Time and Place in the Prehistory of the Aslian Languages

Abstract

The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of Aslian languages. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to infer a detailed picture of Aslian language history, addressing a number of outstanding questions, including (1) whether the root ancestor of Aslian was spoken in the Malay Peninsula, or whether the family had already divided before entry, and (2) the dynamics of the movement of Aslian languages across the peninsula, with a particular focus on its spread to the indigenous foragers. Abstract The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of Aslian languages. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to infer a detailed picture of Aslian language history, addressing a number of outstanding questions, including (1) whether the root ancestor of Aslian was spoken in the Malay Peninsula, or whether the family had already divided before entry, and (2) the dynamics of the movement of Aslian languages across the peninsula, with a particular focus on its spread to the indigenous foragers.

Contrasting maternal and paternal genetic variation of hunter-gatherer groups in Thailand

“…The Maniq, also known as Sakai or Kensui, have a census size of ~250 individuals [15][16] and are considered to be related to the Semang of Malaysia 17 . For example, the Maniq language belongs to the northern Aslian group of Austroasiatic languages, as do the Semang languages 18 , although this most likely reflects a later introduction by agriculturalists [19][20] . A previous study of sequences of the first hypervariable region (HVR) of the mtDNA control region reported a relatively large divergence of the Sakai (Maniq) from southern Thailand from other Thai groups 21 .…”

Contact and isolation in hunter-gatherer language dynamics

“…This is in contrast to the pattern observed in Kensiw, for which at least a velar exponent /kʰ/ is identified in indigenous words, e.g. /kʰəʔ/ 'to vomit' , /kʰiʔəh/ 'mountain goat' (Phaiboon 2006;Hajek 2010). Incidentally, these two Kensiw examples correspond to /kəʔ/ 'to vomit' and /kieh/ 'mainland serow (Capricornis milneedwardsii)' in Maniq.…”

“…Incidentally, our own phylogenetic and phylogeographic models of Aslian history suggest that Maniq split off from its sister branch Kensiw/Kentaq some several hundred years ago (Dunn, Kruspe & Burenhult 2013). Similar /h/ + sonorant sequences in Thai loans have not been reported in these varieties, so this may be taken to indicate that Maniq is the only surviving Aslian language to have experienced early and sustained contact with Thai.…”

“…It is thus doubtful whether they should be considered fully integrated components of Maniq phonology. We can conclude that Maniq does not display any of the indigenous manifestations suggested to occur in Kensiw (Hajek 2010). This means that a component considered fundamental to the development of tonal distinctions is absent (see further in Section 4.4).…”

“…In this respect, Maniq shares fully in the distinctiveness of Aslian languages and does not follow the typological trends of Mainland Southeast Asia, in spite of its geographical exposure. We propose that existing claims of contrastive aspiration and tone in Northern Aslian (Hajek 2003(Hajek , 2010 are in need of careful reassessment.…”