9.148, Review: Mon-Khmer Studies 27

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1)
Date:  Mon, 26 Jan 98 12:06:50 -0700
From:  neil.olsen at ci.slc.ut.us
Subject:  Review of Mon-Khmer Studies 27

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 26 Jan 98 12:06:50 -0700
From:  neil.olsen at ci.slc.ut.us
Subject:  Review of Mon-Khmer Studies 27

Review of Mon-Khmer Studies, Vol. 27 (1997); Mahidol University at
Salaya, Thailand, and Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas, Texas,
USA; US $39.00.

Reviewed by Neil H. Olsen, neil.olsen at ci.slc.ut.us

Volume 27 of Mon-Khmer Studies (MKS) is dedicated to Paul K.
Benedict on the occasion of his 85th birthday (5 July 1997).
Tragically, Dr. Benedict died sixteen days later in an automobile
accident.  Robert S. Bauer writes a memorial tribute which includes a
concise biography.  Following Bauer's memorial, he and other MKS
editors have compiled a bibliography of Benedict\213s articles, books,
and conference papers--the most current and complete published to
date.

MKS 27 is the third volume in the special series dedicated to
recognized experts in the field of Southeast Asian linguistics.  MKS
25 was dedicated to the late Andre Haudricourt and MKS 26 to
David Thomas, one of the founding editors of MKS in 1964.  MKS 28
will resume the regular format of the journal.  Although MKS is
generally a journal devoted to Mon-Khmer and Austroasiatic
languages, it welcomes articles on other Southeast Asian languages
and language families.

The 28 papers in this volume are more ambitious than previous MKS
volumes and represent a wide range of linguistic topics which reflect
Dr. Benedict's broad, eclectic, and sometimes controversial interests.
There are papers on Chinese, Japanese, Tai, Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-
Burman, Hmong-Mien, Austronesian, and, of course, Austroasiatic.
The main purpose of this review is to briefly summarize the various
papers so that readers may select those articles which interest them.

The first paper is Paul K. Benedict's, "Interphyla flow in Southeast
Asia," which was one of the keynote speeches at the 4th
International Symposium on Languages and Linguistics, Pan-Asiatic
Linguistics, held in Bangkok in January 1966.  Benedict warns us
that the field of Southeast Asian Linguistics is the Bosnia of historical
linguistics--a lovely landscape strewn with land mines!  He playfully
formulates a Law of Historical Linguistics: the number of linguistic
errors perpetrated is inversely proportional to the median length of
the roots involved.  The remainder of his paper is devoted to
exploring Sino-Tibetan, Mon-Khmer, and Austro-Tai homelands
(with a map and diagram), distinguishing between direct and stimulus
diffusion in interphyla tone flow, and contrasting affixation patterns
among the superstocks.  Finally, he traces a pair of Mon-Khmer loan-
words, 'tiger' and 'raptor', as they 'invade' Southeast Asia.

"On the Track of Austric: Part II, Consonant Mutation in Early
Austroasiatic' by La Vaughn H. Hayes is a data-rich paper
continuing (Part I in MKS 21) his effort to validate Wilhem Schmidt's
1906 hypothesis that Austroasiatic and Austronesian are genetically
related and should be grouped under a new Austric superstock.
Hayes claims that diachronic changes affecting Proto-Austroasiatic
obscure and conceal the linkage between ancient consonants and
their modern reflexes.  These changes have contributed to the
difficulty of establishing the lexical connection between Austroasiatic
and Austronesian.  This paper describes and details four plre
phonological shifts--palatalization, spirantization, assibilation, and
voicing--which took place early in the history of the Austroasiatic
language family causing massive mutations in the consonant system.

Dipankar Moral, in "North-East India as a linguistic area," delineates
seven Indian states--with 220 languages belonging to the Indo-
European, Sino-Tibetan, and Austroasiatic families--as a linguistic
area distinct from the rest of India.  Lists of common linguistic
characteristics (phonological, grammatical, and lexical features)
bolster the argument of areal uniqueness.  Read this paper in
conjunction with Simon's paper noted below.

Michel Ferlus, in 'Le maleng bro et le vietnamien, describes the
phonology and morphology of Maleng Bro, a Viet-Muong language
spoken in Khammouan, Laos.  Data from Maleng sheds light on Viet-
Muong linguistic history, especially the syllable structure and ancient
morphology of Vietnamese and the development of its tones.

David Filbeck, in "The Protasis-Apodosis construction in Mal," gives
a structural and functional description of a topic-comment syntactic
pattern in Mal, a Mon-Khmer language spoken in northern Thailand.

Sujaritlak Deepadung and Suriya Ratanakul, in "Final particles in
conversational Mal (Thin)," discuss status, question, and mood
sentence final particles in the Ban Sakat Klang dialect of Mal.

