwell (2009), in
288-494: The reconstruction of Proto-Mon–Khmer in Harry L. Shorto 's Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary . Little work has been done on the Munda languages , which are not well documented. With their demotion from a primary branch, Proto-Mon–Khmer becomes synonymous with Proto-Austroasiatic. Paul Sidwell (2005) reconstructs the consonant inventory of Proto-Mon–Khmer as follows: This is identical to earlier reconstructions except for *ʄ . *ʄ
306-411: The register contrast by evolving more diphthongs or in a few cases, such as Vietnamese, tonogenesis . Vietnamese has been so heavily influenced by Chinese that its original Austroasiatic phonological quality is obscured and now resembles that of South Chinese languages, whereas Khmer, which had more influence from Sanskrit, has retained a more typically Austroasiatic structure. Much work has been done on
324-679: Was coined by Wilhelm Schmidt ( German : austroasiatisch ) based on auster , the Latin word for "South" (but idiosyncratically used by Schmidt to refer to the southeast), and "Asia". Despite the literal meaning of its name, only three Austroasiatic branches are actually spoken in South Asia: Khasic , Munda , and Nicobarese . Regarding word structure, Austroasiatic languages are well known for having an iambic "sesquisyllabic" pattern, with basic nouns and verbs consisting of an initial, unstressed, reduced minor syllable followed by
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