The Handbook of the Austroasiatic Languages is the first comprehensive reference work on this important language family of South and Southeast Asia. Austroasiatic languages are spoken by more than 100 million people, from central India to Vietnam, from Malaysia to Southern China, including national language Cambodian and Vietnamese, and more than 130 minority communities, large and small.
The handbook comprises two parts,
Overviews and
Grammar Sketches:
Part 1) The overview chapters cover typology, classification, historical reconstruction, plus a special overview of the Munda languages.
Part 2) Some 27 scholars present grammar sketches of 21 languages, representing 12 of the 13 branches. The sketches are carefully prepared according to the editors’ unifying typological approach, ensuring analytical and notational comparability throughout.
Mathias Jenny, Ph.D. (2005) University of Zurich, is senior researcher at that university. His research focuses on language history, typology, and contact in Southeast Asia. He has published numerous journal articles on the languages of Myanmar and Thailand, as well as the monograph
The Verb System of Mon (2005).
Paul Sidwell, Ph.D. (1999, University of Melbourne) is an ARC Future Fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra. His research focusses on the history and classification of Austroasiatic languages and implications for social history of SEAsia. He authored
Classifying the Austroasiatic Languages (2009).
Contributors are Mark Alves, Gregory D. S. Anderson, Aung Si, Kevin Bätscher, Walter Bisang, Kees Jan Bos, Marc Brunelle, Supakit Buakaw, Niclas Burenhult, Becky Butler, Sujaritlak Deepadung, Arthur Holmer, Nicole Kruspe, Jinfang Li, Yongxian Luo, Patrick McCormick, Keralapura Shreenivasaiah Nagaraja, Neil H. Olsen, Suwilai Premsrirat, Ampika Rattanapitak, Felix Rau, Hiram Ring, Nattamon Rojanakul, Kenneth D. Smith, Jan-Olof Svantesson, Tobias Weber, Rachel Weymuth, and Ewelina Wnuk.
All interested in grammars and language sketches, endangered languages, language history, language contact, typology, language documentation, language classification, the austroasiatic languages and the mon-khmer languages.