Proto-Munda language

Proto-Munda is the reconstructed proto-language of the Munda languages of South Asia. It has been reconstructed by Sidwell & Rau (2015). According to Sidwell, the Proto-Munda language split from Proto- Austroasiatic in Indochina and arrived on the coast of Odisha around 4000 – 3500 years ago.^[1]

Proto-Munda
Reconstruction of	Munda languages
Reconstructed ancestor	Proto-Austroasiatic

Reconstruction

The following Proto-Munda lexical proto-forms have been reconstructed by Sidwell & Rau (2015: 319, 340-363).^[2] Two asterisks are given to denote the tentative, preliminary state of the proto-language reconstruction.

Gloss	Proto-Munda
belly	**(sə)laɟ
big	**məraŋ
to bite	**kaˀp
black	**kE(n)dE
blood	**məjam
bone	**ɟaːˀŋ
to burn (vt.)	**gEˀp
claw/nail	**rəmAj
cloud	**tərIˀp
cold	**raŋ
die (of a person)	**gOˀj
dog	**sOˀt
to drink (water)	**uˀt, **uˀk
dry (adj./stat.)	**(ə)sAr
ear	**lutur, **luˀt
earth/soil	**ʔOte
to eat	**ɟOm
egg	**(ə)tAˀp
eye	**maˀt
fat/grease/oil	**sunum
feather	**bəlEˀt
fire	**səŋal
fish (n.)	**ka, **kadO(ŋ)
fly (v.)	**pEr
foot	**ɟəːˀŋ
give	**ʔam
hair (of head)	**suˀk
hand	**tiːˀ
to hear/listen	**ajɔm
heart, liver	**(gə)rE, **ʔim
horn	**dəraŋ
I	**(n)iɲ
to kill	**(bə)ɡOˀɟ
leaf	**Olaːˀ
to lie (down)	**gətiˀc
long	**ɟəlƏŋ
louse (head)	**siːˀ
man/husband, person/human	**kOrOˀ
meat/flesh	**ɟəlU(Uˀ)
moon	**harkE, **aŋaj
mountain/hill	**bəru(uˀ)
mouth	**təmOˀt
name	**ɲUm
neck	**kO, **gOˀk
new	**təmI
night	**(m)ədiˀp
nose	**muːˀ
not	**əˀt
one	**mOOˀj
rain	**gəma
red	**ɟəŋAˀt
road, path	**kOrA
root (of a tree)	**rEˀt
sand	**kEˀt
see	**(n)El
sit	**kO
skin	**usal
sleep	**gətiˀc
smoke (n.)	**mOˀk
to speak, say	**sun, **gam, **kaj
to stand	**tənaŋ, **tƏŋgə
stone	**bərƏl, **sərEŋ
sun	**siŋi(iˀ)
tail	**pata
thigh	**buluuˀ
that (dist.)	**han
this (prox.)	**En
thou/you	**(n)Am
tongue	**laːˀŋ
tooth	**gənE
tree	**ɟiːˀ
two	**baːˀr
to walk, go	**sEn
to weave	**ta(aˀ)ɲ
water	**daːˀk
woman/wife	**selA, **kəni
yellow	**saŋsaŋ

Proto-Munda reconstruction has since been revised and improved by Rau (2019).

Morphosyntax

Most linguists believe that proto-Munda was head-first, VO like proto-Austroasiatic. Evidence for VO order has been founded in noun incorporation verbal morphology in the Sora-Gorum languages, and to a lesser extent in Gutob, Remo, Kharia, and Juang. By any given verb conjugations, the Munda verbs (including Kherwarian (Santali, Ho,...) and Korku) always show internal head-first, V-P order, with two main overall syntactic orders of transitive verbs: A-V-P and V-P-A, corresponding to Austroasiatic clausal syntaxes SVO and VOS. Most Munda compounds are also head-first and right-branching, with new loan words from Indian languages following the Indian norm of head-final and left-branching.

