Re: A new Indo-European subfamily in China

Roger Mills wrote:

>Kristian Jensen wrote:
>>Completely different. Malay and Filipino are Austronesian. Chinese
>>and Burmese are Sino-Tibetan. Thai is Daic. Khmer and Vietnamese are
>>Austro-Asiatic. Austronesian langs are almost all non-tonal (except
>>for a few exceptions like the Chamic subfamily). Same goes for
>>Austro-Asiatic but its most well known member, Vietnamese, is certainly
>>tonal cuz of its strong influence from Chinese. Both Vietnamese and Cham
>>are tonal due to Chinese influence.>
>
>As to the latter, more likely Chinese influenced VN, which influenced Cham,
>but that's just my guess.
That must certainly hold true for Cham in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand.
The Cham in Hainan island, however, is said to have been influenced quite
strongly from the surrounding languages; Yao (Miao-Yao), Li (Daic), and
Chinese. Unfortunately, I think the language is extinct now.

> I've heard Khmer described as being en route to
>becoming tonal-- vowel are diphthongized, voiced stops are breathy (heading
>toward voiceless?) and supposedly produce different "registers", whatever
>that means.
Registers are phonations, rather than intonation, of entire syllables. Mon
for instance has a phonemic contrast between modal versus breathy voiced
register.

-kristian- 8)