Re: Two language families linked

Barry wrote:

>I read somewhere that some linguists link Austronesian with the Tai-kadai
>family. Am i remembering right? Any idea why? What would those two
>families share that is enough to cause some linguists to link them
>together?
I'm behind about 300 posts, so pardon me if someone already answered
this. I have skimmed Benedict's book "Austro-Thai: Language and Culture"
and the evidence appears to be mostly sound correspondences/changes. This
proposed family also includes the Miao-Yao languages. The Austro-Asiatic
languages at the time of writing (1975) was proposed only as a substrate
of Austro-Thai. Basically, Austro-Thai is proposed as being predominantly
disyllabic like Austronesian but Thai has preserved only the last syllable,
while Miao-Yao only the first if not a prefixed form. Clusters were also
significantly reduced in the Austronesian and Miao-Yao forms. For example,
from my notes we have (with affixation in brackets):

       AT             AN             KD             MY
EYE    *mapLa         maTa           []pra          maay<maat
KILL   *[pa]play      paTay           --            tay<[p]tay
DIE    *[ma]play      maTay          []pla(a)y      day<tay

(where: AT=Austro-Thai, AN=Proto-Austronesian, KD=Kadai, and MY=Miao-Yao)

-kristian- 8)