Austro-Tai

Austro-Tai is a hypothetical family of languages that combines the Austronesian languages , the Tai-Kadai languages, and possibly the Japanese-Ryūkyū languages into a single unit.

history

As early as 1901 it was noticed that the vocabulary of the Tai Kadai languages and the Austronesian languages are very similar. These are so numerous that, in the opinion of the proponents of the hypothesis, they cannot be random matches. Therefore, in 1942 , Paul Benedict hypothesized that the two language families are close relatives in the family tree of the Australian languages. This assumption was confirmed by a linguistic analysis in 2015.

In 2005, Weera Ostapirat established 50 vocabulary that occur in all three subgroups of the Tai-Kadai languages, half of which can be traced back to Austronesian vocabulary through regular sound shifts. Other linguists also find this credible.

After the Buyang , a Tai-Kadai language, was documented and it turned out that this language is probably the only Tai-Kadai language with two-syllable basic vocabulary (which is a main characteristic of the Austronesian languages), these were also compared with reconstructed Austronesian vocabulary which show surprisingly large similarities.

Benedict (1960) extended Austro-Tai to Austro-Tai-Japanese. This extension is controversial and opposed by the majority of Austronesian and Tai Kadai language specialists.

literature

Paul Benedict: Austro-Thai language and culture, with a glossary of roots. New Haven 1975, ISBN 0-87536-323-7 .
Weera Ostapirat: Kra-Dai and Austronesian: Notes on phonological correspondences and vocabulary distribution. In: The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archeology, Linguistics and Genetics. London 2005.
LA. Reid: Austro-Tai Hypotheses, in: The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Second edition, 2006.

Web links

Laurent Sagart: The higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai (PDF; 469 kB).

Individual evidence

↑ Benedict 1990
^ Gerhard Jäger: Support for linguistic macrofamilies from weighted sequence alignment . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 112 , no. 41 , October 13, 2015, ISSN 0027-8424 , p. 12752–12757 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1500331112 , PMID 26403857 , PMC 4611657 (free full text) - ( pnas.org [accessed September 5, 2018]).
^ Vovin, Alexander: Proto-Japanese beyond the accent system . In: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory . ( academia.edu [accessed September 5, 2018]).
↑ Alexander Vovin: Out of Southern China? ( academia.edu [accessed September 5, 2018]).

[1] Benedict 1990

[2] Gerhard Jäger: Support for linguistic macrofamilies from weighted sequence alignment . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 112 , no. 41 , October 13, 2015, ISSN 0027-8424 , p. 12752–12757 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1500331112 , PMID 26403857 , PMC 4611657 (free full text) - ( pnas.org [accessed September 5, 2018]).

[3] Vovin, Alexander: Proto-Japanese beyond the accent system . In: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory . ( academia.edu [accessed September 5, 2018]).

[4] Alexander Vovin: Out of Southern China? ( academia.edu [accessed September 5, 2018]).