AUSTROASIATIC LANGUAGES Essays in honour of H .L. Shorto Edited by J .H.C.S. Davidson. School of Oriental and African Studies \ University of London I 1991 25 Collected Papers in Oriental and African Studies AUSTROASIATIC LANGUAGES Essays in honour of H. L. Shorto Edited by Jeremy H. C. S. Davidson Formerly Lecturer in Vietnamese School of Oriental and African Studies SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 1991 © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1991 All rights reserved Published by School of Oriental and African Studies University of London Thornhaugh Street Russell Square London WCIH OXG British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Austroasiatic languages: essays in honour of H. L. Shorto - (Collected papers in Oriental and African Studies). I. Davidson, Jeremy H. C. S. (Jeremy Hugh Chauncy Shane) IT. Shorto, H. L. TIT. Series 495 ISBN 0-7286-0183-4 Typeset by PDQ Typesetting, Stoke-on-Trent, England. Printed in England by Hobbs the Printers Ltd., Southampton CONTENTS CONTRIBUTORS ................................................................................... vi PREFACE ............................................................................................ vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................... viii H. L. SHORTO: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE J. H. C. S. Davidson ....................... 1 PUBLICATIONS OF H. L. SHORTO Helen Cordell ......................................... 3 AUSTRIC: AN 'EXTINCT' PROTO-LANGUAGE Paul K. Benedict .................... 7 PALAUNGIC VOWELS IN MON-KHMER PERSPECTIVE G. Dijjloth ............. 13 COMMUNICATIVES, EXISTIVES, AND STATIVES IN PROTO-SOUTH-BAHNARIC David Thomas ............................................. 29 A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SOME SOUTH MUNDA KINSHIP TERMS, I Norman H. Zide & Arlene R. K. Zide ............................ 43 PROBLEMS AND PITFALLS IN THE PHONETIC INTERPRETATION OF KHASI ORTHOGRAPHY teugenie J. A. Henderson .............................. 61 HU - A LANGUAGE WITH UNORTHODOX TONOGENESIS Jan-O/of Svantesson ....................................................... 67 ON AUSTRONESIAN LEXICON IN VIETNAMESE Kenneth Gregerson ............ 81 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY VIETNAMESE LEXICON: PRELIMINARY GLEANINGS FROM ALEXANDRE DE RHODES' WRITINGS Nguy'Jn Dinh-Hoa ............................................................... 95 THE PHONOLOGY OF KOMPONG THOM CHAM Robert K. Headley ........... 105 ASPECTS OF INTER-CLAUSAL RELATIONS IN KHMU Suwilai Premsrirat ................................................................... 123 AN INSTRUMENTAL STUDY OF CHONG REGISTERS Theraphan L. Thongkum .................................................... 141 KEEPING THINGS UP FRONT: ASPECTS OF INFORMATION PROCESSING IN MAL DISCOURSE STRUCTURE David Fi/beck .............. 161 LES DERIVES DESIDERATIFS EN KHMER - Saveros Pou .......................... 183 A DIACHRONIC SURVEY OF SOME KHMER PARTICLES (7th to 17th CENTURIES) Judith M. Jacob .............................................. 193 THE FORM syan IN ANGKORIAN KHMER Philip N. Jenner ....................... 227 OLD MON s- Christian Bauer ................................................................. 241 Frontispiece - Professor H. L. Shorto V CONTRIBUTORS J. H. C. S. Davidson, formerly Lecturer in Vietnamese, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Helen Cordell, Sub-Librarian, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London P. K. Benedict, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA G. Diffloth, Professor, Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA D. Thomas, Summer Institute of Linguistics, International Linguistics Center, Dallas, Texas, USA N. H. Zide, Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA Arlene R. K. Zide, Department of Foreign Languages, Harold Walsh College, Chicago, Illinois, USA tEugenie J. A. Henderson, Professor Emeritus of Phonetics in the University of London J.