Major families of languages in Southeast Asia. Languages and writing of East Asia. Information about the research staff of the department is presented in the directory
Languages of Southeast Asia
The linguistic map of Southeast Asia is very colorful. This is especially true for Indochina. In almost every region we find representatives of different language families and groups. Next to the languages of nations of many millions there are languages whose number of speakers is estimated at a few hundred people.
The distribution of some languages and their groups is very discontinuous and mosaic. However, a more in-depth examination of the language picture of Southeast Asia reveals much more features of unity and commonality than differences. Almost all the languages spoken here belong to three large families - Malayo-Polynesian, Mon-Khmer and Sino-Tibetan. There are theories linking all these three families into a single Pacific language trunk. Such views were expressed in the last century by J. Logan, and later by A. Conradi, K. Wolfe and others. Indeed, there are certain connections between these three families. As we shall see below, sometimes it is even possible to outline transitional links from one family to another. Part of this interfamily commonality may date back to a supposed era of primitive linguistic continuity; in addition, it is necessary to remember the millennia of contacts and mutual influences of all three families in the territory under consideration.
Of the families mentioned, only the Mon-Khmer family can be said with sufficient certainty that its formation took place within Indo-China and in neighboring regions of the Asian mainland. To this day, the Mon-Khmer languages are spoken only in Indochina and partly in adjacent territories - in Assam, on the Nicobar Islands, in southwestern China (in Yunnan).
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are represented in Southeast Asia by one of their four branches, namely the Indonesian languages. In Indonesia and the Philippines, they are distributed almost exclusively, and in Indochina only in the south; outside Southeast Asia, they are used in Taiwan and Madagascar. However, Southeast Asia was unlikely to have been captured by the area of their original formation, which was most likely limited to the southeast coast of China. In West Irian, part of the population speaks the languages of another branch of the same family - Melanesian.
Sino-Tibetan languages were formed within East Asia and relatively late penetrated the territory of Indochina.
In addition, in some regions of Southeast Asia, part of the population speaks Indo-European and Dravidian languages, mainly common in Hindustan, which penetrated Southeast Asia in ancient times, and in our time are organically included in the linguistic picture of this part of the ecumene. It is especially important to note that they had a very strong influence on the largest indigenous languages of Southeast Asia, significantly enriching their vocabulary, influencing toponymy, phraseology, and even grammar. In this regard, there is a certain parallelism between the majority of the language groups of Southeast Asia - in each of them there are languages of the peoples of ancient culture that have experienced Indian (as well as Chinese) influence, and languages \u200b\u200bof close to them of mountain tribes, more archaic and have not experienced such an impact. Such a correlation is observed between the language of the Hinduized Mons (Talain) and the languages of the mountain Mons, the language of the Chams and the languages of the mountain Indonesians, the Khmer language and the languages of the mountain Khmers, the languages of Khontai and the mountain Tai, the Burmese and the ranks close to them, among the Chinese-influenced Vietnamese and who have not experienced such influence of the Muongs. The same can be seen in Indonesia.
Finally, it is necessary to mention the Papuan languages. They are mainly distributed in New Guinea, primarily in the politically and historically connected Czech with Indonesia West Irian. Structurally similar languages have been preserved in those regions of Indonesia where Indonesian languages predominate - on the islands of Ternate and Tidore, in the north of Halmahera, in the interior of the island of Timor. Obviously, in ancient times, in the Neolithic era, these languages were much more widespread in Indonesia and preceded Indonesian here, and possibly the Mon-Khmer languages in part of Indochina. Structurally, the languages of the natives of the Andaman Islands can be close to the Papuan languages.
Among the Sino-Tibetan languages of Southeast Asia, one can distinguish such branches as Thai (called Zhuangtun in Chinese literature); Tibeto-Burmese, Miao-Yao, Chinese proper and Viet-Muong. However, the inclusion of Thai, Miao-Yao, and especially Viet-Muong languages into this family is debatable.
Most characteristic of the Sino-Tibetan languages is that all their vocabulary, with the exception of words borrowed from Indo-European languages, is composed of root syllables. Each root, each minimal carrier of semantic and grammatical meaning is one syllable. In the process of word formation and inflection, these root syllables are combined; At the same time, it is important to note that word formation in the vast majority of cases follows the path of formation of binomials, i.e., paired combinations of root syllables. However, usually each syllable retains its sound completely and does not experience any phonemic deformation.
The number of possible syllables in all Sino-Tibetan languages is strictly limited, although the set of phonemes in them is quite rich. The fact is that the sounds of different groups can occupy only a certain place in the syllable. Most consonants are at the beginning of a syllable, followed by a simple or compound vowel, and at the end of a syllable there may again be a consonant, but not any. In addition, combinations of neighboring consonants and vowels are not possible, but only strictly defined ones.
When parsing Sino-Tibetan syllables, these three positional classes of phonemes are commonly referred to as the initial, tonal, and final, respectively. They are present in most of the languages of this group, although some may lack finals.
Most often, initials and finals are simple consonants. Combinations of consonants are found in a limited number in initials and almost never occur in finals. At the same time, all languages of this family have a tendency to constrict combinations of consonants into simple sounds: for example, the archaic thlam (three) in the Kaolan language of the Thai group corresponds to sam in the Thai, Khontai, and Lao languages. However, a syllable constructed according to all the rules is not yet a root syllable - it does not make sense in itself. An obligatory element of the root syllable is the tone. The same syllable with different tones will represent different monosyllabic words.
Internal relations of root syllables in binomial are similar syntactic relations in a phrase, this is the relationship of the defined and the definition, the verb and the object, the circumstance and the verb, etc. Thus, the attributive connection is obvious in the Vietnamese binomials he lu'a (cart + fire) - train, nha may (house + cars) - plant . The verb-objective connection is present in the binomials with t?L (to have + person) - to be present, tra loi (to return + words) - to answer. Often, especially common root syllables - components of binomials lose their real meaning and turn into some kind of affixes. However, the connection of such affixes with the original meaningful words remains very clear, and such an affixation can be called rudimentary, in contrast to the developed affixation inherent, for example, in Indo-European languages. An example of such an affix is the Viet formant of the adjectives dang with the independent meaning "worthy". From the verbs khen (praise), kinh (respect), it forms the adjectives dang khen (commendable), dang kinh (venerable).
The Tibeto-Burmese languages developed in the north of East Asia, in the contact zone between the Sino-Tibetan and Altaic languages. The influence of the Altaic languages affected their syntax: the predicate closes the phrase, the definition precedes the defined, and the object precedes the verb. It can be traced in their vocabulary; thus, the Burmese mrang (horse) is comparable to the Mongolian morin (tigep) with the same meaning.
