Re: Fluency Wish-List

In a message dated 4/15/2000 3:43:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time, bpj@NETG.SE
writes:

<< At 17:19 13.4.2000 -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
 >I've heard it said that Khmer is on its way to becoming a tonal language,
 >hardly surprising since it's surrounded by them.  Its influence on Acinese
 >(N.Sumatra) is clear

 How did it come about? >>

Which?
Becoming tonal:  most importantly, has to do with initial voiced stops >
voiceless but with lowered tone or register.  Same thing has been observed
ongoing in other SE Asian langs. as well as historically in Thai, and
Vietnamese and perhaps Chinese too.  There is apparently an acoustic
explanation-- but I have this on hearsay so really can't explain.
Influence on Achinese:  (1) tendency to reduce bisyllables to mono, by final
stress and deletion of old penult V (2) breaking/diphthongization of stressed
vowels such that *i > o@, *u > e@ among others; e.g. *t@lu 'three' > Ach.
lhe@ --very odd development of the new initial cluster too.  Similar changes
are found in the Chamic languages still spoken in Vietnam, which additionally
show the voiced stop > vl + low tone change.  Lots of Austoasiatic loanwords
(not necessarily just Khmer) in both groups too.
I'm not aware of any good history on the movements of people in pre-contact
SEA, but it's generally held that the Achinese did not reach Sumatra until
around 1000 CE, so presumably they were on the mainland before that.  As you
may know, from ca. 200 CE on, there were a number of Indianized "states" in
what are now Cambodia/Thailand/Burma and Vietnam-- the former were Mon-Khmer,
the latter Chamic (malayo-polynesian), generally always at war with each
other.  Big turmoil around 900-1000 occasioned by (1) Burmese came down out
of SW China, (2) Thai likewise-- both effectively ending Mon-Khmer
dominations in those areas; (3) Viets pushing South down the coast  from
S.China/N.Vietnam, conquering and crowding out the Chams, some of whom
retreated into the mountainous interior where they still are.  My guess is
that the Proto Achinese probably were another displaced group that wandered
in Southern Vietnam/Cambodia until moving to Sumatra. (The really interesting
question-- what was happening in China that impelled the Burmese, Thai and
VNese to get out??? A little early, and too far south,  for the Mongols, I
think.)
Best reference that I know of for this period:  Coedès, Indianized States of
SE Asia (also in French, Etats Hindouisées....); almost everything based on
inscriptions or later, difficult to interpret chronicles.  All the kings seem
to be named Jayavarman, which gets confuzzing.
Interesting theoretical sidebar:  the phonological history suggests that
Chamic  and Achinese subgroup with Malay.  It's possible then, that the Chams
were relatively late settlers/traders on the coast of Vietnam, not
indigenous; part of an apparently large Proto-Malay Volkerwanderung just
before/around the beginning of the CE.