Austro-Tai languages

Austro -Tai is a hypothetical language family, which summarizes the Austronesian languages ​​and the Tai - Kadai languages ​​to a single unit.

History

As early as 1901 we noticed that the vocabulary of the Tai - Kadai languages ​​and the Austronesian languages ​​is very similar. These are so numerous that it can not act to coincidences in the opinion of the proponents of the hypothesis. Therefore, Paul Benedict presented in 1942 to the hypothesis that the two language families are close relatives in the pedigree of austrischen languages. This alone could not prevail so already, because the existence of Austrischen was doubted itself and mainly typological characteristics were used, which may be caused by language contact.

However, the proponents present the hypothesis that these similarities can not solely be due to language contact, as it is in the matching vocabulary consists mostly of basic vocabulary that will not be adopted from other languages ​​in general. After the hypothesis of austrischen macro family was abandoned, the efforts to achieve a better understanding of the Tai - Kadai languages ​​concentrated. Weera Ostapirat presented at 2005 50 words that occur in all three sub- groups of the Tai - Kadai languages ​​, one of which can be traced back through half alleged regular sound shifts on Austronesian vocabulary. Other linguists find this credible.

After the Buyang, a Tai - Kadai language was documented and it turned out that this language probably the only Tai - Kadai language with two-syllable basic vocabulary is (which is a main feature of the Austronesian languages ​​), were also compared these reconstructed Austronesian vocabulary which surprisingly show strong similarities.