Austroasiatic languages
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- Also spelled:
- Austro-Asiatic
Austroasiatic languages, stock of some 150 languages spoken by more than 65 million people scattered throughout Southeast Asia and eastern India. Most of these languages have numerous dialects. Khmer, Mon, and Vietnamese are culturally the most important and have the longest recorded history. The rest are languages of nonurban minority groups written, if at all, only recently. The stock is of great importance as a linguistic substratum for all Southeast Asian languages.
Superficially, there seems to be little in common between a monosyllabic tone language such as Vietnamese and a polysyllabic toneless Muṇḍā language such as Muṇḍārī of India; linguistic comparisons, however, confirm the underlying unity of the family. The date of separation of the two main Austroasiatic subfamilies—Muṇḍā and Mon-Khmer—has never been estimated and must be placed well back in prehistory. Within the Mon-Khmer subfamily itself, 12 main branches are distinguished; glottochronological estimates of the time during which specific languages have evolved separately from a common source indicate that these 12 branches all separated about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.
Relationships with other language families have been proposed, but, because of the long durations involved and the scarcity of reliable data, it is very difficult to present a solid demonstration of their validity. In 1906 Wilhelm Schmidt, a German anthropologist, classified Austroasiatic together with the Austronesian family (formerly called Malayo-Polynesian) to form a larger family called Austric. Paul K. Benedict, an American scholar, extended the Austric theory to include the Tai-Kadai family of Southeast Asia and the Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien) family of China, together forming an “Austro-Tai” superfamily.
Regarding subclassification within Austroasiatic, there have been several controversies. Schmidt, who first attempted a systematic comparison, included in Austroasiatic a “mixed group” of languages containing “Malay” borrowings and did not consider Vietnamese to be a member of the family. On the other hand, some of his critics contested the membership of the Muṇḍā group of eastern India. The “mixed group,” called Chamic, is now considered to be Austronesian. It includes Cham, Jarai, Rade (Rhade), Chru, Roglai, and Haroi and represents an ancient migration of Indonesian peoples into southern Indochina. As for Muṇḍā and Vietnamese, the works of the German linguist Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow on Khaṛiā and of the French linguist André Haudricourt on Vietnamese tones have shown that both language groups are Austroasiatic.
Classification of the Austroasiatic languages
The work of classifying and comparing the Austroasiatic languages is still in the initial stages. In the past, classification was done mainly according to geographic location. For instance, Khmer, Pear, and Stieng, all spoken on Cambodian territory, were all lumped together, although they actually belong to three different branches of the Mon-Khmer subfamily.
Khmer and Vietnamese are the most important of the Austroasiatic languages in terms of numbers of speakers. They are also the only national languages—Khmer of Cambodia, Vietnamese of Vietnam—of the Austroasiatic stock. Each is regularly taught in schools and is used in mass media and on official occasions. Speakers of most other Austroasiatic languages are under strong social and political pressure to become bilingual in the official languages of the nation in which they live. Most groups are too small or too scattered to win recognition, and for many the only chance of cultural survival lies in retreating to a mountain or jungle fastness, a strategy that reflects long-standing Austroasiatic tradition.
Linguistic characteristics
Phonological characteristics
The sound systems of Austroasiatic languages are fairly similar to each other, but Vietnamese and the Muṇḍā languages, under the influence of Chinese and Indian languages respectively, have diverged considerably from the original type. The usual Austroasiatic word structure consists of a major syllable sometimes preceded by one or more minor syllables. A minor syllable has one consonant, one minor vowel, and optionally one final consonant. Most languages have only one possible minor vowel, but some have a choice of three (e.g., a, i, or u) or even use vocalic nasals (m or n) and liquids (l or r) as minor vowels. Major syllables are composed of one or two initial consonants, followed by one major vowel and one final consonant. Many languages—e.g., Khmer, Mon, and Bahnar—allow major syllables without final consonants, but no Austroasiatic language allows combinations of two or more final consonants.
Consonants
A typical feature of Mon-Khmer languages, uncommon in the Muṇḍā subfamily, is to allow a great variety of two-consonant combinations at the beginning of major syllables. Khmer is especially notable for this. At the end of a word, the inventory of possible consonants is always smaller than at the beginning of the major syllable and is considerably smaller when contact with Tai-Kadai or Sino-Tibetan languages has been extensive. These two properties combine to give Mon-Khmer words their characteristic rhythmic pattern, rich and complicated at the beginning, simple at the end.
