Austro-Tai Languages - The Relationship

The Relationship

Among scholars who accept the evidence as definitive, there is disagreement as to the nature of the relationship. Benedict attempted to show that Tai–Kadai has features which cannot be accounted for by proto-Austronesian, and that therefore it must be a separate family coordinate with Austronesian (a sister relationship). Ostapirat concluded that these reconstructed linguistic features are spurious. However, he could not rule out the possibility that Tai–Kadai tone cannot be explained, and so leaves the question open pending further reconstruction of proto-Austronesian. He supports the consensus hypothesis of several scholars that proto-Austronesian was spoken on Formosa or adjacent areas of coastal China, and that the likely homeland of proto-Tai–Kadai was coastal Fujian or Guangdong as part of the neolithic Longshan culture. The spread of the Tai–Kadai peoples may have been aided by agriculture, but any who remained near the coast were eventually absorbed by the Chinese.

Sagart, on the other hand, holds that Tai–Kadai is a branch of Austronesian which migrated back to the mainland from northeastern Formosa long after Formosa was settled, but probably before the expansion of Malayo-Polynesian out of Formosa. The language was then largely relexified from what he believes may have been an Austroasiatic language.

However, Ostapirat maintains that Tai–Kadai could not descend from Malayo-Polynesian in the Philippines, and likely not from the languages of eastern Formosa either. His evidence is in the Tai–Kadai sound correspondences, which reflect Austronesian distinctions that were lost in Malayo-Polynesian and even Eastern Formosan. These are proto-AN *t and *C, also *n and *N, which were distinct in proto-Tai–Kadai but which fell together as *t and *n in proto-MP and Eastern Formosan; and *S, which is *s in proto-Tai–Kadai but *h in proto-MP. There are also Austro-Tai roots which are not attested from Malayo-Polynesian, such as *Cumay "bear". (Western MP has *biRuaŋ.) Such roots are retentions from Proto-Austronesian shared by Tai-Kadai and Formosan, and lost in Malayo-Polynesian, in Sagart's view.

Sagart (2005b) proposes an Eastern Formosan–Malayo-Polynesian connection with Tai–Kadai, based on words such as proto-Tai–Kadai *maNuk and Eastern Formosan *manuk "bird", as compared to proto-Austronesian, where the word for "bird" was *qayam, and *maNuk meant "chicken" (cf. English "fowl", which once meant "bird" but has come to usually refer to chickens and other birds raised for meat), and a few other words such *-mu "thou" which have not been reconstructed for proto-Austronesian. However, Ostapirat notes Tai–Kadai retains the Austronesian *N in this word, which had been lost from Eastern Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian, and that a change in meaning from "chicken" to "bird" could easily have happened independently, for example among proto-Tai–Kadai speakers when they borrowed the mainland word *ki "chicken" (cognate with Old Chinese *kej and Miao /qai/).

Sagart (2004) presents a distinct argument for subgrouping Tai-Kadai with Malayo-Polynesian: he argues that the numerals 5–10, shared by Tai-Kadai, Malayo-Polynesian and three southeastern Formosan languages, are post-proto-Austronesian innovations. Part of the problem of evidence may be due to the loss of the ancestral languages in the Philippines: the uniformity of Philippine languages suggests widespread language replacement after the expected time of the Tai–Kadai split.

Sagart (2005b) suggests that Austronesian (including Tai-Kadai) is ultimately related to the Sino-Tibetan languages, forming a Sino-Austronesian family. The Proto-Sino-Austronesian speakers would have originated from the Neolithic communities of the coastal regions of prehistoric North China or East China. Ostapirat disputes this view, noting that the apparent cognates are rarely found in all branches of Tai–Kadai, and almost none in core vocabulary. Apparent connections with Austroasiatic languages, per Benedict, may be due to language contact when the ancestral Tai–Kadai language reached the mainland.