-0. Svantesson, Professor, Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden K. J. Gregerson, President, Summer Institute of Lingiustics, Interna­ tional Linguistics Center, Dallas, Texas, USA Nguy~n Dinh-Hoa, Professor, Vietnamese Studies Program, San Jose State University, San Jose, California, USA R. K. Headley, Senior Research Linguist, US Government, Washington, DC, USA Suwilai Premsrirat, Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Nakhorn Pathom, Thailand Theraphan L. Thongkum, Department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand D. Filbeck, Christian Mission to the Orient, Chiang Mai, Thailand Saveros Pou, Directeur de Recherche, CNRS, Paris, France Judith M. Jacob, formerly Senior Lecturer in Cambodian, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (rtd.) P. N. Jenner, Director, Department of Indo-Pacific Languages, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA C. Bauer, Lecturer in Linguistics and Mon, Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Nakhorn Pathom, Thailand Vl PREFACE The present volume is the fourth in this series to be dedicated to a retired scholar of the School. Here we honour Professor H. L. Shorto, whose standing in the field of Austroasiatic-especially Mon-Khmer­ Studies is well reflected in the range and quality of the papers offered as a tribute in this volume. The arrangement is, I hope, obvious-opening with a questioning paper by Paul Benedict, then moving from the languages of the rims of the area to focus on the Mon-Khmer heartland of Harry's major interest. The papers do not call for any comment from me as Editor, nor do their authors need introduction. Their contributions speak for themselves and will undoubtedly stimulate further research in the field of Austroasiatic Studies in coming years. Jeremy H. C. S. DAVIDSON vu ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to thank all those who have helped make the task of editing these seventeen contributions lighter. In particular I wish to thank the Publications Committee (especially its Chairman, Professor Shackle, and its Secretary, Mr Martin Daly) for financial support in this publication of the volume. Thanks are due to the Editorial Secretary, Miss Diana Matias and to the SOAS photographer, Mr Paul Fox, for help with its production. The photograph on the cover is by Hans Hinz and is reproduced by permission from Thai painting published by the Office du Livre, Fribourg. viii HARRY LEONARD SHORTO: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Professor Harry Shorto is one of the founding scholars of Mon-Khmer studies, the field which his knowledge and insight helped to make the active and expanding area of scholarship that it is today. It is now some forty five years since Harry Shorto completed his MA in Modern and Mediaeval Languages at Cambridge before moving to SOAS to take up a training appointment as Lecturer in Linguistics in 1948. From that point he was to pursue the study of the Austroasiatic and Austronesian language families of his choice: in 1952 he was appointed Lecturer in Mon; in 1964 Reader in the Languages and Literatures of South-East Asia; in 1971 to the Chair of Mon-Khmer Studies in the University of London. During this period he produced his two magisterial dictionaries, A dictionary of Modern Spoken Mon (1962) and A dictionary of the Mon inscriptions from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries (1971), to which he added numerous other stimulating publications listed in the bibliography of this volume. Harry Shorto is a private man, given to weighing his words carefully between frequent re-lightings of his ever-present pipe. His Common Room colleagues may often have found awesome the ease with which he negotiated the depths and further reaches of his unfamiliar linguistic territory, but the learning was always leavened with humour, the delight in language for its own sake infectious. The lightness of touch and passion for detail which Harry brought to the investigation of languages, their histories, constructions, and interconnections, are in complete harmony with his other absorbing interest: early musical instruments, in particular the flute, gamba, cornet and virginal. This interest extends to performance and he was for a time a member of a consort of viols. Today he continues to perfect his technique on his 1960 Morley virginal. To Harry Shorto's many colleagues and former students it must be a source of great satisfaction that retirement has not put an end to his encyclopaedic researches, notably his project for a comparative phonology of the Mon-Khmer languages. We wish him well and offer this volume in appreciation of his contribution to scholarship over the years. Jeremy H. C. S. DAVIDSON PUBLICATIONS OF H. L. SHORTO Helen Cordell 1956 Notes on Mon epigraphy. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 18(2), 344-52. 1956-57 Quantification in Mon. Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Orientalists, Cambridge, 1954. London: Royal Asiatic Society. 278-79. 1958 The Kyaikmaraw inscriptions. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 21(2), 361-67. 1960 Word and syllable patterns in Palaung. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 23(3), 544-57. 1961 A Mon geneaology of kings: observations on the Nidana Arambhakhatha. In, Historians of South East Asia, (ed.) D. G. E. Hall. London: Oxford University Press, 63-72. 1962 A Dictionary of Modern Spoken Mon. London: