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Languages of the World--Indo-Pacific Fascicle Eight

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Languages of the World--Indo-Pacific Fascicle Eight REPORT RESUMES ED 010 367 48 LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD--INDO-PACIFIC FASCICLE EIGHT. ST- VOEGELI1, C.F. VOEGELIN, FLORENCE M. INDIANA UNIV., BLOOMINGTON REPORT NUMBER NDEA- VI -63 -20 PUB DATE. APR 66 CONTRACT OEC-SAE-9480 FURS PRICE MF-$Q.18HC-52.80 70P. ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS, 8(4)/1-64, APRIL 1966 DESCRIPTORS- *LANGUAGES, *INDO PACIFIC LANGUAGES, ARCHIVES OF LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA THIS REPORT DESCRIBES SOME OF THE LANGUAGES AND LANGUAGE FAMILIES OF THE SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA REGIONS OF THE INDO-PACIFIC AREA. THE LANGUAGE FAMILIES DISCUSSED WERE JAKUM, SAKAI, SEMANG, PALAUNG-WA (SALWEEN), MUNDA, AND DRAVIDIAN. OTHER LANGUAGES DISCUSSED WERE ANDAMANESE, N/COBAnESE, KHASI, NAHALI, AND BCRUSHASKI. (THE REPORT IS PART OF A SERIES, ED 010 350 TO ED 010 367.) (JK) +.0 U. S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE b D Office of Education tr's This document has been reproduced exactlyas received from the S.,4E" L es, C=4.) person or organiz3t1on originating It. Points of view or opinions T--I stated do not nocessart- represent official °dice of Edumdion poeWon or policy. AnthropologicalLinguistics Volume 8 Number 4 April 116 6 LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD: INDO- PACIFIC FASCICLE EIGHT A Publication of the ARCHIVES OFLANGUAGES OF THEWORLD Anthropology Department Indiana University ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for the immediate publication of data-oriented papers for which attestation is available in the form oftape recordings on deposit in the Archives of Languages of the World. This does not imply that contributors will bere- stricted to scholars working in the Archives at Indiana University; infact, one motivation for the publication of ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS is to increase the usefulness of the Archives to scholars elsewhere by making publishable data and conclusions and their tape recorded attestation more widely available.(Recorded attestation of papers from scholars elsewhere will be copied by the Archives and the original recorfings re limed to the collector; othersmay then work with the tape copy either in the Archives or elsewhere by having a copy sent to them.)In addition to heavily exemplified papers in the form of preliminaayor final statements on restricted problems in phonemics, morpi:ophonemics, morphemics, syntax and comparative grammar, ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUIS- TICS will include lexical lists and analyzed texts (especially in the otherwise hard-to-publishrange of 20 to 100 pages) and theoretical and methodologicll papers(especially in the form of papers from symposia). Each volume of ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS consists of nine numbers to 1.issued during the months of January, February, March, April, May, June, October, November and Det.mber. Subscriptions ($3.50 a year) and papers for publication should be sent to the editor, Dr. Florence M. Voegelin, Anthropology Department, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Entered as second class matter at the postoffice at Bloomington, Indiana LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD INDO-PACIFIC FAS CICLE EIGHT C.F. and F. M. Voegelin Indian a Univ e rsity 9 .0. Consultants 9. Oth e r no n-Austronesian, n on-S ino- Tib etan and non -Ind o-European Lang uag e familie sin S outheas t Asia and in S outh Asiz 10. Jakun farzily 11. Sakai family 12. Se man g family 13. Andamane se and Nicobarese 14. Palaung-Wa (S alwe e n) family 15 Khasi 16. Mund a family 17. Dray idian family 18. Nahali and Burushask i The rese arch re ported he re inwas pe rformed pursuant to a contract wi,th the United States Office of Education, De paetment of Health, Education, and We lfare. 1 2 Anthropological Linguistics,Vol. 8, No. 4 9.0.This fascicle has gainedimmeasurably from critical readingby two consultants at the Universityof California, MurrayB. Emeneau (Berke- Ley) and William Bright (LosAngeles). 