The Tibeto-Burmese languages of Southeast Asia fall into four groups: Burmese, which includes Burmese, several Naga languages, and many Chin languages; the Kachin group with the Kachin language; the group of zu with the languages Akha, Uni, etc.; finally, the Karen group, whose languages stand somewhat apart, closer in syntactic structure to the Thai rather than to the Tibeto-Burmese languages.
The question of the division of the Chinese branch is complex. The Chinese language, widespread in Southeast Asia, is divided into several dialects. Moreover, if the Safang dialect, which exists in the north-west of Vietnam, is close to the Yunnan dialect and thus belongs to the same northern dialect group as the common Chinese Putonghua, the southern dialects are much more common - Guangdong (Yue), Fujian (Min), Hakka (Kejia). In Thailand, Malaya and Indonesia, these dialects are to some extent imbued with the vocabulary of the languages of the indigenous population, experiencing their phonetic influence; the dialects of the Indonesian Chinese can hardly be fully identified with the speech of the Chinese of those regions of China, from where the resettlement to Indonesia took place.
Now, when in China the spread of the all-Chinese norm - Putonghua, which not only displaces local dialects, but also preliminarily modifies them, has taken on a colossal scale, this discrepancy is becoming especially strong, because the influence of Putonghua does not spread beyond the territory of China to such an extent. In addition, in the regions of Vietnam bordering China, there are a number of peoples who are not Chinese, but are historically related to the peoples of the Tzu (Kuityau) group or the peoples of the Yao (Sanju) group. Their languages are based on Chinese dialects - southern (Guangdong) for Sanju and Santi, northern (Guizhou) for Kuytau. These languages also have their own specific substratum, the Zu Zu or Yao, and their further development proceeds not under Chinese, but under Viet influence.
If the formation of the Tibeto-Burmese and Chinese branches took place in the northern half of East Asia, then the formation of the Miao-Yao, Thai and Viet-Muong branches took place in the center and especially in the south of this territory, from where they penetrated into Indochina. Therefore, their history and typological characteristics have much in common, and they can be collectively called the southern Sino-Tibetan languages. The most noticeable common feature in the typology of these languages, which distinguishes them from Chinese and Tibeto-Burmese (except for Karen) is the postpositivity of the definition, often absolute, but sometimes (among the Miao-Yao) allowing for an exception, especially for pronominal definitions. Thus, in the mentioned Kaolan language of the Thai group, the construction “my father’s house” is consistently postpositive: “anlan hon sa koi”, i.e. “home is an indicator of belonging-father-I”. In the Meo (Miao) language of Vietnam, in the Black Meo dialect, this sequence is broken, and we have "cei ku9i"; in the Meo-man dialect of Vietnam, close to the Mabu-Miao of China, "cai va pa" (literally "home - I am the father"). Accordingly, the verb control is usually prepositional, but in some dialects of Miao and Yao it can also be postpositional: in the Man language of Vietnam, in the Man Tien dialect, “under the tree” sounds “Bai dyan”, where bai is a preposition; in Man Lan Tien we have "gyan kChoi", where k'toi is a postposition.
A common moment in the history of the formation of the three "southern" branches of the Sino-Tibetan family is their relationship with Schmidt's Austric, i.e. Mon-Khmer (Austroasiatic) and Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) languages. The formation of the southern Sino-Tibetan languages most likely took place in the conditions of primitive linguistic continuity, in which, obviously, there were Sanmiao, Yue, etc. tribes recorded by ancient Chinese chronicles of different eras. ”), it should be remembered that the interpretation of the ethnonyms of ancient Chinese chronicles, and in general any division related to the era of linguistic continuity, is very conditional. In essence, we are talking about continuity between the totality of the ancient tribes of South China and the modern southern Sino-Tibetan languages as a whole. Later, in the last centuries BC, a particularly important role was played by the Loyue tribes, or Lak Viet (in the Viet pronunciation), whom we can consider as carriers of the Thai and Viet proto-languages, which by this time had crystallized out of a state of primitive continuity.
It is these historical data that best agree with the point of view of Maspero, who most closely connects the Thai and Vietnamese languages, while Pzhilusky, Audricourt and other scientists separate them and bring the Vietnamese language closer to Smon-Khmer. With the Mon-Khmer languages, the Miao-Yao languages were repeatedly brought together.
As for the Thai languages, Benedict brings them closer to the Malayo-Polynesian ones, and the Kadai group, made up of the languages of Gelao (Miao-Yao branch), Hainan Li, Lati and Lakwa in northern Vietnam (Thai branch) serves as a connecting link. On a broader scale, he divides all the languages of Southeast Asia into two families - Sino-Tibetan, which includes the northern Sino-Tibetan languages of our classification, and Proto-Austrian, which, along with all the southern Sino-Tibetan languages, includes both Mon-Khmer and Austronesian (which he calls Indonesian), with Mon-Khmer closer to Vietnamese, Indonesian to Thai.
Constructions similar to Benedict's scheme, reflecting the series real facts, however, do not stand up to extensive criticism. From a historical point of view, it is difficult to reconcile the ethnic affinity of the ancestors of the Viet and the ancestors of the Tai with Haudricourt's opinion about their linguistic dissimilarity; one cannot ignore the great closeness of the Thai languages with Chinese and Karen, as Benedict does. The various members of his kadai group are all too obviously linked with either the Tai or the Miao. However, the parallels noted by these authors are not far-fetched: they are real and very tangible.
Thus, we see a very complex interweaving of lines of similarity between languages: these lines will always stretch between languages of different families, no matter how they are distributed according to one scheme or another. The explanation for such a complex picture lies in the combination of different phenomena: firstly, in the relics of the Pacific language trunk - the linguistic continuity dating back to the deepest antiquity between the ancestors of all three families of Southeast Asia - Sino-Tibetan, Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian; secondly, in later emerging in general terms languages of smaller groups, which retained this continuity longer; thirdly, in neighboring influences; fourthly, and this will be last but not least, in the substrate influences exerted by the Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian languages on the southern Sino-Tibetan languages that assimilate them, and in the superstratum influence of the Sino-Tibetan languages on the Mon -Khmer if no such assimilation occurs.
Typologically, the Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian languages are similar, but differ from the Sino-Tibetan languages in the presence of a developed affixation. As a classic example of the Malayo-Polynesian language, we can consider the modern Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia).
If in the Sino-Tibetan languages the root word serves as the main detail, the brick from which the building of speech is built, then in the Indonesian language the root word plays its role. This is an invariable unit of speech, which, as a rule, does not allow any inflection and is able to act as a separate independent word. The root syllable has the same qualities, but differs The main difference between the root word is that most often it is disyllabic and does not phonemically fall into positional classes. Further, if word formation by word formation is also inherent in root syllables, then only the root word makes it possible to form word by affixation, and affixes, taken separately, are no longer root words. The Indonesian language knows all kinds of affixes - prefixes, suffixes and even infixes - particles that wedged into the root word. So, the prefixes those and per form the verb memperbesar (increase) from the word besar (big, great). The suffix an forms the word kiriman (sending) from the verb kirim (send). The infix em forms the adjective gemuruh (deafening) from the word guruh (thunder).
