Embedded Files
News
News
2018 Lincom Europa published my monograph length study The Khasian Languages: Classification, Reconstruction, and Comparative Lexicon. Those of you familiar with my previous reconstructions published by Lincom Languages of the World series will recognize the style and layout. I plan 3 more in the series yet before I synthesize the work into a Handbook of proto-Austroasiatic (or something along those lines).
Other matters of interest:
Other matters of interest:
Nagaraja's short description of Bhoi Khasi, including basic word list, is now available here.
You can download Badakerlin Lyngdoh's description of Maram (PhD thesis) here or from Shodhganga.
Hiram Ring kindly prepared this map at short notice for the new book, (thanks Hiram!) see below.
Classification
Classification
To investigate classification this, I compiled a lexical data-set based on the 1971 Swadesh 100 list, for 15 doculects, including Khasi, Pnar, Maram, Lyngngam, and War, plus 2 Palaungic varieties (Lameet and Palaung Namshan) to root the tree.
Some of the semantic categories in the Swedesh list are merged in Khasian languages: skin/bark, sleep/lie down, so the total length of the list is 98 items.
Lexical items are scored as cognate or not according to my current comparative reconstruction. You can inspect the data here, and the Nexus file here (as in .txt format).
Using Splits Tree 4.13.1 I generated the Phylogram (neighbor-Joining) on the left and the Neighbor-Net (default settings) further below.
The phylogram largely aligns with the classification offered with Weidert at the Second International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics at Mysore in 1978, immediately below.
There are difference between Weidert's tree and the most recent analysis, left.
Bhoi Khasi comes within the Pnar-Khasi clade in the new phylogram;
Maram lects (Nobosohpoh, Mawranglang) are now included, and form a sister clade with Pnar-Khasi.
Lyngngam is a sister to the Pnar-Khasi-Maram clade, rather than a primary branch.
The branching relations indicated here suggest that Khasi began as a marginal Pnar dialect which subsequently expanded and restructured under special social conditions, especially the British colonization and Christian proselytization in recent centuries. Khasi is therefore not particularly conservative, and it is simply an accident of history that it is the best documented representative of the branch.
My existing publications directly related to Khasian:
My existing publications directly related to Khasian:
2014 Proto-Khasian: An emerging reconstruction. In Gwendolyn Hyslop, Linda Konnerth, Stephen Morey & Priyankoo Sarmah (eds) North East Indian Linguistics 6. Canberra; Asia Pacific Linguistics. pp. 149–166.
2013 (with K. S. Nagaraja & Simon Greenhill) A Lexicostatistical Study of the Khasian Languages: Khasi, Pnar, Lyngngam, and War. Mon-Khmer Studies 42:1–11
2011. Proto Khasian and Khasi-Palaungic. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 4.2:144-168.
Google Sites
Report abuse