Austroasiatic Research Articles

Genetic variability of 23 autosomal STRs in Austroasiatic-speaking populations from Thailand.

Austroasiatic (AA) speakers constitute around 4% of the population of Thailand, while the majority (89.4%) speak Kra-Dai (KD) languages. Previous forensic and population genetic studies in various Thai populations have employed a limited number of short tandem repeats (STRs). This study aims to expand the investigation of the genetic makeup of AA populations in Thailand and their relationship to KD populations using a larger number of autosomal STRs with the VeriFiler™ Plus PCR Amplification Kit. We generated 593 new genotypes from AA-speaking groups and combined them with previously reported data from AA and KD groups. A total of 1,129 genotypes across 23 STR loci were used to construct the largest allelic frequency profile for Thai and Lao populations. However, several loci deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, likely due to the reduced genetic diversity in some highland populations, which should be considered in forensic investigations. Beyond forensic applications, our findings reveal genetic differences between AA-speaking groups in Northern and Northeastern Thailand. The AA groups from Northeastern Thailand exhibit greater genetic homogeneity and diversity, likely due to population interactions. In contrast, reduced diversity and increased heterogeneity in AA groups from Northern Thailand are possibly driven by genetic drift and cultural and geographic isolation. In conclusion, we emphasize the usefulness of increasing the number of autosomal STRs in forensic and anthropological genetic studies. Additional Y-STR and X-STR data from various AA-speaking groups in Thailand would further enhance and strengthen forensic STR databases in the region.

Optionality and paradigmaticity

Abstract Zooming in from the grand-scale descriptions of the Mainland Southeast Asian convergence area, this paper focuses on Htanaw, an Austroasiatic language in Myanmar’s Shan State. Close contact with Burmese/Intha, Pa’O, and Shan led to a restructuring of Htanaw, exemplified here by the verb phrase, which exhibits an intriguing mixture of (isolating) Austroasiatic and (morphologically complex) Tibeto-Burman features. The Htanaw VP is internally complex with optional bound morphemes expressing grammatical and semantic categories. Based on original fieldwork data and available published material, this study presents the dynamics of the Htanaw verb phrase patterns and puts them in an areal typological perspective.

INTEGRATED ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON KORKU TRIBES IN 2020 (INDIA, MAHARASHTRA). PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Introduction. In February 2020, the third season of the Russian-Indian Anthropological expedition was conducted in Maharashtra. The field work was coordinated by Paleoethnology Research Center (Russia) and Department of Anthropology of Savitribai Phule Pune University (India). The goal was to examine Korku people, who are members of the Mundo-speaking branch of the Austroasiatic family. Data and methods. A total of 293 people were examined from three different Amravati district locations. The sociological questionnaire indicated that 285 individuals were members of the Korku, of which 196 individuals were children and teenagers (95 male, 101 female) and 89 individuals were older than 17 years (58 male, 31 female). Following the traditions of the Russian anthropological school, the study of Korku was conducted using as many morphological techniques as possible, including the collection of data on somatometry, cephalometry, cephaloscopy, dental anthropology, dermatoglyphics, and anthropological photo. All data was collected according to the law protecting personal data and the principles of bioethics. Results and discussion. Korku people tend to have dark pigmentation of the eyes, hair and skin, and soft, wavy hair. Males are orthognathic in the vertical profile of the face, females are mesognathic. Horizontal profiling in both sexes is characterized by average values. The lateral profile of the nasal bridge is flattened, the eye gap is of medium width and has horizontal orientation, while epicanthus is rare. According to the head index, males are mesocephalic with a tendency to subbrachycephaly, the proportions of the face and nose are characterized by average values. Women are also mesocephalic, relatively leptorineic. According to somatometric indicators, males have an average body length (164.4 cm). According to the proportions of the body, males and females are brachymorphic. The body length and chest circumference of children increases smoothly with age. The same growth curve is typical for body weight with a slight jump in the transition from 10–11 y.o. to 12–14 y.o. Composite portraits of Korku males and females were compiled in three standard norms. Dermatoglyphics and dental anthropology data are still being analyzed. Conclusion. The Russian-Indian Anthropological Expedition examined the Korku people using an integrated anthropological approach during the 2020 field season. The Korku's somatometric, cephalometric, and cephaloscopic characteristics were acquired and presented for the first time.