Reduplication, that is, repetition, is used primarily for the formation plural, for example saudara-saudara- friends, comrades, from saudara-friend, brother (in the letter this is depicted saudara2). But with mata (eye), mata-mata gives a new word - spy.
Defective reduplication is also possible, when only part of the word or only its first consonant is repeated (with the addition of the vowel e), for example, lelaki (male) from laki (male). An interesting example of a combination of prefixation with defective reduplication is given by ma-sak-sakit ("fragile" in Ilok) from the stem sakit (sickly). Similarly, but without defectiveness, Tagalog "very good" (ma-buting-buting) is formed.
The same methods are used in various cases of inflection, which is available, although it is used on a very limited scale. Finally, it should be noted that prefixation generally prevails over suffixation, and in the field of syntax in the Malayo-Polynesian languages, as well as in the Mon-Khmer and southern Sino-Tibetan languages, the post-positivity of the definition is characteristic.
The internal division of the Indonesian languages is difficult. The features of unity are very strong even outside of Indonesia - from Madagascar to Taiwan. Some languages, such as Javanese, retain a complex archaic grammar, while others are much simpler, such as Indonesian or Boogie Macassar, etc. It should be noted that it is impossible to state any regular difference between the languages spoken by the so-called Proto-Malays and Deuteromalays. In this regard, the question of the time and ways of spreading the Indonesian languages in Indonesia is very complicated. A confident answer can only be given regarding the events of a later time - about the appearance of individual languages on certain islands or island groups. The languages of the Indonesian branch of the Malayo-Polynesian family are so closely related to each other by a system of gradual transitions that their division into groups is rather arbitrary - it is difficult to establish clear boundaries between them. In general, the Indonesian languages can be divided into Western, Eastern and Northern languages. The western group, which includes all the languages of Sumatra, Java and Bali, is also joined by the Indonesian languages common on the mainland; The connecting link here is the Ache language, in which the Mon-Khmer substratum is noticeable. Languages eastern group, common in the Lesser Sunda Islands, on the contrary, have some similarities with the Melanesian ones. This similarity is even clearer in the languages of the northern group, represented mainly in the Philippines. The languages of the peoples of Kalimantan and Sulawesi combine the features of all three or any two of these groups. The languages of the peoples of Kalimantan are studied worse than others; the languages of the center and north of Sulawesi gravitate toward Filipino, the southeast toward East Indonesian, and the southwest (Boogie Macassar) toward West Indonesian.
West Indonesian languages can be divided into mainland and insular subgroups. To the first we will include the Cham language and the languages of the mountain Indonesians (ede, jaray, raglai and others), and to the second - the languages of the island world of Southeast Asia. The mainland languages can be seen as a transition from Malayo-Polynesian to Mon-Khmer. W. Schmidt even considered them as languages with an Austroasiatic basis, but which were strongly influenced by the Malayo-Polynesian languages. It would be more correct, however, to speak of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which were strongly influenced by the Mon-Khmer substratum, which is especially noticeable in the languages of the mountain Indonesians.
These languages are characterized by the transition of two-syllable root words into monosyllabic ones by contraction, as in Cham, or truncation, as in Ede. The Indonesian tahun (year) has the Cham counterpart thun, the Acean kehim has the Cham khim (to smile), the Javanese puluh (ten) has the Cham pluh; Indonesian bini (wife) to Cham mnie; Indonesian djalan (way), ratus (one hundred), langit (sky) correspond to Edes "lan, 4uh, "ngit.
In the mainland subgroup, Indonesian words are subject to contraction, in the island region the number of open syllables has increased in them, the consonant composition has become simpler, and consonant combinations have been eliminated. This phenomenon is noticeable in the peripheral languages of Eastern Indonesia and peaks outside of Southeast Asia, in Polynesia.
As mentioned above, the Malayo-Polynesian language-base was formed, obviously, in the southeast of China. The beginning of its fragmentation, as well as the beginning of the Malayo-Polynesian expansion, is attributed by some authors, in particular Mielke, according to glottochronological analysis, to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e., others - to an even earlier time. This time coincides with the era of the largest economic and cultural changes in East Asia, with the rapid growth of productive forces and population, which set in motion the entire circle of tribes inhabiting the south of present-day China, which until modern times have been moving since then continuously following one after another by migration flows. to Southeast Asia.
In fact, there are two main possible routes for the Indonesians: one along the coast of China and Indochina, where the Chams remained, then to Western Indonesia and from there east and northeast, to Eastern Indonesia, to the Philippines, to Taiwan. But the resettlement could also go in the reverse order - through Taiwan to the Philippines, and from here to Indonesia and Indochina.
Most likely, migration from the very beginning went in both directions, but in Eastern Indonesia the movement from west to east must have taken precedence, because within Indonesia the depth of antiquity of linguistic traditions decreases with the advance to the east of the archipelago, which, therefore, underwent Indonesian linguistic assimilation later than the west.
It remains for us to touch on the current state of the Indonesian languages. Both due to historical circumstances and due to the specifics of the phonetic composition, namely the absence of positional classes, their vocabulary turned out to be much more easily permeable to foreign influences than that of the Mon-Khmer and Sino-Tibetan languages. Therefore, there is much more than in the latter, and in a less modified form, not only Indian and Chinese borrowings, but also a lot of Arabisms that penetrated with Islam, later European borrowings (in the languages of Indonesia, mainly Dutch, in the Filipino languages - Spanish).
Khmer (Cambodian) can be described as an example of the Mon-Khmer languages. The basic Khmer speech unit is a cross between a Sino-Tibetan root syllable and an Indonesian root word. The original Khmer root word (lexical and grammatical borrowings, numerous in all national languages Southeast Asia) can be decomposed into positional classes: a consonant initial from one consonant or several, combined according to certain principles, a medial vowel (it cannot be called a tonal for reasons that such a distinction is not necessary) and a final from one consonant. Examples of Khmer root words are Krup ("whole", "complete"), cEh (verb "to know"). Sometimes in a complex initial there is a fluent connecting vowel sound (for example, the word “teeth” is possible in the “thmen and tamen” forms, but even in this case, the word remains phonemically monosyllabic. Khmer vowels fall into two rows. Vowels of the first row can form independent syllables, and vowels of the second row are possible only with a consonant initial.The second row is characterized not only by closedness, but also by a lower pitch.So here already lies the possibility of developing a system of tonality, which was realized in some languages of the mountain Mons.