Several Mon-Khmer languages—e.g., Khmer, Katu, Mon, and some forms of Vietnamese—allow implosive 
b̑ and 
d̑ at the beginning of major syllables. These sounds, pronounced with a brief suction of the air inward, have sometimes been called pre-glottalized, or semi-voiceless, sounds. They probably existed in the ancestral language called Proto-Mon-Khmer but have disappeared in many modern languages.
A series of aspirated consonants, ph, th, ch, and kh, pronounced with a small puff of air, is found in several branches or subbranches of Mon-Khmer (Pearic, Khmuic, South Aslian, Angkuic), but this is not a typical feature of the family, and it probably did not exist in the ancestral language.
Most Austroasiatic languages have palatal consonants (č or ñ) at the end of words; they are produced with the blade of the tongue touching the front part of the palate. Austroasiatic languages stand apart from most other languages of Asia in having final consonants of this type.
Vowels
Typical of Mon-Khmer languages is an extraordinary variety of major vowels: systems of 20 to 25 different vowels are quite normal, while several languages have 30 and more. Nasal vowels are sometimes found, but in any one language they do not occur very frequently. Four degrees of height are usually distinguished in front and back vowels, as well as in the central area. The variety of Khmer spoken in Surin (Thailand) distinguishes five degrees of height, plus diphthongs, all of which can be either short or long, for a total of 36 major vowels.
Tones
Most Austroasiatic languages, notably Khmer, Mon, Bahnar, Kuay, and Palaung, do not have tones. This is noteworthy, considering that the language families found to the north—Tai-Kadai, Sino-Tibetan, and Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao)—all have tones. The few Austroasiatic languages that are tonal—e.g., Vietnamese, the Angkuic subbranch, and the Pakanic branch—are found in the northern geographic range of the family. They have acquired tones independently from each other, in the course of their own history, as a result of contact and bilingualism with language families to the north. Tones are not posited for any ancient stage of Mon-Khmer or Austroasiatic.
Registers
Much more characteristic of the Austroasiatic stock is a contrast between two or more series of vowels pronounced with different voice qualities called registers. The vowels may have, for example, a “breathy” register, a “creaky” register, or a clear one. This feature, which is fairly rare the world over, is found, for example, in Mon, Wa, and Kuay, which distinguish breathy from clear vowels; in some Katuic languages, which distinguish creaky vowels from clear ones; and in the Pearic branch, which cumulates both distinctions. These registers have a variety of historical origins; for some languages (such as Mon) they are a fairly recent innovation, but for others (such as Pearic) they may be very ancient, perhaps dating to the ancestral language called Proto-Austroasiatic.
Grammatical characteristics
Morphology
In morphology (word formation), Muṇḍā and Vietnamese again show the greatest deviations from the norm. Muṇḍā languages have an extremely complex system of prefixes, infixes (elements inserted within the body of a word), and suffixes. Verbs, for instance, are inflected for person, number, tense, negation, mood (intensive, durative, repetitive), definiteness, location, and agreement with the object. Furthermore, derivational processes indicate intransitive, causative, reciprocal, and reflexive forms. On the other hand, Vietnamese has practically no morphology.
Between these two extremes, the other Austroasiatic languages have many common features. (1) Except in Nicobarese, there are no suffixes. A few languages have enclitics, certain elements attached to the end of noun phrases (possessives in Semai, demonstratives in Mnong), but these do not constitute word suffixes. (2) Infixes and prefixes are common, so that only the final vowel and consonant of a word root remain untouched. It is rare to find more than one or two affixes (i.e., prefixes or infixes) attached to one root; thus, the number of syllables per word remains very small. (3) The same prefix (or infix) may have a wide number of functions, depending on the noun or verb class to which it is added. For instance, the same nasal infix may turn verbs into nouns and mass nouns into count nouns (noun classifiers). (4) Many affixes are found only in a few fossilized forms and often have lost their meaning. (5) Expressive language and wordplay are embodied in a special word class called “expressives.” This is a basic class of words distinct from verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in that they cannot be subjected to logical negation. They describe noises, colours, light patterns, shapes, movements, sensations, emotions, and aesthetic feelings. Synesthesia is often observable in these words and serves as a guide for individual coinage of new words. The forms of the expressives are thus quite unstable, and the additional effect of wordplay can create subtle and endless structural variations.
