The linguistic geography of southern : language origins and dispersals Andrew Hsiu (CRCL) [email protected]

21st Himalayan Languages Symposium (HLS 21) Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal June 2-3, 2015 Outline Purpose: Provide “Big picture” Riverine dispersal theories that I will propose: KD + HM Macrophyla: Austro-Tai, Yangtzean Linguistic areas that I will propose: (1) Lingnan area (2) Plateau area Southern China: ~ 1,000 – 500 B.C. Homelands Inferred mostly from present-day geographic distributions, and some Chinese historical records:  Henan, Shaanxi: Sinitic  : Dongyi (TB? “Etruscan of China”?)  Hunan: Hmong-Mien  Jiangxi: “Para-Hmong-Mien”?  Chongqing: Tujia [TB]  Sichuan: Qiangic [TB]  Yunnan: Bai, Loloish [TB]  : “Macro-Bai” (Cai-Long) [TB]  , ( = Yue): Kra-Dai  Fujian, : Pre-Austronesian Spread of Sinitic  Massive expansion of Chinese empire, culture, language starting around 2,000 B.P. (Qin Dynasty, )  Chinese expansion brings about tonogenesis & monosyllabification = creolization processes  Parallel to expansion of Roman Empire and Latin / Romance languages  TB, KD, HM, AA had also been expanding prior to 2,000 B.P.; they would have wiped out various isolates. KD + HM riverine dispersals  I noticed that present-day distributions of KD and HM branches overlap a lot with drainage basins.  KD:  Kra:  Kam-Sui:  Tai:  Explains why KD spread west  HM:  Hmongic:  Mienic: Xiang River  Explains why HM spread southwest Kra-Dai riverine dispersal: ~ 3,000 B.P. Former distribution of Buyang (Kra) Source: Li Jinfang (2000). Buyang yu yanjiu. Beijing: Minzu University Press. Hmong-Mien riverine dispersal: ~2,500 B.P. Hmongic: Guizhou, Western Hunan Mienic: Southern Hunan Double-crop rice and languages Single-crop rice and languages Yangtzean, Austro-Tai Yangtzean  Stanley Starosta‟s proposal  KD & HM: agricultural expansions  Hmong-Mien: Daxi culture  Para-Hmong-Mien: Jiangxi = perfect geography and conditions for a Hmong-Mien sister family (cf. double-crop rice map)  Proto-Yangtzean / Pre-Hmong-Mien would have been in Hubei, perhaps .  HM & KD are “not quite that diverse”, vs. TB (Blench, van Driem, Starosta). Austro-Tai  Paul K. Benedict (1942, 1975); Weera Ostapirat (2005)  Austro-Tai: Majiabang, Hemudu cultures  Fujian coast archaeology (Tianlong Jiao 2007) Fujian to Taiwan migration: 6500-5000 B.P Fujian-Taiwan contact maintained until 3500 B.P. Austro-Tai  Proto-Austro-Tai: Fisher-foragers along the Fujian coast (Jiao 2007); no rice agriculture yet. Splits to Proto-Kra-Dai and Proto-Austronesian.  Proto-Kra-Dai: Rice agriculturalists in Guangdong (Pearl River Delta), dispersed via rivers.  Proto-Austronesian (Formosan): Millet agriculture, no wet-rice agriculture (Blench); no outriggers (yet). Multiple migrations from Fujian (cf. Ross‟ and Li‟s Formosan classifications). Guizhou: earlier languages Guizhou before Tai, Sinitic, HM, Loloish  Boren: May be Lachi (Kra branch) (Edmondson & Li 2003)  Caijia, Longjia: unclassified TB languages  Gelao, Mulao: Kra  Tujia (TB isolate branch)  Bolyu: AA, Mangic / Pakanic branch; migrated from Guizhou to Guangxi in the 1800‟s with Gelao (Li 1999) “Macro-Sinitic” ≠ Bai (Sagart) “Macro-Bai” (incl. Sinitic) KD-HM, KD-TB, TB-HM contact Lolo-Burmese dispersal: overland Source: Lama, Ziwo (2012). Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) Languages. Ph.D. thesis, UT Arlington. Austroasiatic branches: dispersal

Credits: Paul Sidwell, Roger Blench Austroasiatic branches: contact Linguistic areas Linguistic areas Linguistic areas formed AFTER Hmong-Mien, Kra split up