Dai Qingxia and Liu Yan, in "Analysis of the tones in the Guangka
subdialect of Deang," present a synchronic description and analysis
of Guangka tones.  They compare Guangka to other Deang dialects
with and without tones.  Deang is a Mon-Khmer language spoken in
southwest Yunnan, China.  This study contributes to further
understanding of the development of tone systems in Mon-Khmer
languages.

Theraphan L.-Thongkum, in "The place of Lawi, Harak, and Tariang
within Bahnaric," presents the results of field work with Mon-Khmer
languages spoken in Sekong province, Laos.  Ethnolinguistic data
and word lists are included.  Lawi is classified as a West Bahnaric
language, while the place of Harak and Tariang within Bahnaric is
unclear at present.

Natalja M. Spatar, in "Imperative Constructions in Cambodian,"
notes that the Cambodian imperative paradigm consists of four
categories: 1st person sg. and pl., 2nd person, and 3rd person.  The
center of this paradigm is the 2nd person imperative forms: any
imperative marker (except oj) can be used in a 2nd person
imperative, and only 2nd person imperatives can be used without any
marker and without a subject.

Suwilai Premsrirat, in "Linguistic Contributions to the Study of the
Northern Khmer Language of Thailand in the last Two Decades,"
surveys the linguistic work, major developments, and recent research
that has been conducted on Khmer (Cambodian) as spoken in
Thailand.  A 3-page bibliography is included.

Sophana Srichampa, in "Serial verb constructions in Vietnamese,"
examines a specific verb construction in Vietnamese--a sequence of
verbs occurring together with a non-overt subject and/or a non-overt
object--within the framework of Government and Binding Theory.

Zhou Zhizhi and Yan Qixiang, in their "On the genetic affiliation of
Vietnamese," reopen the old debate concerning whether Vietnamese
is a Tai, Austroasiatic, or Chinese language.  They compare 159 basic
vocabulary items from Vietnamese with Thai and Zhuang (Tai
languages) and Wa, Blang, and Palaung (Austroasiatic languages).
Focusing on a 40% cognate rate with Wa, they examine phonetic
and grammatical similarities between Vietnamese and Wa and
confirm that Vietnamese is indeed an Austroasiatic language.

I. M. Simon, in "On first looking into Paul K. Benedict's Sino-
Tibetan," uses Benedict 1972 as a starting point to compare Khasi, a
Mon-Khmer language spoken in Assam, with Tibeto-Burman, and
with Huffman's (1990) Mon and Kur wordlists.  This paper should be
read in conjunction with Moral's paper noted above.

David Bradley, in "What did they eat?  Grain crops of the Burmic
groups." follows up on Benedict 1972 and 1975 and takes a closer
look at the reconstruction of words for various grain crops within the
Burmic subgroup of Sino-Tibetan.  Bradley draws some conclusions
about the implications of this reconstruction for the original
homeland of the Burmic, Tibeto-Burman, and Sino-Tibetan groups.

James A. Matisoff, in "Dayang Pumi phonology and adumbrations of
comparative Qiangic," analyzes Pumi's complex phonology and
tones in great detail.  He discusses Pumi's place in the Qiangic family
and notes that much internal reconstruction will be necessary before
details of the complex initial- and rhyme-correspondences will be
figured out.  Pumi is a Tai language spoken in Yunnan, China.

Helen Potopova, in "Semantic characteristics of the Tibetan honorific
forms," focuses on words taking honorific prefixes, the original
meanings of which are anatomical terms.  In Tibetan, the choice to
use an honorific form as opposed to a neutral form is determined by
social stratification and the situation of the communication act itself.
Semantic and lexical evidence is presented.

George Bedell, in "Causatives and clause union in Lai (Chin),"
examines causative constructions in Lai within a generative
framework.  Lai, also called Hakha Chin, is spoken in Chin State,
Myanmar (Burma).

Ilia Peiros, in "Lolo-Burmese linguistic archaeology," discusses what
linguistic data suggest about speakers of Proto-Lolo-Burmese (PLB).
Three main issues are discussed: (1) localization of PLB homeland;
(2) absolute dating for the disintegration of PLB homeland; and (3)
some features of PLB cultural reconstruction.  Peiros proposes that
3800-3600 years ago a highly developed culture flourished in
Yunnan, connected more with sub-Himalayan cultures than
Southeast Asian.  There is an appendix of PLB cultural lexicon.

K. S. Nagaraja's "Kinship terms in Konyak Naga" is a data paper
listing kinship terminology collected for Konyak Naga, a Tibeto-
Burman language of Nagaland state in India.