Investigating linguistic and genetic shifts in East Indian tribal groups

South Asia is home to almost a quarter of the world's total population and is home to significant ethnolinguistic diversity. Previous studies of linguistic and genetic affiliations of Indian populations suggest that the formation of these distinct groups was a protracted and complex phenomenon involving multiple waves of migration, cultural assimilation, and genetic admixture. The evolutionary processes of migration, mixing and merging of populations thus impact the culture and linguistic diversity of different groups, some of which may retain their linguistic affinities despite genetic admixture with other groups, or vice versa. Our study examines the relationship of genetic and linguistic affinities between Austroasiatic and Indo-European speakers in adjacent geographical regions of Eastern India. We analyzed 224 mitogenomes and 0.65 million SNP genotypes from 40 unrelated individuals belonging to the Bathudi, Bhumij, Ho, and Mahali ethnic groups from the Eastern Indian state of Odisha. These four groups are speakers of Austroasiatic languages who have adopted elements from Indo-European languages spoken in neighbouring regions. Our results suggest that these groups have the greatest maternal genetic affinity with other Austroasiatic-speaking groups in India. Allele frequency-based analyses, genome-wide SNPs, haplotype-based methods and IBD sharing further support the genetic similarity of these East Indian groups to Austroasiatic speakers of South Asia rather than regional populations speaking Indo-European and Dravidian languages. Our study shows that these populations experienced linguistic mixing, likely due to industrialization and modernization that brought them into close cultural contact with neighbouring Indo-European-speaking groups. However, linguistic change in these groups is not reflected in genetic mixing in these populations, as they appear to maintain strict genetic boundaries while simultaneously experiencing cultural mixing.

Notation and phonology of the Tri language in Vilabouly*

Abstract Gérard Diffloth (1937–2023) was a leading authority on Austroasiatic languages, with a wide range of linguistic interests ranging from historical reconstruction to expressives, and much more. He was a tireless fieldworker who firmly believed that research into the linguistic history of Austroasiatic need be grounded in long-term fieldwork with native speakers in their daily speech environment. In this paper we introduce an unpublished manuscript on the phonology of the Tri language spoken in Vilabouly District, Savannakhet Province in southern Laos. We frame this with a brief introduction to his work, with a tribute to his commitment to fieldwork and the principles he maintained throughout the many decades of working with speakers of Austroasiatic languages.

The Origin and Dispersal of Austroasiatic Languages from the Perspectives of Linguistics, Archeology, and Genetics

The Austroasiatic (AA) languages comprise a large language family in mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) and South Asia. Theoretical, methodological, and material constraints have limited research on the origin and dispersal of AA-speaking populations within historical-comparative linguistics. With the deepening of archaeological and genetic studies, interdisciplinary collaboration has become key to solving this problem. We review the latest hypotheses in linguistics, archaeology, and molecular anthropology and propose insights on the origin and dispersal of AA languages. The ancestors of the AA-speaking populations were suggested to be rice farmers living in the Neolithic Age in southern China. Between 3,000 and 4,500 BP, some of these ancestors who spoke Proto-AA migrated from southern China to northern Vietnam, together with shouldered stone tools and domesticated rice. They mixed with local hunter-gatherers and expanded to the south of MSEA, giving rise to the Mon-Khmer, Aslian, and Nicobarese populations. They also spread to the northeast of India to form the Munda-speaking populations. Another group arrived near Dian Lake in Yunnan about 2,500 BP, where they created the Bronze Drum culture with the Proto- Tai-Kadai (TK)–speaking populations and later spread eastward to northern Vietnam via Guangxi. Finally, the Proto-AA–speaking people who remained in southern China mixed with the Proto-TK–speaking groups from Fujian and Guangdong, leading to a language shift, which we hypothesize was one of the main reasons for the “disappearance” of AA in southern China.

Differentiated genomic footprints suggest isolation and long-distance migration of Hmong-Mien populations

BackgroundThe underrepresentation of Hmong-Mien (HM) people in Asian genomic studies has hindered our comprehensive understanding of the full landscape of their evolutionary history and complex trait architecture. South China is a multi-ethnic region and indigenously settled by ethnolinguistically diverse HM, Austroasiatic (AA), Tai-Kadai (TK), Austronesian (AN), and Sino-Tibetan (ST) people, which is regarded as East Asia’s initial cradle of biodiversity. However, previous fragmented genetic studies have only presented a fraction of the landscape of genetic diversity in this region, especially the lack of haplotype-based genomic resources. The deep characterization of demographic history and natural-selection-relevant genetic architecture of HM people was necessary.ResultsWe reported one HM-specific genomic resource and comprehensively explored the fine-scale genetic structure and adaptative features inferred from the genome-wide SNP data of 440 HM individuals from 33 ethnolinguistic populations, including previously unreported She. We identified solid genetic differentiation between HM people and Han Chinese at 7.64‒15.86 years ago (kya) and split events between southern Chinese inland (Miao/Yao) and coastal (She) HM people in the middle Bronze Age period and the latter obtained more gene flow from Ancient Northern East Asians. Multiple admixture models further confirmed that extensive gene flow from surrounding ST, TK, and AN people entangled in forming the gene pool of Chinese coastal HM people. Genetic findings of isolated shared unique ancestral components based on the sharing alleles and haplotypes deconstructed that HM people from the Yungui Plateau carried the breadth of previously unknown genomic diversity. We identified a direct and recent genetic connection between Chinese inland and Southeast Asian HM people as they shared the most extended identity-by-descent fragments, supporting the long-distance migration hypothesis. Uniparental phylogenetic topology and network-based phylogenetic relationship reconstruction found ancient uniparental founding lineages in southwestern HM people. Finally, the population-specific biological adaptation study identified the shared and differentiated natural selection signatures among inland and coastal HM people associated with physical features and immune functions. The allele frequency spectrum of cancer susceptibility alleles and pharmacogenomic genes showed significant differences between HM and northern Chinese people.ConclusionsOur extensive genetic evidence combined with the historical documents supported the view that ancient HM people originated from the Yungui regions associated with ancient “Three-Miao tribes” descended from the ancient Daxi-Qujialing-Shijiahe people. Then, some have recently migrated rapidly to Southeast Asia, and some have migrated eastward and mixed respectively with Southeast Asian indigenes, Liangzhu-related coastal ancient populations, and incoming southward ST people. Generally, complex population migration, admixture, and adaptation history contributed to the complicated patterns of population structure of geographically diverse HM people.

Tracing the Evolution of Machine Translation: A Journey through the Myanmar (Burmese)-Wa (sub-group of the Austro-Asiatic language) Corpus

Tracing the Evolution of Machine Translation: A Journey through the Myanmar (Burmese)-Wa (sub-group of the Austro-Asiatic language) Corpus

Лексика традиционной материальной культуры в языках Юго-Восточной Азии1

The article presents some findings of the research project "Traditional Material Culture Realia in Southeast Asia Languages and Folklore Texts". The main goal of the project is to show how the common for various South-East Asia populations material-culture elements are reflected in the areal languages — primarily, in their vocabulary. As an example of the research under the project, the article proposes an analysis of two lexemes for ‘gong’ and ‘cymbal’, respectively. Our research traces the “migration” of the corresponding terms bet­ween languages belonging to the various language families of the area (Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, and Kra-Tai). Hypotheses on the ways of these lexemes’ distribution across the region are proposed. The article also describes the main results of our 2022 expedition to the north of Cambodia (a region inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Austroasiatic language family).

Lexical Evidence in Austronesian for an Austroasiatic presence in Borneo

Abstract: Divergence and diversity at the level of phonology and lexicon in many of the Austronesian languages of Borneo are widely recognized and well studied. However, the source of this divergence is debated. In this paper, lexical items in the languages of Borneo which lack secure Austronesian etymologies are the object of study. Some of these words show potential semantic and phonological matches with Austroasiatic forms, suggesting a possible early period of in situ contact between Austronesian speakers and speakers of Mon-Khmer languages on the island of Borneo.

A study on Santali rhymes: collection and discussion

The ancestors of the Santals are the largest ethnic community in India. Santali is their mother tongue, is origin from an Austro-Asiatic language family. Santali is the rich heritage of folk rhymes. In Santali folk literature, however, rhyme holds a place of equal importance to these other forms. The aims of the study mainly focused on Santali rhymes that were intimately related to the social and cultural life of the Santal community. In this view, to obtain a profile of the culture-related folklore, the study was done on the qualitative linguistic approach. The result showed that the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism, the argument of Santali folk rhyme is created in the Santali language based on orality laid the conservation of the Santal-socio-cultural system. Santali folk rhymes are set in the context of Santal tradition, culture, behavior, social status, and identity construction within the community.

The Function and Usage of the Verb ‘be’ in Ho language

The Ho language, a member of the Austro-Asiatic language family, specifically falls under the Munda group. Traditionally, the verb 'be' has been denoted to as the ‘-tan’ verb. However, our study seeks to argue that both the ‘-tan’ and ‘-min’ verbs should be categorized as 'be' verbs, serving as main verbs with the meaning 'is’, while maintaining distinct usage and functions. Thus, this paper aims to examine the functions and uses of both the ‘-tan’ and ‘-min verbs. In pursuit of this goal, we will explore not only their roles as main verbs but also their applications as tense markers, brand names, and linking verbs.

A sociophoentic study of intergenerational differences in Kemie language

Previous sociophonetic studies have primarily concentrated on European languages or other dominant languages, with Chinese dialects and minority languages receiving less attention. This article aims to examine the phonetic variations of vowels, stops and tones emerged owing to age differences in Kemie Language, an Austroasiatic language in China. 18 speakers were categorized by age into young, middle-aged and older groups with 6 speakers in each group. Acoustic parameters such as formants, VOT, f0 and duration were extracted, and linear mixed effects model and repeated measures ANOVA in R were employed to test whether the above parameters were significantly different across the groups. Results show that: (1) The monophthongs /ɛ/ /a/ /ɔ/ manifest significant variations through tongue height or frontness or both. (2) VOT values of /b/ in the above three groups are significantly different and inverse with age, while no consistent conclusions can be reached in terms of /d/ /ɡ/. (3) Low-rising (13) and high-rising (35) tones with stop codas (cu yun wei) haven’t merged across the groups, but pitch range of the two tones become narrower with decreasing age; Low-rising (13) and mid-level (33) tones with sonorant codas (shu yun wei) have merged across groups.

Neural machine translation systems for English to Khasi: A case study of an Austroasiatic language

Neural machine translation has predominantly outperformed previous machine translation models primarily for resourceful languages. However, very little work has been reported for resource-constrained languages such as Khasi. The Khasi language belongs to the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family and is spoken primarily in the state of Meghalaya in India. Although performing neural machine translation for the under-resourced Khasi language is difficult, we build a substantial parallel corpus of English–Khasi. We apply three segmentation methods in the datasets for our experiments: untokenized, tokenized and a subword BPE (Byte Pair Encoding). Experiments are carried out on this dataset with different aspects of neural machine translation systems using cutting-edge architectures such as LSTM (Long Short Term Memory), GRU (Gated Recurrent Unit) and a transformer based model for the English–Khasi language pair. We also carry out experiments by adapting the transfer learning approach using English-Vietnamese as the parent language pair and English-Khasi as the child language pair. This work reports a quantitative and qualitative analysis of several models based on architectural and data segmentation methodologies. The experimental findings show that the model adapted using the transfer learning approach achieved a reasonable improvement in BLEU scores with the highest being 58.1 BLEU on similar domains and 17.7 BLEU for the general domain outscoring the other models for the same language pair. Qualitative analysis is carried out focusing on the morphological inflections of gender identification in the translated output.

South Asian maternal and paternal lineages in southern Thailand and the role of sex-biased admixture.

Previous genome-wide studies have reported South Asian (SA) ancestry in several Mainland Southeast Asian (MSEA) populations; however, additional details concerning population history, in particular the role of sex-specific aspects of the SA admixture in MSEA populations can be addressed with uniparental markers. Here, we generated ∼2.3 mB sequences of the male-specific portions of the Y chromosome (MSY) of a Tai-Kadai (TK)-speaking Southern Thai group (SouthernThai_TK), and complete mitochondrial (mtDNA) genomes of the SouthernThai_TK and an Austronesian (AN)-speaking Southern Thai (SouthernThai_AN) group. We identified new mtDNA haplogroups, e.g. Q3, E1a1a1, B4a1a and M7c1c3 that have not previously reported in Thai populations, but are frequent in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania, suggesting interactions between MSEA and these regions. SA prevalent mtDNA haplogroups were observed at frequencies of ~35-45% in the Southern Thai groups; both of them showed more genetic relatedness to Austroasiatic (AA) speaking Mon than to any other group. For MSY, SouthernThai_TK had ~35% SA prevalent haplogroups and exhibited closer genetic affinity to Central Thais. We also analyzed published data from other MSEA populations and observed SA ancestry in some additional MSEA populations that also reflects sex-biased admixture; in general, most AA- and AN-speaking groups in MSEA were closer to SA than to TK groups based on mtDNA, but the opposite pattern was observed for the MSY. Overall, our results of new genetic lineages and sex-biased admixture from SA to MSEA groups attest to the additional value that uniparental markers can add to studies of genome-wide variation.

Austro-Asiatic Numeration

This paper is an attempt to exhibit the commonalities as well as variations present in the numeral systems of four Austro-Asiatic (AA) languages of India, namely Khasi, Pnar, Santali and Mundari. Khasi and Pnar are classified under the ‘Mon- Khmer Branch’ of AA family, while languages Mundari and Santali fall under the ‘Munda Branch’ of the same. This study assays the structure of counting systems in detail while simultaneously compares it with systems in other languages of the family. The paper not only analyses the cardinals and their structure, but also sheds light on other types of numerals and on the interaction of numerals with NP. The numeral classifier also has been discussed in this paper as the languages, Khasi and Pnar are numeral classifier languages.