AT Khmer, as in Malayo-Polynesian, there are suffixes, prefixes and infixes, often representing not even a syllable, but one consonant. All of them have a word-forming meaning. So, the prefix k - forms Mie1 (exhaustion) from dual (fall). The infix - am - (options - amn-, - urn-, -umn-) form camnEh (knowledge) from cEh (to know), Kum-rup (to replenish) from Krup (full). However, the possibilities of affixal word formation in modern language are significantly narrowed: only minor traces of suffixation remain, and most prefixes and infixes have lost productivity. But great importance acquired new prefixes and suffixes, often called semi-affixes, which, like the "affixes" of the Sino-Tibetan languages, go back to meaningful root words and retain their sound appearance. Thus, the root word neak, with the real meaning "son", serves as a prefix for nouns denoting occupations, for example, neaknipon - a writer, neakdaa - a walker.
There is no inflection in Khmer. Categories such as types of a verb are formed analytically, with the help of auxiliary words, moreover, optional ones.
Approximately the same features are inherent in other Mon-Khmer languages, which within Indochina form several groups - Mon, Gorno-Mon with subgroups of the northern (Va, Palaun) and southern (Xakau, Khmu), Gorno-Khmer with subgroups of the northern (re, Sui), central (banar, sedangi) and southern (mnongi, ma) and, finally, Khmer proper, where, obviously, in addition to the Khmer language, the Kui languages, as well as the tribal languages of Por, Chon, Samre, which can essentially be considered as Khmer dialects. However, this division is very arbitrary, there are gradual transitions between these groups. It should be specially noted that there are no grounds to oppose the Mon languages to the Khmer ones: for all the differences between the classical Khmer and Talay languages, they are connected by an uninterrupted chain of gradual transitions.
At the same time, even between close languages there are sometimes quite significant differences. So, in the Khmer language there is now a five-fold counting system, i.e. 6, 7, 8 are expressed as 5 + 1, 5 + 2, 5 + 3 (pram-muy, pram-pil, pram-bei prityu - 1, ріг - 2, bei - 3, pram - 5), while in Gorno-Khmer languages the counting system is decimal, there are special words to represent all numbers from 1 to 10.
The Mon-Khmer languages should also include the Semang and Senoi languages. In their state of the art however, they have been so influenced by Indonesian influence that they are sometimes classified as such.
Some Mon-Khmer languages show more shifts towards Sino-Tibetan typology than is typical of the family as a whole. So, in the Lamet language (the southern Gorno-Mon subgroup) there are two tones that are of a semantic-distinctive nature, which most likely goes back to the Thai superstratum.
If in the Viet language itself the Mon-Khmer substratum is so strong that the question of including this language in the Mon-Khmer family is raised, then the manifestation of Mon-Khmer features is even more growing in the Muong language. Where the dividing line should be drawn between the Sino-Tibetan and Mon-Khmer languages is not yet entirely clear. Yes, and on the scale of the whole family as a whole, as is clear from the above, one can trace the growth of austric features in the Sino-Tibetan languages: they are already quite pronounced in the Miao and Yao languages, they are even more noticeable in the Kadai languages -
In Latin and Lakva. Kadai as a whole can be seen as an intermediate a link between Miao-Yao and Tai; not without reason Benedict included gelao (Miao language with a Thai substratum) and Li (Thai language with a Miao substratum) here. Then come the Thai languages, with their distinct Malayo-Polynesian and even more distinct Mon-Khmer connections; finally, the Viet language already has a vocabulary of a completely Mon-Khmer appearance, especially noticeable in some Muong dialects. But, as we have seen, such specifically Sino-Tibetan features as tonality, not to mention binomials, are not alien to the Austrian languages. Tracing of the Thai tavan - sun (literally "eye of the sky") is the Vietnamese mat-trai (mat - eye, trai - sky); among the mountain Mons, the sun is mat-bri (eye of the forest), among the Indonesians - mata^hari (eye of the day). In these words of such different languages of different families, one root - mat (eye), obviously, goes back to the times of their most ancient community. Other points of similarity (for example, the complete coincidence of the Khmer and Thai systems of analytical means of expressing speech relationships with the usually complete dissimilarity of the etymology of the corresponding particles) are obviously explained by many centuries of parallel development in similar conditions and close neighborly contact.
It should be remembered that all of the characteristics listed above, which are generally characteristic of the families described here, as a whole in their modern form, are not eternal, but historically developed categories. Even if there existed in the era of primitive linguistic continuity a commonality like the Pacific language trunk, then at that time there were still neither root syllables with their positional classes, nor tones - both arose in the process of contraction of polysyllabic words and phonetic simplification of monosyllabic ones.
The example of the evolution of the Rade and Cham languages clearly shows how the Mon-Khmer languages developed from disyllabicity to predominant monosyllabicity. In the ancient Chinese language, the remnants of inflection have been preserved, in the ancient Vietnamese and other Sino-Tibetan languages there was once a prefix. Thus, although the major Mon-Khmer, Sino-Tibetan, and Malayo-Polynesian languages appear sharply different at first glance, the connection between them is noted in the study of many intermediate tribal languages and is further strengthened by historical analysis.
One must think that the Sino-Tibetan languages were originally typologically similar to modern Indonesian and came to their current state through a stage similar to that at which the Mon-Khmer languages are now. The general line of development, therefore, seems to be the same for all the major languages of Southeast Asia.
A very special place among the languages of Southeast Asia is occupied by the Papuan languages. The main area of their modern distribution is New Guinea. However, in the past they were apparently much more widespread, almost throughout Indonesia, and perhaps even in Indochina. Although the Papuan languages are very diverse both in terms of vocabulary and grammar, they do have some common typological features. The languages close to the Papuan, spoken outside of New Guinea, can be divided into two main groups - Timorese and Northern Halmaher. They differ little in grammatical characteristics, but Halmacheric languages have a grammatical class category, sometimes called gender. . Nouns belong to one class or another, and this is reflected in the design of the members of the sentence that agree with them. There is no class category in the Timorese languages of Banak, Makasai, Waymaha, Kairui and other languages.
The Papuan languages are characterized by polysyllabic roots; despite the widespread use of composite words, it is impossible to talk about binomization in relation to these languages. They have a developed agglutinative inflection system with elements of inflection. Almost the only form of affixation is suffixation; related to this are the post-complex control and the preposition of the definition.
Typology of the languages of southern East Asia
The southern part of East Asia is inhabited by peoples whose languages are a much more difficult object of comparative historical research than the languages of its northern part. These difficulties are generated by their rather remarkable typological features.
All languages of this area have a pronounced syllogomorphemic structure, i.e., their morphemes or minimal meaningful units are usually equal in size to a syllable. In turn, these syllables are characterized by a very rigid structure. In some cases, it is quite complex, that is, it contains consonants at the beginning and end of a syllable, in others it is quite simple and then consists of syllables like CV or CVC.
