Austroasiatic Syntax in Areal and Diachronic Perspective elevates historical morpho-syntax to a research priority in the field of Southeast Asian language history, transcending the traditional focus on phonology and lexicon. The volume contains eleven chapters covering a wide range of aspects of diachronic Austroasiatic syntax, most of which contain new hypotheses, and several address topics that have never been dealt with before in print, such as clause structure and word order in the proto-language, and reconstruction of Munda morphology successfully integrating it into Austroasiatic language history. Also included is a list of proto-AA grammatical words with evaluative and contextualizing comments.
Mathias Jenny, Ph.D (2005) University of Zurich, is a senior researcher and lecturer at that university. His main fields of interest are language contact and language change in Southeast Asia, with a special focus on the languages of Myanmar/Burma, on which he has conducted fieldwork and widely published over the past twenty years.
Paul Sidwell, Ph.D. (1999) University of Melbourne, is an Associate at Sydney University and a partner in the firm Language Intelligence (Canberra). His research focuses on Austroasiatic language history and implications for the language and history of Mainland Southeast Asia.
Mark J. Alves, Ph.D. (2000) University of Hawaii, is a Professor at Montgomery College and the Editor-in-Chief of JSEALS. His research has centered on Vietnamese language history, which also encompasses surrounding language groups, including Sinitic/Chinese,Tai, Vietic, and Austroasiatic broadly.
Preface List of Illustrations and Tables Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Austroasiatic Syntax in Diachronic and Areal Perspective Paul Sidwell, Mathias Jenny and Mark Alves
Part 1 Syntactic Reconstruction
1 Verb-Initial Structures in Austroasiatic Languages Mathias Jenny
2 Initial Steps in Reconstructing Proto-Vietic Syntax Mark Alves
3 Nicobarese Comparative Syntax Paul Sidwell
Part 2 Northern Austroasiatic Word Order
4 Verb-Initial Order, Gender, and Diachrony in Khasian Hiram Ring
5 Word Order in the Wa Languages Atsushi Yamada
Part 3 Munda
6 Proto-Munda Prosody, Morphotactics and Morphosyntax in South Asian and Austroasiatic Contexts Gregory Anderson
7 The Proto-Munda Predicate and the Austroasiatic Language Family Felix Rau
8 Proto-Kherwarian Negation, TAM and Person-Indexing Interdependencies Bikram Jora and Gregory Anderson
9 Relative Clauses in Santali: A Matching Analysis Approach Mayuri Dilip, Rajesh Kumar, Kārumūri V. Subbārāo, G. Uma Maheshwar Rao and Martin Everaert
Part 4 Grammatical Lexicon
10 Grammatical Words in Austroasiatic: An Annotated Comparative Vocabulary with Reconstructions Mark Alves, Mathias Jenny and Paul Sidwell
Index
The volume will appeal to students and academics interested in language and history of Southeast Asia, historical reconstruction, especially reconstruction of word order and morpho-syntax.