Jerold A. Edmonson and Kenneth J. Gregerson, in their "Outlying
Kam-Tai: notes on Ta Mit Laha," offer recent field notes primarily on
the phonology of Laha, a Kadai language spoken in northern
Vietnam.  There is a brief overview of Laha ethnolinguistic history
along with comparative comments on the rather large shared
vocabulary with the Tai branch.  They conclude that the Laha
language of Ta Mit township will prove useful in future work in
deciphering the history of outlier Kadai languages.  Wave form and
pitch trajectory of two words are illustrated; a map showing Laha
groups in Vietnam and China is very useful.

Luo Yongxian, in "Expanding the Proto-Tai Lexicon--a Supplement
to Li (1977)," examines a sizable number of new cognate sets which
substantially expands Li's seminal 1977 work.  Using lexical
classification, the new cognates sets are arranged by semantic field:
nature and environment, agricultural terms, etc.  Implications of
lexical classification for subgrouping in Tai langauges are discussed
and cognates rates are tabulated.

Qin Xiaohang, in "Evolution of the initial consonant clusters pl,
kl, ml in the Hongshiuhe vernacular of Zhuang," analyzes the
historical evolution of the initial consonant clusters pl, kl, ml in the
Hongshuihe vernacular, a northern dialect of Zhuang, a Tai language,
spoken in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China.

Udom Warotamasikkhadit, in "Fronting and backing topicalization
in Thai," observes that, in Thai, topicalization can occur at the
beginning of, in the middle of, or at the end of a sentence.  Illustrative
sentences are given and it is concluded that topicalization is closely
related to emphasis.

Apiluck Tumtavitikul, in "Reflection on the X' category in Thai,"
questions whether or not there is an intermediate level of X' category
in Thai.  Evidence is presented for the existence of X' in Thai, in
particular, N' and V', and most probably A' and P' as well, if a
similar kind of argumentation is applied.  There is a concluding
discussion of the implications.

Martha Ratliff, in "Hmong-Mien demonstratives and pattern
persistence," examines the persistence of a 3-way, person-oriented
demonstrative system in the Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) family.  The
Hmong Daw (White Hmong) demonstrative ko 'that-near you' is
discussed in detail.  Ratliff comments on the implications of pattern
persistence in relation to Southeast Asia areal types, relexification,
and Hmong-Mien as Austro-Tai.

Christiane Cormo, in "Towards a constructivist approach of the
Japanese 'Passive'," recategorizes Japanese passive verbs according
to the pronominal approach in a constructivist framework.

Joseph F. Kess and Tadao Miyamoto, in "Psycholinguistic aspects of
Hanji processing in Chinese," explore the psycholinguistic
dimensions of logographic hanji character processing and linguistic
recognition in Chinese.  They review the current literature on the
subject and attempt to synthesize the conflicting explanations offered
by two opposing theoretical models of Chinese lexical access, word
recognition, and the architecture of the Chinese mental lexicon.

The final paper in the volume, Ernest W. Lee's, "Austronesian for
ordinary speakers of Austronesian languages" demonstrates the
pedagogical technique of introducing the notion of a proto-language
and daughter languages to non-linguist Austronesian speakers from
the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu using Roglai (Vietnam) and
Maguindanao (Philippines) cognates.

Errata for two articles that appeared in MKS 26, and a publications
list of the Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development at
Mahidol University complete this issue.

Soliciting, compiling, and editing articles for inclusion in dedicatory
or special issues of journals is difficult in itself; the editors of MKS
have done an admirable job on the last three volumes.  My only
criticism is that in a few papers (e.g., Ratliff, Cormo), some works
cited are not referenced in the bibliography, making it difficult to
follow up on an interesting topic.

Bibliography

Benedict, Paul K.  1972  Sino-Tibetan: a Conspectus.  James A
Matisoff,  contributing ed.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Benedict, Paul K.  1975  Austro-Thai Language and Culture.  New
Haven: Human Relations Area Files.

Huffman, Franklin E.  1990  Burmese Mon, Thai Mon, and Nyah Kur:
A Synchronic Comparison.  MKS 16-17:31-84.

Li, Fang-Kuei.  1977  A Handbook of Comparative Tai.  Oceanic
Linguistics Special Publications, 15.  Honolulu: The University Press
of Hawaii.

The author of this review is Neil H. Olsen, Information Planner with
Salt Lake City Corporation.  He earned a M.A. in linguistics from the
University of Utah in 1994.  Olsen has been an adjunct instructor at
the English Language Institute, University of Utah.  His linguistic
interests focus on South Bahnaric languages, where he did field work
with Koho speakers in Vietnam (1967-68) and in North Carolina
(1997).  He is currently working on a Koho grammar and dictionary.








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