In most of these languages, syllables are pronounced with a special musical tone, the case of which depends on the properties of the initial consonant: syllables with voiceless initial consonants are realized in a high register, syllables with voiced initial consonants - in a low one. For a long time it was believed that the tones of the Thai languages are realized in three registers - high, medium, low, but research recent years testify that in these languages, in reality, only two registers are actually distinguished - high and low [Li Fanggui, 1962, 31–36]. Thus, the mentioned rule has no exceptions.
In all the languages of southern East Asia, the relationships between words in a sentence are expressed using word order and auxiliary morphemes, which for the most part retain their significant functions. The languages of the southern part of East Asia, which have such important common structural characteristics, are considered in modern linguistics as representatives of the language type, which S. E. Yakhontov proposes to call "sinitic" [Yakhontov, 19716, 268].
The rules of word order in the languages of the southern part of East Asia were used in the first typological classification of the languages of this area, proposed by T. Delyakupri. The basis for his classification of languages was the place of the attribute in relation to the defined and the place of the object in relation to the verb. As a result, all the languages of East Asia were divided into two main types: Northern, where the attribute comes before the noun and object before the verb, and Southern, where the noun comes after the noun and the object comes after the verb. The principles proposed by T. Delyakupri had a significant impact on subsequent classifications of the languages of southern East Asia.
The classification of languages by W. Schmidt, which is considered genealogical, is in fact based on many typological criteria, among which the word order in a sentence occupies a prominent place. W. Schmidt singled out Sino-Tibetan languages in the area of East Asia, to which he also included the Yenisei, considering them the extreme northern languages of this group, Thai languages, Austroasiatic and Austronesian. The languages of the last group are distributed primarily on the islands of the South Seas, and only a small part of them is found in the southeast of the Asian continent.
In addition to the synchronous typological classifications discussed above, there is also one diachronic one proposed by SE Yakhontov in 1971. The essence of this classification is as follows. SE Yakhontov proceeds from the fact that the development of all the isolating syllabic languages of East Asia proceeds in the same direction. Depending on how far the processes of evolution of grammatical structure have gone in individual languages, the languages of this area can be divided into three evolutionary types: archaic, middle and late [Yakhontov, 1971, 269]. He considers Khmer, classical Tibetan, ancient Chinese of the 1st millennium BC as examples of archaic languages. e. Examples of middle type languages are Thai, Vietnamese, Yao. Examples of late languages are modern Chinese, Miao, Zu Zu, Burmese [ibid, 269–275].
In the 1960s, S. E. Yakhontov conducted a lexical and statistical study of the languages of the south of East Asia. The lexico-statistical method was created to estimate the time of separation of related languages based on the number of common words in the M. Swadesh list, named after the creator of this method, which contains the main, usually non-borrowed words of the language. There are two main lists of words - a large one, consisting of two hundred words, and a small one, consisting of one hundred words. The lists are used depending on the amount of available linguistic material and on the accuracy of the estimate of the time of language separation that the researcher is interested in. Despite the fact that the lexicostatistical method was proposed for the study of obviously related languages, it is actually also used to estimate the amount of common vocabulary in languages whose relationship has not been proven.
A lexical and statistical study of the main languages of the south of East Asia leads to the assertion of the existence of the following groups of languages with stable lexical connections within the list of M. Swadesh: Sino-Tibetan, Thai, Austroasiatic, Austronesian.
According to S. E. Yakhontov, the group of Sino-Tibetan languages is divided into two branches: Tibeto-Burmese and Chinese. He considers the Tibeto-Burmese languages to be the center of the grouping of the Tibeto-Burmese languages, around which all the others are grouped: Burmese, Naxi, Tangut, which are farther apart than each of them is from the Loz languages [Yakhontov, 1964, 3]. The Chinese language is an independent group of Sino-Tibetan languages and, in turn, is divided into a significant number of dialects that are very distant from each other, which, just like related languages, can be the subject of lexical and statistical analysis [ibid, 5] .
According to S. E. Yakhontov, already in the 4th millennium BC. e. Sino-Tibetan languages were distributed from Nepal and Assam in the south to the upper Yellow River in the north. The isolation of the Chinese language also dates back to this time. Such an early isolation of the Chinese language is the reason for relatively weak lexical ties with other languages of the Sino-Tibetan family [ibid., 6].
The Thai languages form a compact group with obvious genetic links. A lexical and statistical study of the Siamese language of Thailand, the languages of the Yunnanese Tai and the Nung language showed their close relationship. According to S. E. Yakhontov, the beginning of the collapse of the common Chinese language dates back to the 4th-6th centuries. [ibid., 7]. It is widely believed that the Thai languages are genetically related to Chinese. Lexico-statistical analysis of Chinese and Thai materials does not confirm this view. Both languages share a significant amount of common vocabulary, but there is little overlap within the Swadesh list. From this, S. E. Yakhontov concludes that the general vocabulary in these languages is the result of more or less late borrowings. A study of the vocabulary of the Thai language Li in Hainan, which only relatively recently came into contact with the Chinese language, shows that it contains almost no words of Chinese origin [ibid., 86].
The Austroasiatic languages group includes Monkhmer, Munda, Vietnamese, and the Miao-Yao languages. At the same time, the Vietnamese language shows a significant, and the Miao-Yao languages, a somewhat lesser lexical similarity with the Monkhmer languages. By themselves, the Miao and Yao languages represent a fairly compact group with obvious genetic links [ibid., 10].
A lexico-statistical study of a wider range of languages in the southern part of East Asia, also involving Indonesian, indicates the existence of very ancient lexical connections between the Monkhmer, Thai, and Indonesian languages. These groups constitute branches of the Austroasiatic, or, as S.E. Yakhontov calls it, Austric, family of languages [ibid., 9].
Thus, a lexical and statistical analysis of the languages of southern East Asia leads to the conclusion that all the languages of this area and part of the island world adjoining it belong to two main groups of languages: Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic. The division of each of these language groups began a very long time ago. All currently existing language groups of this area are the result of the division and mutual contacts of these main groups (Map 2).
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These languages are represented in East Asia, namely in Yunnan, by their Mon branch with two groups - Wa-Benglun (Kawa, Benlun languages) and Bulan (Bulan language). All these languages are characterized by the fact that tone as a meaningful element is almost absent in them. Only in some dialects of Kawa in relatively recent times, apparently under the influence of Chinese or Thai, a very limited number of words of the same sound composition appeared, the pronunciation of which under different tones gives them different meanings. Words and roots can be monosyllabic and polysyllabic, the system of affixation is developed, in syntax the addition follows the predicate, and the definition follows the determined. In general, the same characteristic applies to the Malayo-Polynesian languages.
Malayo-Polynesian family
On the territory of East Asia, this family is represented only by a small group of its Indonesian branch, and in a very limited area - these are the languages of the aborigines of Fr. Taiwan, which
rye can be summarized in the group of Gaoshan languages. Only the Yami language, common on about. Hongtoyu, east of Taiwan, stands somewhat apart from other Gaoshan languages, closer to the languages of the north of the Philippines.
Altai family
The Altai family has clearly defined specific features. The root vocabulary in these languages is largely polysyllabic. The morphology is predominantly agglutinative, and suffixes are used almost exclusively, each of which has only one certain value. The basis of the sentence is the predicate - the verb (or adjective), which is always at the end of the sentence. The object, direct or controlled by a postposition, is in front of the verb, the definition precedes the defined. However, the pronominal definition can be replaced by a possessive nominal construction in many languages. So, in the Mongolian language, instead of the lines ger "my yurt', you can say eer min" my yurt'. Such post-word possessives, as well as verb person markers where they exist, usually derive from truncated personal pronouns.
There are few unions in the languages of the Altaic family, their role is played by numerous gerund forms of verbs, which serve as predicates of subordinate clauses and have a wide variety of functions: temporary, causal, conditional, etc.
The most characteristic feature of the phonetics of the Altaic languages in the field of consonants is the impossibility of setting p or a combination of consonants in the initial position, and in the system of vowels - synharmonism, i.e. such a phenomenon when the vowel of the root determines the nature of the subsequent vowel affix of the same word.
The vowels of each language are divided into two groups, or rows, according to the place of their formation in the speech apparatus: the front and back rows. Vowels of different rows cannot coexist in one word. Therefore, for suffixes, only the composition of consonants is stable, and vowels change depending on which word the suffix is attached to. So, in the Mongolian language, the instrumental suffix exists in the form “vowel +. R". In the words hedgen "bumblebee 5, ivkher comrade', mord" horses' (with singular mor), the instrumental case will be respectively hedgeneer, nvhvrevr, mordoor.
The division of the Altaic languages most likely began with the allocation of the ancient Tungus proto-language - the basis of all the Tungus-Manchu languages, which later overlapped mainly on the Paleo-Asiatic substrate and, under its influence, diverged further from the rest of the languages \u200b\u200bof their family branches.
The Mongolian languages can be taken as a certain standard of the Altaic languages to a greater extent than other languages of this family. They are most characterized by an agglutinative synharmonic structure, the rigidity of syntax with the final position of the verb and with the defining syntactic meaning of its attributive (participial) and participle forms.
The differentiation of the currently existing Mongolian languages occurred relatively recently, approximately in the 14th-16th centuries; before that, there were numerous tribal dialects of a single ancient Mongolian language, which gave rise to independent languages due to the isolated position in which they fell during the resettlement of their carriers.
Among the Mongolian languages, in addition to the Mongolian proper, it should be noted such languages as Buryat, Oirat (and, as a variant of it, the Kalmyk language), Dakhur, which is distinguished by a large proportion of archaisms and Manchu borrowings, Mongolian with a mass of Chinese borrowings, Dongxiang, Baoan languages, and also common outside of East Asia, in Afghanistan, is the Mughal language. As for the Mongolian language itself, in its classical literary form it is not a folk language. spoken language. The Mongols who use it and live in the PRC use various dialects that are very different from it in everyday life. In the MPR, it was replaced by the Khalkha-Mongolian language, which branched off from it, based on the living colloquial speech of the Khalkha Mongols.
The Turkic languages spoken in East Asia are quite close to one another in terms of their vocabulary and grammatical structure. The main differences between them are in the field of phonetics. However, the history of these languages is complex, since, due to their proximity, these languages easily crossed with each other and one language, assimilating another, was strongly permeated with elements of the assimilated language.
Most Turkic languages now there is a large proportion of inclusions from languages of other groups - features of the substratum order or borrowings. Especially noteworthy are Arabisms, Iranisms and Mongols. The Türkic branch of languages as a whole falls into two large groups - Western Xiongnu and Eastern Xiongnu. This separation took place as early as the so-called Xiongnu era, i.e. no later than the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e.
In the Eastern Hun group, apparently at the end of the same era, two dialect communities were distinguished - the ancient Kirghiz (Kyrgyz-Kypchak) and the Uighur-Oguz. On the territory of East Asia, the direct descendant of the first of these communities is the modern Kyrgyz language. In addition to the specific features acquired by it in the process of its development, it differs from most other Turkic languages in its vocabulary, where the specific weight of Mongols is large with a relatively small number of Iranian and Arabisms. The languages of the Uyghur-Oghuz family, which once were widespread, are now dead. This is the ancient Uighur language dating back to the Uighur-Tukue dialects - the language of the Uyghur people in the 1st millennium AD. e. His vocabulary contained a large number of substratum ancient Iranian elements.
In terms of vocabulary, phonetics and grammar, the Old Uyghur language, which differs greatly from the Middle Uyghur that replaced it, is closest to another dead language Uighur-Oguz community - the ancient Oguz language of the Orkhon-Yenisei Turks. Now, within East Asia, the Uighur-Oguz community is represented only by the Tuvan languages - Tuvan and close to it Kokchulutan, and outside this territory also by the Yakut language. The Saryuighur (Yuygu) language associated with the Khakass dialects can also be included here, but the Kirghiz and Western Hunnic influences are very strong in it, and the vocabulary contains a large admixture of Mongolisms and even Tibetisms.
The Western Xiongnu languages of East Asia all belong to the Karluk-Kipchak subgroup. These languages at the end of the 1st millennium AD. e. differentiated into two even smaller divisions - Kypchak and Karluk. The latter includes the Middle Uyghur language - the language of the Uyghur people, in the XI-XV centuries. developed on the basis of the Old Uigur through the gradual loss of Eastern Xiongnu and the acquisition of Western Xiongnu features. This also includes the New Uigur language, which arose, however, not directly from the Middle Uigur, but through its assimilation by dialects of another part of the Karluk languages, namely the Karluk-Khorezmian dialects. From these same dialects comes the Uzbek language, which is very close to the Uighur, especially in its medieval literary form.
Thus, the New Uyghur language was formed as a result of triple assimilation: first, in the late antique and post-antique era, by assimilation by the Uyghur-Oguz dialects of the ancient Eastern Iranian languages, widespread in Xinjiang, then, in early middle ages, in the so-called Karakhanid era, - as a result of the assimilation of the ancient Uyghur language thus formed by the Karluk dialects, and finally in the late Middle Ages - during the assimilation of the Middle Uyghur language by the Karluk-Khorezmian dialects.
The Salar ascending to the Middle Uigur language is very close to the New Uigur language. The Khotonic language has the same origin, in which, however, foreign influences are strong - Kirghiz and even Turkmen.
Kazakh and Tatar belong to the Kypchak languages in East Asia, ascending respectively to the Kypchak-Nogai and Kypchak-Bulgarian dialects.
The Tungus-Manchurian branch of the Altaic family of languages is divided into 1ri groups: the northern, or Siberian, which includes the Evenki language and the very close Orochon, southern, or Amur group with the Hechzhe (Nanai) language and the western group, which is made up of Manchurian. a language with Sybinsk very close to it. The last group, although it occupies an intermediate position between the northern and southern ones, differs from both of them at the same time in a great rapprochement with the Mongolian languages. This rapprochement is manifested both in phonetics and in such features of grammar as the absence of personal forms of the verb. If the syntax Evenki language allows the setting of the verb before its object, then in Manchu, as well as in Mongolian, this is excluded.
Korean and Japanese in most published literature linguistic classifications act as isolated and are not included in large language families. However, all more linguists are inclined to include these languages, especially Korean, in Altai family. With regard to the Japanese language, again, most Japanese linguists recognize the relationship of the Japanese language with Korean. Thus, their inclusion as a special Korean-Japanese branch in the Altaic family of languages seems to be the most relevant to our knowledge. However, it should be recognized that in terms of lexical composition, both of these languages differ from each other and from other Altaic languages more strongly than any two other Altaic languages differ from each other. However, all general characteristics Altaic languages, given above, is applicable to them. The exception is the absence of possessive forms of the name in Korean and Japanese, which, however, are also absent in Manchu, and the absence of synharmonism in Japanese. In Korean, vowel harmony is partly preserved, but it is clearly going through a period of decay, which has been well traced over the past centuries. However, according to the most ancient monuments of the Japanese language, it can be traced that it also had synharmonism, which disappeared by the end of the 1st millennium AD. e.
Of course, in the vocabulary of the Japanese and Korean languages there is a certain common layer and a certain number of words comparable with other Altaic languages; however, nothing gives grounds to bring Japanese and Korean languages with any other branch of the Altaic languages more closely than with the other branches, although such attempts were made mainly in the direction of the Tungus-Manchu languages.
AT Japanese- in his vocabulary and phonetics - some kind of Malayo-Polynesian substrate is also clearly traced. “Having formed in some part of the mainland, the proto-Japanese language, obviously, came to the islands when the languages of the peoples were already in use here, especially in their western part. southern origin. At the same time, the Japanese language was superimposed on these languages as the dominant language, assimilating them. 3
The grammatical similarities between Korean and Japanese are very large. Both languages have an unsuffixed zero form of the nominative case, a nominative case with an emotional expression, and a special suffix for this case, which is identical in both languages (ga). The suffixes of other cases do not match, but in the set of cases and their functions, the similarity is close to identity. The same can be said about excretory and concessive particles. In both languages, adjectives are close to verbs, conjugated in almost the same pattern. At the same time, the determinative form of adjectives etymologically goes back to a similar form of the past tense of the verb.
Japanese and Korean verbs are distinguished by a special richness of participle forms that the predicate, which concludes subordinate clause. So, in Japanese, from the verb sinu die’, one can form the participle forms of sineb “if he dies”, sindatte although he died’, sindara “if he died”, etc.
Iranian languages
Once widespread in the northwest of East Asia, almost all of them were assimilated into Turkic languages. Only a small part of them has been preserved here in the form of the languages of the mountain Tajiks. It should be noted that these languages, like Afghan, belong to the Eastern Iranian group and are only very distantly related to the Tajik language proper, which, together with Persian, goes back to Middle Persian - Dari and belongs to the Western Iranian languages.
Widespread among mountain Tajiks, the Vakhan and Sarykolskshg languages are the only group Indo-European family in East Asia. There is reason to believe that such groups of mountain Tajiks as the Kanzhuts speak the Burish language, which some researchers consider isolated, while others bring it closer to the Iberian-Caucasian and even Basque languages. Perhaps further exploration of this area will reveal some other languages here.
Ainu language
It occupies a very special place among the languages of East Asia. Attempts to link it genetically with any other languages proved to be untenable, but the Ainu language was associated with Japanese, Tungus-Manchu, Paleo-Asiatic, Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian, Iberian-Caucasian, and even languages such as Sumerian. In its syntax, in general, Ainu is similar to the Japanese and Altaic languages; however, it should be noted that the same sentence structure is inherent in the Dravidian and Papuan languages. Perhaps it is the study of the latter in the aspect of the Ainu connections that has some prospects. The morphology of the Ainu language is complex and generally agglutinative, with features of changing word endings as a result of conjugation or declension. The conjugation system of the Ainu verb is especially complex and rich in types. The Ainu language has many suffixes and prefixes. The counting system, built on a twenty-digit basis, is peculiar. In the vocabulary of the Ainu language, in addition to Japanese and Nivkh borrowings, a very significant Malayo-Polynesian, mainly Indonesian, layer is clearly distinguished. In addition, there are later, Manchu and other borrowings.
Europeans who got acquainted with the Chinese language were amazed that the words of the Chinese language do not have either prefixes or suffixes. Monosyllabic words of the Chinese language were presented to them as naked roots, not amenable to morphological analysis. Therefore, in the first morphological classification of the languages of the Schlegel brothers, the Chinese language and the languages \u200b\u200bof East Asia similar in grammatical structure were called amorphous.
W. Humboldt pointed out that the amorphousness of a word has nothing to do with the lack of grammar in such languages. Therefore, he called languages like Chinese isolating: each root is isolated from the other, and the grammatical connections between them in such languages are expressed using word order and intonation.
Grammatical relations between Chinese words are formed with the help of word order and auxiliary words. The basic rules of word order are as follows: the definition always comes before the determined, the subject - before the predicate, the direct object - after the verb. For example: gao - "high", shan - "mountain". Depending on their sequence, these two words can be grouped into two different grammatical units: gao shan - "high mountains" and shan gao - "high mountains".
Absence external signs belonging to a grammatical category contributes to the development of grammatical conversion of words from one grammatical category to another under the influence of the grammatical environment.
The order of words in a sentence, function words are the main pillars in the grammatical analysis of a sentence in an isolating language. In some isolating languages, such as Thai, the word order in a sentence can be changed by grammatical or prosodic means. So, in Chinese, a direct object usually stands after a transitive verb, but with the help of the preposition ba or during a pause, it can be placed before the verb. However, in Vietnamese and Chinese, this change in word order is not possible. The grammar of isolating languages makes it possible to express any content, and isolating languages themselves can serve as an effective means of communication.
It should be borne in mind that in reality there are no languages whose grammatical structure would fully correspond to the definition of "isolating languages" in existing morphological classifications.