Language Plateau Lingnan group area area Kra Gelao, Buyang, Lachi Qabiao Hmong- Hmongic Mienic Mien Linguistic areas: origins  Formed between 500 A.D. – 1500 A.D. (around or after split-up of , but before the Qing Dynasty)  Plateau area primary influences: Tibeto-Burman + Old Sinitic lects in Sichuan and Hunan  Lingnan area primary influences: Tai +  Qiangic: linguistic area but not coherent subgroup (Chirkova) Plateau area  Loss of final stops (-p, -t, -k)  Tendency for disyllabic and trisyllabic lexical forms (many “dummy” prefixes such as ka-, qa-, ta-, pa-, etc.; PTB *tsa suffix common)  Simpler tone systems (many with only 4 tones)  Centered in Guizhou Lingnan area  Preservation of final stops (-p, -t, -k)  Tendency for monosyllabic forms  More complex tone systems (many with 8 tones or more)  Centered in Guangxi  Vietnamese displays both Lingnan and Mon- Khmer features (Red River valley = Lingnan + Mon-Khmer areas). Mutual influences: families Mutual influences: AA-KD-HM triangle  Routes facilitating early contact: coasts of and southern China, and rivers.  TB → HM: widespread influence (Ratliff 2010)  TB → KD: heaviest influences in Kra (Ostapirat 2000)  AA → HM: various AA loanwords / cognates in Proto- HM („water‟, „blood‟, „bone‟ etc.), but not in KD or TB or AN (Ratliff 2010)  HM → AA: less likely than AA → HM, but possible  AA → KD: sporadic AA loanwords in Kra  KD → AA: widely attested; cf. Reid (2005) on Austric  KD → HM: cf. Kosaka (2002) on Miao-Dai  HM → KD: cf. Kosaka (2002) on Miao-Dai Whence the interphyletic similarities? Possible explanations for East Asian language family similarities. Austro-Tai =? Sino-Tibetan =? AA =? HM  (1) They are all related (Starosta‟s East Asian macrophylum)  (2) They are all borrowings (e.g., Blench‟s South Yunnan interaction sphere hypothesis)  (3) Perhaps compromise of (1) and (2) Ongoing research  SE Asian languages database: CRCL Bangkok  Reconstruction work: Austroasiatic (Paul Sidwell), Kra-Dai (Peter Norquest)  Flood of new data from China  New research on genetics, archaeology, etc. Southern China: ~ 1,000 – 500 B.C. References  Benedict, Paul K. 1942. "Thai, Kadai and Indonesian: a new alignment in south east ." American Anthropologist 44.576-601.  Benedict, Paul K. 1975. Austro-Thai language and culture, with a glossary of roots. New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.  Blench, Roger. 2015a. Origins of Ethnolinguistic Identity in . In: Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology. Editors: Junko Habu, Peter Lape, John Olsen eds. Springer.  Blench, Roger. 2015b. Ethnographic and archaeological correlates for an MSEA linguistic area. Paper for a volume from the Conference „Beyond the Sanskrit Cosmopolis‟. ISEAS, Singapore, November 2013. Andrea Acri, Roger Blench & Alix Landmann eds. ISEAS. Intended publication date, 2015.  Edmondson, Jerold A. and Shaoni Li. 2003. "Review of 'LajiyuYanjiu' by Li Yunbing." In Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 26, no. 1: 163-181.  Jiao, Tianlong. 2007. The Neolithic of Southeast China: Cultural Transformation and Regional Interaction on the Coast. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.  Lama, Ziwo (2012). Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) Languages. Ph.D. thesis, UT Arlington.  Lee, Yeon-, and . 2008. "No limits to borrowing: The case of Bai and Chinese". Diachronica 25 (3): 357–385.  Li Jinfang (2000). Buyang yu yanjiu. Beijing: Minzu University Press.  Li Xulian [李旭练]. 1999. A Study of (Bolyu) [倈语硏究]. Beijing: Minzu University Press [中央民族大学出版社]. References  Matisoff, James A. 2003. Handbook of proto-Tibeto-Burman. Berkeley: University of California Press.  Ostapirat, Weera 2000. Proto-Kra. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 23,1.  Ostapirat, Weera 2005. Kra-Dai and Austronesian: Notes on phonological correspondences and vocabulary distribution. In: The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas eds. 107-131. London: Routledge Curzon.  Ratliff, Martha. 2010. Hmong-Mien language history. Canberra, Australia: Pacific Linguistics.  Reid, Lawrence A. 2005. The current status of Austric. In: The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez- Mazas eds. 132-160. London: Routledge Curzon.  Shafer, Robert 1967. Introduction to Sino-Tibetan. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.  Sidwell, Paul, and Roger Blench 2011. The Austroasiatic Urheimat : the Southeastern Riverine Hypothesis. In: N. Enfield ed. Dynamics of Human Diversity in Mainland SE Asia. 317-345. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.  Starosta, Stanley 2005. Proto-East-Asian and the origin and dispersal of languages of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In: The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. eds. Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas 182-197. London: Routledge Curzon.  Van Driem, George L. 2008. To which language family does Chinese belong, or what‟s in a name. In: Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, Roger Blench, Malcolm D. Ross, Ilia Peiros and Marie Lin, eds. Past Human Migrations in East Asia: Matching Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. 219-253 London and New York: Routledge.