No description available.

Ho, an under-documented North Munda language of India, is known for its complex verb forms. This dissertation focuses on analysis of several features of those complex verbs, using data from original fieldwork undertaken by the author. By way of background, an analysis of the phonetics, phonology and morphophonology of Ho is first presented. Ho has vowel harmony based on height, and like other Munda languages, the phonological word is restricted to two moras. There has been a long-standing debate over whether Ho and the other North Munda languages have word classes, including verbs as distinct from nouns. Looking at the distribution of object, property and action concepts, this study argues that Ho does, in fact, have word classes, including a small class of adjectives. Several new morphological analyses are given; for example, what has previously been called 'passive' is here analyzed as 'middle'. The uses of the middle -oʔ in Ho overlap with uses documented for other middle-marking languages, suggesting that this is a better label than 'passive'. Ho traditionally marks aspect in the verb rather than tense, especially for transitive verb constructions. Several aspect suffixes follow the verb root. Ho is developing a periphrastic past tense construction with the past tense copula form taikena. Also, the combination of perfect(ive) aspect suffixes and the transitivity suffix -ɖ always gives a past tense interpretation, to the extent that -ɖ may be re- grammaticalizing to past tense. Three types of complex clauses are discussed in the dissertation: complement clauses; relative clauses and serial verb constructions. Like many South Asian languages, Ho has productive serial verbs and several serialized verbs are grammaticalizing to become more like auxiliary verb constructions.

No description available.

This dissertation studies the synchronic phonetics of the tonation systems of five Vietic (Austroasiatic) varieties, Arem (ISO: aem), Rục (ISO: scb), and three North-Central Vietnamese (ISO: vie) dialects, Cổ Định (Thanh Hoá province), Nghi Ân (Nghệ An province), and Diêm Điền (Quảng Bình province) with the aim of improving reconstructions of Proto-Vietic tonation. Tonation is a cover term for tone and register, two phonological contrasts frequently encountered in many East and Southeast Asian languages. These two contrasts can be realized on the rhyme by differences in f0, phonation type, and duration, but also, especially in the case of register, by differences in vowel quality and by modulations of closure duration and voice onset time in onset consonants. Tone usually derives from the loss of laryngeal codas (tonogenesis), while register typically originates from the loss of voicing contrast in onset obstruents (registrogenesis). Onset devoicing can also lead to the formation of two-tone systems or double the number of tones in tonal languages. Different hypotheses have been advanced to explain the phonetic underpinnings of tone and register development, their shared phonetic properties, and intersecting segmental origins, but experimental evidence is needed to validate these hypotheses. The results show that Arem contrasts high and low registers realized by means of a breathier phonation and more closed vowels in the low register. However, Proto-Vietic final glottals, *-ʔ, *-h, and glottalized sonorant codas are still preserved in the language, and their effects on duration, f0, and phonation of preceding vowels are too variable across registers and speakers to consider Arem as tonal. The study of the tonation system of Rục shows that it has four tones in open and sonorant-ending syllables. These tones can be grouped into two high-register tones and two low-register tones that are distinguished by consistent differences in f0, phonation type, vowel quality, and to a lesser extent, vowel duration and VOT. The final fricative *-h is still preserved in Rục, and syllables ending in this coda exhibit no f0 difference, but they feature all other register properties. Hence, Rục has a hybrid system of tone and register. The results of the perception experiment reveal that Rục participants use the same phonetic cues in their perception as in their production of tonation, with roughly the same prominence for each cue. I then turn to the three North-Central Vietnamese dialects and show that they have different numbers of tones and make use of different phonetic properties to realize these tones. Different post-tonogenetic changes also led to distinct tone mergers in these dialects. Traces of register-conditioned variation in phonation type and vowel quality are limited in these varieties, but the low-register tone A2 in Diêm Điền was found to preserve breathy phonation, which is likely to be a remnant of the low register in Proto-Việt-Mường. Vowel quality was found to be conditioned by the tense phonation of tones in the low f0 range in Cổ Định and Nghi Ân, but I argue that this is not a remnant of register, a conclusion strengthened by an investigation showing that there is little evidence for register-conditioned vowel changes from Proto-Vietic to modern Northern Vietnamese. Since there is either a register contrast or remnants of register in all branches of Vietic, I propose to reconstruct a register contrast in Proto-Vietic, against previous proposals postulating that it had a voicing contrast. This register contrast evolved differently in different daughter languages and interacted with various patterns of retention of laryngeal codas, resulting in diverse tonation systems in Vietic languages. By combining insights on the typology of tonogenetic effects gained from my investigation of Rục and Arem glottal codas and on evidence from correspondences between Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese tones, I further propose that tonogenesis from codas is likely to have happened in Proto-Việt-Mường from the 9th to 12th century CE, which is later than previous proposals.

Thesis (M.A. (Linguistics))--Mahidol University, 1986.

