Vietic languages

Vietic
Geographic
distribution:		 Mainland Southeast Asia
Linguistic classification:

Austroasiatic

  • Vietic
Subdivisions:
Glottolog: viet1250[1]

The Vietic languages are a branch of the Austroasiatic language family. The branch was once referred to by the terms Việt–Mường, Annamese–Muong, and Vietnamuong; the term Vietic was proposed by Hayes (1992),[2] who proposed to redefine Việt–Mường as referring to a sub-branch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Mường.

Many of the Vietic languages have tonal or phonational systems intermediate between that of Viet–Muong and other branches of Austroasiatic that have not had significant Chinese or Tai influence.

Vietnamese, today, has had significant Chinese influence especially in vocabulary and tonal system. Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary accounts for about 30–60% of Vietnamese vocabulary, not including calques from China. Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese.

Origins

Based on linguistic diversity, the most probable homeland of the Vietic languages appears to have been located in modern-day Bolikhamsai Province and Khammouane Province in Laos as well as parts of Nghệ An Province and Quảng Bình Province in Vietnam. The time depth of the Vietic branch dates back at least 2,000 years.[3]

Vietnamese was identified as an Austroasiatic language in the mid-nineteenth century, and there is now strong evidence for this classification. Today, Vietnamese is a monosyllabic tonal language like Cantonese and has lost many Proto-Austroasiatic phonological and morphological features. Vietnamese has also large stocks of borrowed Chinese and Tai vocabulary. However, there continues to be resistance to the idea that Vietnamese could be more closely related to Khmer than to Chinese or the Tai languages. Nevertheless, the vast majority of scholars consider these typological similarities to be due to language contact rather than common inheritance.

The ancestor of the Vietnamese language is traditionally assumed to have been originally based around the Red River area in what is now northern Vietnam. However, Chamberlain argues that the Red River Delta region was originally Tai-speaking and became Vietnamese-speaking only between the seventh and ninth centuries AD, as a result of immigration from the south, i. e., modern Central Vietnam, where the highly distinctive and conservative North-Central Vietnamese dialects are spoken today. Therefore, the region of origin of Vietnamese (and the earlier Viet–Muong) was well south of the Red River.[3]

Like the ethnonym Lao, the name Yue/Việt originally referred to Tai–Kadai-speaking groups. In northern Vietnam, these later adopted Viet–Muong[3] and further north Chinese, where the designation Yue Chinese preserves the ethnonym. (Both in Vietnam and southern China, however, many Tai–Kadai languages remain in use.) This explains the fact that the same ethnonym Yue ~ Việt (whence Vietic) is associated with groups that speak Tai–Kadai, Austroasiatic and Chinese languages, which are typologically similar and share significant amounts of lexicon, but have different origins.

Distribution

Vietic speakers reside in and around the Nakai–Nam Theun Conservation Area of Laos and north-central Vietnam (Chamberlain 1998). Many of these speakers are referred to as Mường, Nhà Làng, and Nguồn. Chamberlain (1998) lists current locations in Laos for the following Vietic peoples.[4] An overview based on first-hand fieldwork has been proposed by Michel Ferlus.[5]

In Vietnam, some Vietic hill-tribe peoples, including the Arem, Rục, Maliêng, and Mày (Cươi), were resettled at Cu Nhái (located either in western Quảng Bình Province or in the southwest of Hương Khê District in Hà Tĩnh Province). The Sách are also found in Vietnam.

The following table lists the lifestyles of various Vietic-speaking ethnic groups. Unlike the neighboring Tai ethnic groups, many Vietic groups are not paddy agriculturalists.

Cultural typology of Vietic-speaking ethnic groups[3]
Lifestyle Vietic group
Small-group foraging nomads Atel, Thémarou, Mlengbrou, (Cheut?)
Originally collectors and traders who have become emergent swidden sedentists Arao, Maleng, Malang, Makang, Tơe, Ahoe, Phóng
Swidden cultivators who move every 2–3 years among pre-existing village sites Kri
Combined swidden and paddy sedentists Ahao, Ahlao, Liha, Phong (Cham), Toum

Languages

The discovery that Vietnamese was a Mon–Khmer language, and that its tones were a regular reflection of non-tonal features in the rest of the family, is considered a milestone in the development of historical linguistics. The Vietic languages reflect every stage in this development.[6][7]

Classification

The following classification of the Vietic languages is from Chamberlain (2003:422), as quoted in Sidwell (2009:145). Unlike past classifications, there as a sixth "South" branch that includes Kri, a newly described language.

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Vietic". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  2. ↑ Hayes, La Vaughn H. 1992. Vietic and Việt-Mường: a new subgrouping in Mon-Khmer. Mon-Khmer Studies 21. 211–228.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Chamberlain, J.R. 1998, "The origin of Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history", in The International Conference on Tai Studies, ed. S. Burusphat, Bangkok, Thailand, pp. 97-128. Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University.
  4. ↑ http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLAOPRD/Resources/jim_chamberlain_monitoring_report_on_nt2_consultations.pdf
  5. ↑ Ferlus, Michel. 1996. Langues et peuples viet-muong. Mon-Khmer Studies 26. 7–28.
  6. ↑ Ferlus, Michel. 2004. The Origin of Tones in Viet-Muong. In Somsonge Burusphat (ed.), Papers from the Eleventh Annual Conference of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 2001, 297–313. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University Programme for Southeast Asian Studies Monograph Series Press.
  7. ↑ The following information is taken from Paul Sidwell's lecture series on the Mon–Khmer languages.
  8. ↑ Phan, John D. 2012. "Mường is not a subgroup: Phonological evidence for a paraphyletic taxon in the Viet-Muong sub-family." Mon-Khmer Studies 40:1-18.

External links

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