Halang, also known as Salang, is a Bahnaric language of the Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family. It is spoken in the southern Laotian province of Attapu by approximately 4000 people and in the neighboring Kon Tum Province of Vietnam by approximately 13,500 people (Ethnologue, 2000).
In more specific usage, Halang refers to the dialect spoken in Vietnam, whereas Salang refers to the dialect spoken in Laos. Halang or Salang may also serve as an ethnonym for members of the ethnic group that speak the language. However, in Vietnam, the Halang speakers are officially classified as a subgroup of the larger Sedang ethnicity.
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“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
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