Remo:

gui-ti

wash-hand

gui-ti

wash-hand

'wash hand'

Sora:

ɲen

1SG

dʒum-te-ti-n-ai

eat-banana-NPST-INTR-1SG.OBJ

ɲen dʒum-te-ti-n-ai

1SG eat-banana-NPST-INTR-1SG.OBJ

'I am eating banana'

Juang:

ba-ama-gito-ke

1DU.SUBJ-NEG-sing-PRES.TR

ba-ama-gito-ke

1DU.SUBJ-NEG-sing-PRES.TR

'We two don't sing'

Gorum:

ne-r-ab-so’ɟ-om

1SG.SUBJ-NEG-CAUS-learn-ACT:2SG.OBJ

ne-r-ab-so’ɟ-om

1SG.SUBJ-NEG-CAUS-learn-ACT:2SG.OBJ

'I didn’t teach you'

Pinnow (1966) believed that proto-Munda was SVO and that was the syntax of proto-Austroasiatic, which was also highly synthetic like Munda, whereas he attributed analytic and isolating typological features in modern Mon-Khmer to language contact in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area. Donegan & Stampe (1983, 2004) argued that proto-Munda was VO but non-agglutinative like its sister languages in Southeast Asia; Munda synthesis arose not just from language contact with the South Asian linguistic area, but by internal restructuring that caused the Munda word prosody to shift its rhythmic patterns from typical Austroasiatic rising, vowel reduction, iambic stressed to falling, vowel harmony, trochaic stressed profile, thus reversed the clausal syntactic structure and triggered word agglutination. However, Donegan and Stampe admitted that "in fact, the Munda languages are far more agglutinative and polysynthetic than is typical of India." Lehmann (1973) reviewed,

"If we examine further evidence provided by Pinnow, we note that Munda contains VO characteristics. It has VO order in compounds (Pinnow [1960], 97); it also provides examples of NG [noun-genitive] order and of prefixes. Since the Khmer-Nicobar languages are consistently VO, I assume that it was the Munda languages which were modified syntactically... We may conclude that Proto-Austroasiatic was VO and non-agglutinative in morphological structure."

— Lehmann, 1973:57

Donegan & Stampe's predictions of Munda synthetic shift caused by change of rhythmic holism is contested by Horo & Anderson et al. (2017, 2020, 2022). Field acoustic researches on various Sora and Santali dialects show that both languages have consistently second-or-last-syllable prominence with clear iambic patterns in disyllabic and tetrasyllabic words (Horo & Anderson 2022).

Anderson & Zide (2001) reconstructed the head-marking bounded predicate of Proto-Munda with A-V-P order as following:

Proto-Munda Predicate (Zide & Anderson 2001)

Slot	+4	+3	+2	+1	core	-1	-2	-3
role	SUBJ	NEG	RECIP/CAUS	DERIV	verb stem	PASS/INTR	TRANS/TNS	OBJ

Rau (2020) while agrees that Proto-Munda predicate structure is SVO, he proposes that it might have been less inflected with fewer bound elements, which may cause the Munda predicate development to become divergent later.

Proto-Munda Predicate Clause

Slot	+6	+5	+4	+3	+2	+1	core	-1	-2	-3
role	SUBJ	MOD/ASP	NEG	RECIP	CAUS	DERIV	verb stem	ASP	[other voices]/valency	OBJ
reconstruction (Rau 2020:231)		*A *O *Vj *mO	*əˀt *Um	*kƏl	*Oˀp	**bə- **tA- **A-		*=lə Perf *=tə Imperf	*n MID *ˀt ACT

According to Anderson (2014, 2017, 2021), Munda syntactic noun incorporation is very archaic and may be the oldest feature of Austroasiatic morphology, with cognates are attested in across every subgroup, but the status of noun incorporation in proto-Munda still difficult to determine (Rau 2020:209).

See also

• Proto-Austroasiatic language

References

1. Sidwell, Paul. 2018. Austroasiatic Studies: state of the art in 2018 Archived 2019-05-03 at the Wayback Machine. Presentation at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, 22 May 2018.
2. Sidwell, Paul and Felix Rau (2015). "Austroasiatic Comparative-Historical Reconstruction: An Overview." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill.