Benedict's Austro-Tai Hypothesis - An Evaluation

Abstract

The possible connections among the hundreds of languages of Southeast Asia have been the subject of considerable research and a fair amount of speculation since at least the beginning of this century. Three major language families have generally been recognized -Austroasiatic (including languages such as Vietnamese, Mon, Khmer, Khasi, Nicobarese, and Munda), Sino-Tibetan (including Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, and scores of other little-known languages), and Austronesian (represented in Mainland Southeast Asia by the Chamic group and Malay). Attempts to relate various of these families into superstocks and to establish the position of Thai within one or another of these families dates back to Schmidt's (1906) attempt to relate Austronesian and Austroasiatic in a family that he called Austric. Thai, primarily because of its monosyllabic word structure and its tonal system which is similar to Chinese, was generally classified as belonging to a Sino-Thai group within Sino-Tibetan.