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[Norman Zide]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
  Regarding Vovin's reference to Mundalogists who question the
Munda-Mon-Khmer relationship, who are these people ? I agree with Sasha -
who doesn't ? - that the numbers (along with much else) imply genetic
relationship. His examples (Kherwarian/North Munda as compared with Khmer)
could be better chosen. I think it is clear that the numbers 1,2,3,4 and 10
are cognate in Munda and MK  (see the Austroasiatic number systems issue of
Linguistics (1976), in most ways not superseded, and, for Munda, N. Zide's
Studies in the Munda Numerals (1978). A messier and more interesting
historical development of number words, in Gorum (a South Munda language) -
partly discussed in Zide, 1978 - was described in a paper (unpublished) by
Zide given at the 1995 Manchester historical linguistics meetings.
Coincidentally - surprisingly to me - a paper with similar data (strange
semantic extensions of simple number words within the number series) on a
Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal was presented by Werner Winter at the same
meeting.
    As to Austric, I agree with Vovin's and Laurie Reid's description of
the state of opinion on  A. I am not competent to deal with 'the Austric
question', but I do agree with Stampe that Reid's paper - in particular his
use of the Nicobarese data - is not convincing.