Syntax
In syntax, possessive and demonstrative forms and relative clauses follow the head noun; if particles are found, they will be prepositions, not postpositions (elements placed after the word to which they are primarily related), and the normal word order is subject–verb–object. There is usually no copula equivalent to the English verb “be.” Thus, an equational sentence will consist of two nouns or noun phrases, separated by a pause. Predicates corresponding to the English “be + adjective” usually consist of a single intransitive (stative) verb. Ergative constructions (in which the agent of the action is expressed not as the subject but as the instrumental complement of the verb) are quite common. Also noteworthy are sentence final particles that indicate the opinion, the expectations, the degree of respect or familiarity, and the intentions of the speaker. Muṇḍā syntax, once again, is radically different, having a basic subject–object–verb word order, like the Dravidian languages of India. It is quite conceivable that the complexity of Muṇḍā verb morphology is a result of the historical change from an older subject–verb–object to the present subject–object–verb basic structure.
Vocabulary
The composition of the vocabulary of the Austroasiatic languages reflects their history. Vietnamese, Mon, and Khmer, the best-known languages of the family, came within the orbit of larger civilizations and borrowed without restraint—Vietnamese from Chinese, Mon and Khmer from Sanskrit and Pāli. At the same time, they have lost a large amount of their original Austroasiatic vocabulary. It is among isolated mountain and jungle groups that this vocabulary is best preserved. But other disruptive forces are at work there. For instance, animal names are subject to numerous taboos, and the normal name is avoided in certain circumstances (e.g., hunting, cooking, eating, and so on). A nickname is then invented, often by using a kinship term (“Uncle,” “Grandfather”) followed by a pun or an expressive adverb describing the animal. In the course of time, the kinship term is abbreviated (thus many animal names begin with the same letter), the normal name is forgotten, and the nickname becomes standard. As such, it is then in turn avoided, and the process is repeated. There are also taboos on proper names; e.g., after a person’s death, his name and all words that resemble it are avoided and replaced by metaphors or circumlocutions. These replacements may explain why, for instance, the Nicobarese languages, which seem closely related, have few vocabulary items in common. In general, new words and fine shades of meanings can always be introduced by wordplay and from the open-ended set of expressive forms. Borrowings from the nearest majority languages are also common.
Writing systems and texts
Two Austroasiatic languages have developed their own orthographic systems and use them to this day. For both scripts, the letter shapes and principles of writing were borrowed from Indian alphabets (perhaps those of the Pallava dynasty in South India) that were in use in Southeast Asia at the time. Both Austroasiatic groups modified these alphabets in their own way, to suit the complex phonology of their languages. The most ancient inscriptions extant are in Old Mon and Old Khmer in the early 7th century. The monuments of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Cambodia have preserved a large number of official inscriptions in these two languages. Both alphabets were in turn used as models by other peoples for writing their own languages, the Thai speakers using Khmer letters and the Burmese speakers using Mon letters. The religious literature in Old and Middle Mon played a very important role in the spreading of Theravāda Buddhism to the rest of Southeast Asia.
Because Vietnam was a Chinese province for a thousand years, the Chinese language was used and written there for official purposes. In the course of time (perhaps as early as the 8th century ad), a system called Chunom (popular writing) was developed for writing Vietnamese with partly modified Chinese characters. About 1650, Portuguese missionaries devised a systematic spelling for Vietnamese, based on its distinctive sounds (phonemes). It uses the Latin (Roman) alphabet with some additional signs and several accents to mark tones. At first, and for a long time, the use of this script was limited to Christian contexts, but it spread gradually, and in 1910 the French colonial administration made its use official. Now called quoc-ngu (national language), it is learned and used by all Vietnamese.
Most other Austroasiatic languages have been written for less than a century; the literacy rate remains very low with a few exceptions (e.g., Khāsī). Dictionaries and grammars have been written only for the most prominent languages, with traditional and often insufficient methods. Many languages have only been described briefly in a few articles, and many more are little more than names on the map.
Gérard Diffloth