La diversité génétique d’une population porte en elle la trace de pratiques culturelles et est un témoignage de certains éléments passés. Ainsi, la langue, qui peut agir comme une barrière culturelle à la reproduction, et le système de parenté, qui va déterminer quand, où et avec qui les individus se reproduisent, vont influencer la diversité génétique. L’objectif de cette thèse est de tenter de retracer les histoires démographiques de populations d’Asie du Sud et du Sud-Est, à plusieurs échelles culturelles, de la famille linguistique Austro-Asiatique aux groupes de filiation en utilisant des données génétiques. Dans un premier temps, nous nous sommes intéressés à la famille linguistique Austro-Asiatique. Les langues appartenant à une même famille linguistique descendent d’une même langue « mère » et nous avons voulu savoir si en plus de cette parenté linguistique, les locuteurs de ces langues partageaient une parenté génétique. Nous avons étudié la diversité génétique autosomale de populations parlant des langues Austro-Asiatiques et nous les avons comparées à des populations voisines appartenant à d’autres familles linguistiques. Nous n’avons pas pu mettre en évidence de parenté génétique particulière entre les populations parlant des langues Austro-Asiatiques. Ces résultats excluent l’hypothèse d’une origine commune des populations parlant des langues Austro-Asiatique et favorisent l’hypothèse d’une diffusion culturelle des langues Austro-Asiatiques. Puis, nous avons étudié la parenté génétique au sein de groupes de descendance dans huit populations d’Asie du Sud-Est. Les individus appartenant au même groupe de filiation disent descendre d’un même ancêtre commun, paternel dans les populations patrilinéaires ou maternel dans les populations matrilinéaires. Nous avons voulu savoir si l’ancêtre commun de ces populations est mythique ou biologique. Nous nous sommes intéressés aux diversités génétiques du chromosome Y et de l’ADN mitochondrial de huit populations d’Asie du Sud-Est : quatre populations matrilinéaires et quatre populations patrilinéaires. Nos données montrent que des individus appartenant à un même clan matrilinéaire sont fortement apparentés génétiquement au niveau de leur lignée maternelle, visible au niveau de leur ADN mitochondrial. A l’inverse, les individus appartenant à un même clan patrilinéaire ne sont pas plus apparentés génétiquement entre eux que deux individus pris au hasard dans la population au niveau de leur lignée paternelle, visible au niveau du chromosome Y. Ces résultats témoignent de réalités différentes entre les populations patrilinéaires et matrilinéaires d’Asie du Sud-Est avec un ancêtre commun réel dans les populations matrilinéaires et un ancêtre commun mythique dans les clans patrilinéaires. Pris ensemble, ces travaux rappellent la manière dont différents processus culturels ont laissé des signatures génétiques sur les diversités génétiques uniparentales et autosomales et illustrent la manière dont le généticien des populations peut utiliser ces diversités génétiques pour retracer l’histoire démographique des populations. / The genetic diversity of a population carries with it traces of cultural practices and is a testimony of certain past events. Thus, language, which can be a cultural barrier to reproduction, and the kinship system, which will determine when, where and with whom individuals reproduce, will influence genetic diversity. The aim of this PhD thesis is to try to retrace the demographic histories of populations of South and Southeast Asia, at several cultural scales, from the Austroasiatic language family to descent groups using the genetic data. Firstly, we studied in the Austroasiatic language family. Languages belonging to the same linguistic family come from the same "mother" language and we wanted to know whether, in addition to this linguistic kinship, the speakers of these languages shared a genetic kinship. We have studied the autosomal genetic diversity of Austroasiatic speaking populations and compared them to neighboring populations belonging to other linguistic families. We could not highlight any particular genetic kinship between populations speaking Austroasiatic languages. These results exclude the hypothesis of a common origin of populations speaking Austroasiatic languages and favor the hypothesis of a cultural diffusion of Austroasiatic languages. Then, we investigated genetic kinship in descent groups in eight Southeast Asian populations. Individuals belonging to the same descent group claim to descend from a common paternal ancestor, in patrilineal populations, or from a common maternal ancestor, in matrilineal populations. We wanted to know if the common ancestor of these populations is mythical or biological. We investigated the genetic diversities of the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA of eight populations in Southeast Asia: four matrilineal populations and four patrilineal populations. Our data showed that individuals belonging to the same matrilineal clan are closely genetically related to their maternal line, visible in their mitochondrial DNA. Conversely, individuals belonging to the same patrilineal clan are no more genetically related to each other than two individuals randomly selected from the population in their paternal line, visible on the Y chromosome. These results reflect different realities between the patrilineal and matrilineal populations of Southeast Asia with a real common ancestor in matrilineal populations and a mythical common ancestor in the patrilineal clans. Together, these results showed how different cultural processes have left genetic signatures on uniparental and autosomal genetic diversities and illustrated how the population geneticist can use these genetic diversities to trace the populations' demographic history.