Sino-Austronesian languages


Sino-Austronesian or Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian is a proposed language family suggested by Laurent Sagart in 1990. Using reconstructions of Old Chinese, Sagart argued that the Austronesian languages are related to the Sinitic languages phonologically, lexically and morphologically. Sagart later accepted the Sino-Tibetan languages as a valid group and extended his proposal to include the rest of Sino-Tibetan. He also placed the Tai–Kadai languages within the Austronesian family as a sister branch of Malayo-Polynesian. The proposal is controversial, but still being debated.

Classification

Sagart (2004)

The classification below follows Sagart.
Sagart suggests that monosyllabic Old Chinese words correspond to the second syllables of disyllabic Proto-Austronesian roots. However, the type A/B distinction in OC, corresponding to non-palatalized or palatalized syllables in Middle Chinese, is considered to correspond to a voiceless/voiced initial in PAN.
GlossProto-AustronesianChinese
brain*punuq腦 *anuʔ > nǎo
salt*siRaH1鹵 *araʔ > lǔ
foxtail millet*beCeng稷 *btsək > jì

Starosta (2005)

Stanley Starosta expands Sagart's Sino-Austronesian tree with a "Yangzian" branch, consisting of Austroasiatic and Hmong–Mien, to form an East Asian superphylum. However, Starosta considers his proposed Yangzian to be a direct sister of Sino-Tibetan rather than Austronesian, which is more distantly related to Sino-Tibetan as a sister of Sino-Tibetan-Yangzian. He considers Proto-East Asian to have been a disyllabic language spoken from 6,500 to 6,000 BCE by Peiligang culture and Cishan culture millet farmers on the North China Plain.
Starosta proposes the following Proto-East Asian morphological affixes, which are found in Proto-Tibeto-Burman and Proto-Austronesian, as well as in some morphologically conservative Austroasiatic branches such as Nicobaric.
Weera Ostapirat supports the link between Austronesian and Kra–Dai, though as sister groups. However, he rejects a link to Sino-Tibetan, noting that the apparent cognates are rarely found in all branches of Kra–Dai, and almost none are in core vocabulary.
Austronesian linguists Paul Jen-kuei Li and Robert Blust have criticized Sagart's comparisons, on the grounds of loose semantic matches, inconsistent correspondences, and that basic vocabulary is hardly represented. They also note that comparing with the second syllable of disyllabic Austronesian roots vastly increases the odds of chance resemblance. Blust has been particularly critical of Sagart's use of the comparative method.
Laurent Sagart responds to some of the criticisms by Blust.
Alexander Vovin does not accept Sino-Austronesian as a valid grouping, but instead suggests that some of the Sino-Austronesian parallels proposed by Sagart may in fact be due to an Austronesian substratum in Old Chinese. This is view also espoused by George van Driem, who suggests that Austronesian and Sinitic had come into contact with each other during the fourth and third millennia B.C. in the Longshan interaction sphere.

Distributions