Этнография, этноботаника, этнолингвистика тропической Азии: обзор Маклаевских чтений 2021–2022 гг. и секции на Радловских чтениях 2023 г.

The paper presents a brief overview of three conferences organized by the Department of Australia, Oceania and Indonesia of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the RAS, St. Petersburg, in 2021–2023, Maclay Readings 2021 and 2022 and a panel on ethnobotany at the Radlov Readings 2023. Fieldwork in the countries of Southeast Asia and Oceania is the main focus of our Department. However, since Covid restrictions reduced our possibilities for travel during that period, ethnobotany, another topic traditional for our studies, was chosen as the main theme of the conference. Also, a number of papers dealt with the history, art, traditional and modern culture of the South of Asia and Oceania, as well as Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages.

СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ ЛЕГЕНДЫ О СТРЕЛКЕ ПО СОЛНЦУ: ОТ АМУРА ДО ТАЙВАНЯ

The article by the well-known Russian sinologist Boris Lvovich Riftin (1932–2012) is devoted to a comparative analysis of one of the most widespread myths that tells about the existence of several suns in some ancient times and the destruction of superfluous ones by a mythological hero. To a large extent, the article is based on the author’s own field recordings among the natives of Taiwan, the peoples of Bunun and Taiya, in 1992–1998. The researcher comes to the conclusion that the myth that relates the hero’s victory over the unbearable solar heat, was developed from a more general idea of an excessive number of suns. It is found in Europe as well as in Africa, but mainly in the Pacific region, East Asia and America. The myth of shooting superfluous suns exists mainly in mainland China, Taiwan and the Philippines, Indonesia and northeastern India, but is practically not noted north of the Amur river, among the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Tibet. Thus, the area of distribution of this myth has clear boundaries, and many peoples who have similar stories belong to the Austroasiatic language family. Perhaps the ancient myth of the destruction of additional suns originally appeared in East Asia, and then during migrations was transferred to Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and some islands in the Pacific.

The linguistics of odour in Semaq Beri and Semelai, two Austroasiatic languages of the Malay Peninsula

AbstractThere is a long history presuming smell is not expressible in language, but numerous studies in recent years challenge this presupposition. Large smell lexica have been reported around the world thereby showing highlexical codabilityin this domain. Psycholinguistic studies likewise find smell can be described with relatively high agreement, demonstrating highefficient codability. Often the two go hand-in-hand: languages with high lexical codability also display high efficient codability. This study compares two Austroasiatic (Aslian) languages – Semaq Beri and Semelai – previously shown to diverge in their efficient codability for smell: Semaq Beri showed relatively high efficient codability, whereas Semelai did not. Despite this, we demonstrate that both languages have high lexical codability, i.e., large lexica of basic smell terms. This seems to be a feature of the Aslian language family, suggesting a long-standing preoccupation with odours. More generally, the dissociation between lexical and efficient codability suggests a more nuanced approach towards linguistic expressibility is necessary.

Multiple migrations from East Asia led to linguistic transformation in NorthEast India and mainland Southeast Asia.

NorthEast India, with its unique geographic location in the midst of the Himalayas and Bay of Bengal, has served as a passage for the movement of modern humans across the Indian subcontinent and East/Southeast Asia. In this study we look into the population genetics of a unique population called the Khasi, speaking a language (also known as the Khasi language) belonging to the Austroasiatic language family and residing amidst the Tibeto-Burman speakers as an isolated population. The Khasi language belongs to one of the three major broad classifications or phyla of the Austroasiatic language and the speakers of the three sub-groups are separated from each other by large geographical distances. The Khasi speakers are separated from their nearest Austroasiatic language-speaking sub-groups: the “Mundari” sub-family from East and peninsular India and the “Mon-Khmers” in Mainland Southeast Asia. We found the Khasi population to be genetically distinct from other Austroasiatic speakers, i.e. Mundaris and Mon-Khmers, but relatively similar to the geographically proximal Tibeto Burmans. The possible reasons for this genetic-linguistic discordance lie in the admixture history of different migration events that originated from East Asia and proceeded possibly towards Southeast Asia. We found at least two distinct migration events from East Asia. While the ancestors of today’s Tibeto-Burman speakers were affected by both, the ancestors of Khasis were insulated from the second migration event. Correlating the linguistic similarity of Tibeto-Burman and Sino-Tibetan languages of today’s East Asians, we infer that the second wave of migration resulted in a linguistic transition while the Khasis could preserve their linguistic identity.