The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are 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. Among the Austroasiatic languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have lengthy, established presences in the written, 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 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) that have traditionally been grouped into two, as Mon–Khmer,Bradley (2012) notes, MK in the wider sense including the Munda languages of eastern South Asia is also known as Austroasiatic. and Munda. However, one recent classification posits three groups (Munda, Mon–Khmer, and Khasi–Khmuic),Diffloth 2005 while another has abandoned Mon–Khmer as a taxon altogether, making it synonymous with the larger family.Sidwell 2009
Scholars generally date the ancestral language to with a homeland in Mainland Southeast Asia or southern China. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area around .
Etymology The name Austroasiatic was coined by Wilhelm Schmidt () based on , 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.
Typology 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 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, and many have infixes, but suffixes are almost completely non-existent in most branches except Munda, and a few specialized exceptions in other Austroasiatic branches.Alves 2014, 2015
The Austroasiatic languages are further characterized as having unusually large vowel inventories and employing some sort of pitch register contrast, either between modal (normal) voice and breathy (lax) voice or between modal voice and creaky voice.Diffloth, Gérard (1989). "Proto-Austroasiatic 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 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.
Proto-language
Much work has been done on 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 poorly documented. Proto-Mon–Khmer becomes synonymous with the Proto-Austroasiatic language with their demotion from a primary branch. Paul Sidwell (2005) reconstructs the consonant inventory of Proto-Mon–Khmer as follows:
LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottalPlosivevoiceless voiced implosive Nasal Liquid Fricative This is identical to earlier reconstructions except for . is better preserved in the Katuic languages, which Sidwell has specialized in.
Internal classification 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.
According to standard linguistic consensus, the principal branches of the Austroasiatic family are universally acknowledged as valid clades, although their internal relationships continue to be a subject of ongoing scholarly debate. 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), the Chamic languages of Vietnam, and the Land Dayak languages of Borneo (Adelaar 1995).Roger Blench, 2009. Are there four additional unrecognised branches of Austroasiatic? Presentation at ICAAL-4, Bangkok, 29–30 October. Summarized in Sidwell and Blench (2011).
Diffloth (1974) 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.
Austro‑Asiatic Munda North Munda Korku Kherwarian South Munda Kharia–Juang Koraput Munda Mon–Khmer Eastern Mon–Khmer Khmer (Cambodian) Pearic Bahnaric Katuic Vietic (Vietnamese, Muong) Northern Mon–Khmer Khasi (Meghalaya, India) Palaungic Khmuic Southern Mon–Khmer Mon Aslian (Malaya) Nicobarese (Nicobar Islands)
Peiros (2004) 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 the internal (branching) structure below.
Austro‑Asiatic Nicobarese Munda–Khmer Munda Mon–Khmer Khasi Nuclear Mon–Khmer Mangic (Mang + Palyu) (perhaps in Northern MK) Vietic (perhaps in Northern MK) Northern Mon–Khmer Palaungic Khmuic Central Mon–Khmer Khmer dialects Pearic Asli-Bahnaric Aslian Mon–Bahnaric Monic Katu–Bahnaric Katuic Bahnaric
Diffloth (2005) 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:
Or in more detail,
Austro‑Asiatic Munda languages (India) Koraput: 7 languages Core Munda languages Kharian–Juang: 2 languages North Munda languages Korku Kherwarian: 12 languages Khasi–Khmuic languages (Northern Mon–Khmer) Khasian: 3 languages of north eastern India and adjacent region of Bangladesh Palaungo-Khmuic languages Khmuic: 13 languages of Laos and Thailand Palaungo-Pakanic languages Pakanic or Palyu: 4 or 5 languages of southern China and Vietnam Palaungic: 21 languages of Burma, southern China, and Thailand Nuclear Mon–Khmer languages Khmero-Vietic languages (Eastern Mon–Khmer) Vieto-Katuic languages ?Sidwell (2005) casts doubt on Diffloth's Vieto-Katuic hypothesis, saying that the evidence is ambiguous, and that it is not clear where Katuic belongs in the family. Vietic: 10 languages of Vietnam and Laos, including Muong and Vietnamese, which has the most speakers of any Austroasiatic language. Katuic: 19 languages of Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. Khmero-Bahnaric languages Bahnaric: 40 languages of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Khmeric languages The Khmer dialects of Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Pearic: 6 languages of Cambodia. Nico-Monic languages (Southern Mon–Khmer) Nicobarese: 6 languages of the Nicobar Islands, a territory of India. Asli-Monic languages Aslian: 19 languages of peninsular Malaysia and Thailand. Monic: 2 languages, the Mon language of Burma and the Nyahkur language of Thailand.
Sidwell (2009–2015)
Paul Sidwell (2009), in a lexicostatistical comparison of 36 languages that 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 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.Sidwell, Paul, and Roger Blench. 2011. "The Austroasiatic Urheimat: the Southeastern Riverine Hypothesis ." Enfield, NJ (ed.) Dynamics of Human Diversity, 317–345. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
If this would be 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 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)Sidwell, Paul. 2015a. "Austroasiatic classification." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill. proposed that Nicobarese subgroups with Aslian, just as how Khasian and Palaungic subgroup with each other.
A subsequent computational phylogenetic analysis (Sidwell 2015b)Sidwell, Paul. 2015b. A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the Austroasiatic languages . Presented at Diversity Linguistics: Retrospect and Prospect, 1–3 May 2015 (Leipzig, Germany), Closing conference of the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. suggests that Austroasiatic branches may have a loosely nested structure rather than a completely rake-like structure, with an east–west division (consisting of Munda, Khasic, Palaungic, and Khmuic forming a western group as opposed to all of the other branches) occurring possibly as early as 7,000 years before present. However, he still considers the subbranching dubious.