The Chinese language has compound words built according to certain word-formation patterns, as well as words consisting of significant morphemes in combination with word-forming and formative suffixes. However, the combination of significant morphemes with suffixes and prefixes does not form the stable unity that distinguishes the combination of stem and affix in Indo-European languages. To convey the same meaning, a word can appear in some cases with a derivational or formative suffix, in others without them. So, for example, attributive relations in modern Chinese are formed with the help of the suffix -dy. However, the presence of this suffix in a definitive phrase depends on its quantitative characteristics, that is, on the number of syllables that make it up. We can say that there are languages that more or less meet this definition. These primarily include Vietnamese and ancient Chinese. S. E. Yakhontov showed that the language of Chinese is closest to this definition. classical poetry 7th-10th centuries
The huge size of Asia does not allow us to cover it at once, so we will travel through it slowly, moving from the southeast, first to the north, and then again to the south, gradually approaching the end of our journey - to Europe.
Southeast Asia and islands
In geography, the term "Southeast Asia" usually refers to a relatively small part of this continent, including the peninsulas of Indochina, Malacca and nearby islands. But it will be more convenient for us if we slightly expand these conditional boundaries, including in the north - China, in the east - all the islands of Oceania (even those that are located closer to America than to Asia or Australia); and finally, in the west, we need the island of Madagascar (which, for a geographer, is almost part of Africa). I think geographers will forgive us for this somewhat free treatment of countries and seas - what can you do, the interests of linguistics and geography do not always coincide exactly.
So, throughout this vast space, four largest families of languages stand out. They are called like this:
- Sino-Tibetan;
- Thai;
- Austroasiatic;
- Austronesian.
We will consider each of these families in turn. main language Sino-Tibetan family is, of course, Chinese; the rest of the languages of this family belong to Tibeto-Burmese group, in which, in turn, the largest language - Burmese. Meanwhile, according to some hypotheses, Chinese is not related to the rest of the languages of its family; in any case, its kinship with them is more difficult to prove than the kinship of all other languages among themselves.
There are already more than a billion Chinese on earth, and they live not only in China, but throughout Southeast Asia (for example, in Singapore, the Chinese population is more than seventy percent). It is interesting that in these countries, among foreign peoples and languages, the Chinese, as a rule, live rather closed, do not mix with the indigenous people and always speak their own language. Many Chinese are also moving to large cities in Europe and America, where they have created entire Chinatowns, with their own shops, restaurants, banks, etc.; about the size of such Chinese settlements says their English title Chinatown, that is, simply "Chinese city".
Since China is a large country, the Chinese language is very heterogeneous. Generally speaking, this does not always happen with large languages in large areas (one of the exceptions is just the Russian language), but more often it happens this way: we know this from the example of American and Australian English, Arabic can also be an example, which will be discussed below.
Therefore, in essence, there are many Chinese languages: dialects of Chinese could be safely considered different languages, because representatives of different dialects often simply do not understand each other. In particular, there are very significant differences between the "northern" and "southern" (more precisely, southeastern) Chinese dialects - a resident of Beijing or Harbin (the city of Harbin, as you know, is located in northern China), a resident of Shanghai (this is the center of China) and a resident of Canton (south of China) is unlikely to understand each other. But at the same time, the inhabitants of all these regions of China are aware of themselves as belonging to a single people and call themselves han.
The Chinese are not only the largest people in the world, but also the people with one of the oldest written histories. States on the territory of modern China (with their rulers, warriors, fortresses and the first examples of writing-drawings!) have existed since at least the second millennium BC. e.; The first monuments of the ancient Chinese language date back to the same era (by the way, these were divinatory inscriptions). Thus, of the living languages, the Chinese language is perhaps the language with the oldest history (after all, the first samples of Chinese writing are older than, for example, Hittite cuneiform tablets - but not a trace of the Hittite language has long been left on earth).
Of course, ancient Chinese is very different from modern Chinese. Nevertheless, both of them are isolating in their structure, just like the vast majority of the languages of this region: after all, not only other languages \u200b\u200bof this family (that is, Tibeto-Burmese) are isolating, but also all Thai and Austronesian, and these are typical representatives of isolating languages: there are no or almost no grammatical indicators, short monosyllabic words; in addition, all the languages of this family, as well as Thai and many Austroasiatic ones, are tonal (and about what tones are, it is written in the fourth chapter of the book, in the section on stress). So, both modern and ancient Chinese - both can be considered isolating, however, in modern language, unlike ancient, there are still some non-root morphemes - for example, suffixes denoting the form or tense of the verb. There are, of course, an insignificant number of such morphemes in it compared to the non-isolating languages familiar to us, but if we compare it with ancient Chinese, it will look like a language that has gone far from the state in which the “correct” isolating one should really be. language. In this sense, Thai and such Austroasiatic languages as, say, Vietnamese, are closer in structure to Old Chinese, while modern Chinese can be compared with such a territorially distant (and typologically close) language as the Yoruba language.
The Tibeto-Burmese languages are concentrated, as their name suggests, mainly in the mountains of Tibet and in the territories adjacent to them: this is the southeastern and southern part China (some areas of Tibet were captured by China quite recently, in the middle of the 20th century), Myanmar (formerly Burma), mountainous Nepal and northeastern India and other countries. Most major languages among them - Burmese and Tibetan(which is spoken in different dialects by the inhabitants of the Tibet region of China, the Sherpas of Nepal and other peoples). In their structure, these languages are closest to the isolating type, but, like modern Chinese (and even, perhaps, to a greater extent), they are languages with "non-strict" isolation, with elements of analyticism and agglutination.
Thai the family unites the languages spoken in South China, Laos and Thailand; the main languages of this group are Laotian and Thai, typical isolating languages.
Austroasiatic(from Latin root austrian"south") family unites languages such as Vietnamese and his closest relative Muong, Khmer(in Cambodia) and other less known and significant languages of Southeast Asia. These are usually tone-isolating languages heavily influenced by, but not related to, Chinese. The languages spoken in India are munda- this is a special, western branch of the Austroasiatic family; the Munda languages (perhaps under the influence of neighboring Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, which we will talk about a little later) turned out to be the only truly non-isolating ones among their Austroasiatic relatives; however, in fairness, it must be said that they are no longer located in Southeast Asia - this indisputable "kingdom of isolating languages." The largest of the Munda languages is the language Santali, which is spoken by more than five million people. In addition, in the Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean, belonging to India (and if you look at the map, you will see that these islands are still located closer to Southeast Asia), they speak a special Nicobar language, which is also included in this family, but forms a separate group.
Austronesian family (that is, "south island": to the Latin root austrian added greek root −nes−, which means "island": the same root is present, for example, in Greek name Peloponnese) is a large association of languages \u200b\u200bspoken mainly on the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans between Asia and Australia. It so happens that the speakers of these languages almost all live on large or small islands: these are the islands of Polynesia scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean (literally "numerous islands"), Melanesia ("black islands") and Micronesia ("small islands"), these are Philippine and Sunda Islands between the Indian and Pacific Ocean and, finally, this is the island of Madagascar off the very coast of Africa, which was also once inhabited by immigrants from Indonesia. Speakers of special Austronesian languages also live on the island of Taiwan, the main population of which is now Chinese.