9. Languages intwo language families Mon-Khmer (7)and Vietnamese (8),were treated in Indo-Pacific FasczcleSeven as not necessarily related to the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynestan)language familyor to language families classifiedas Sino-Tibetan, through the Vietnameseand Mon-Khmer languages are interspersedamorg these other language families, andhave been influenced invarious ways by contact withthem. There remain abouta dozen other language familiesin the South A sia andSoutheast Asia part of the Indo-Pacific area thatmay be similarly claEsified ina negative way. These families have been shownto be related neitherto each other nor to Austro- nesian, nor to Sino-Tibetannor, to lndo-European languages spokenin the tame general area, though relationshipsof a phylumor macro-phylum re- moteness have been suggestedfor some of them. For example, it has beensuggested by Pinnow (19 9)'alter Schmidt' gra- adapted from Schmidt (1906,1914) --that three!anguage families discussed below (10, 1112) should beclassified together in what mightbe called a South Phylum(Malakka); and thatone other language family (14) should be classifiedtogether with :Khasi (15)and with olicobarese (13--but not with Andamanese)in what might be called the CentralPhylum; and that the Munda family (16)should be classified withNahali (16)but not with Dravidian (IDnor with Burushaski (18)in whatmight be calleda Western Indo-Pacific Fascicle Eight Phylum; and finally that these phyla,as specified, may be combined with Mon-Khmer (but not with Vietnamese)into what may be calleda grandiloquent Macro-Phylum (Austro-Asiatic). Themain criticism of this proposal is that it is premature. At Leastone of the conEtituent language families in this scheme of phylum linguisticsthe Palaung-Wa(Salween) family- -is apparently a waste basket into which to file languageswhich may frassibly be alternatively (but more dubiously) Sino - Tibetan oreven Mon-Khmer. Conjectures seem simply uninteresting when theyconcern the more remote external relation- ships of a family whose internalrelationships are neither obviousnor demon- stratd. Still, this criticismis not made of a strawman, easy to knock down. Though it may turn out that futureinvestigation fails to show substantial evidence of acommon ancestor implicit in the phylum linguisticproposal, the proposalmay nevertheless lead to the discovery of typologicalsimilari- ties among the language familiescombined in various phyla. Indeed, interest- ing typologicalsamenesses and differences would be expectednot only within the restrictions of phylumlinguistics, butamong all the languages listed below (10.421, The view expressed hereon the application of phylum linguistics to Austro-Asiatic--from Schmidt toPinnow--does not representa consensus; and yet, divergent viewson phylum linguistics are not in clear-cut contro- versy or opposition to each other. The difficultystems from the fact that though it is sometimes possibleto prove that a given pair of languagesmay be genetically related, thereexists no method of disproving this inlinguistics. Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 8, No. 4 In lieu of a consen sus, we list three kinds ofre action to phylum ling uis- tics commonly encountered. (a)Effo rt (expended on phylum linguistics is misplaced and mightb e more profitably expended on comparative methodlinguistics with its well attested reconstructive techniques.There is never controversyover this reaction: those whoare rewarded by working in sharp focuson the abundant evidence of a given language family,as Munda, do so; those who find a larger linguistic landscapemore intriguing, work in phylum linguisticse.g. compare languages in the Munda family withlanguages in other families. (b) The latterseem always to find some support for connecting language's in different language familiesinthe case of Pinnow, phonologicalcorre- spondences and ;cognate sets.Acceptions of evidence fora phylum is characteristically expressed injournal reviews: the reviewerexpresses himself as convinced that thesupport adduced is sufficient to show the genetic connection postulated betweendifferent language families.Substantial scholars in leading linguisticjournals have expressed themselvesso con- vinced by Pinnow's work inAustro-Asiatic, justas other scholars have been convinced by Poppe's workin the Altaic phylum. Here againcontroversy is almost impossible.The scholars whoare convinced, say so in reviews; those who are not,cannot call upon negative evidenceto show that languages in two language familiesare not related, since the data present only positive evidence.The fact that the dataare sparse is not relevant, since sparseness of data is the divisivefeature which distinguishes phylumlinguistics from Indo-Pacific Fascicle Eight 5 comparative method linguistics. Where thereexists a plethora of cognates, for example, there would bea language family to work in, and the questions asked in phylum linguistics wouldnot arise. (c) A less common reaction to phylumlinguistics is to be neither con- vinced nor skeptical, but hopeful (that is,to regard the proposals made as programmatic, asmaps pointing in one or another direction for further in- vestigaticn).This is the view taken in this report inrespect to various phyla and macro-phyla proposed.It is possible then to regardsome phyla as more or less interesting than other phyla, rather thanas more or less con- vincing. One is convinced bya plethora of evidence, and such abundance is obtainable, by definition, only withina given language family; one is interest- ed in the direction ofmore distant connections between language families that are offered in the sparser attestation of phylum linguistics,or in proposals for which the evidence is notyet
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