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![The An settlement of Taiwan with the MP and TK migrations [a]: The pre-Austronesians, from NE China, expand southward along the SE China seaboard in the 5th and early 4th millennia BCE: they cultivate rice, foxtail millet, exploit marine resources, practice tooth evulsion. [b]: the Nanri and Pingtan islands, from which the top of Mt Xueshan (3884 m., at center of 200-km radius visibility circle) can be seen, 27 are reached. From there one group crosses to Taiwan c. 3500 BCE, while [c] the rest continues expanding in a SW direction towards the Pearl River Delta. [1]: location of earliest An (PAnspeaking) settlements on Taiwan. [2]: location of Pituish, [3] location of Enemish, [4] location of Walu-Siwaish, [5] location of Muish, [6] Tai-Kadai migration, [7] Malayo-Polynesian migration, c. 2000 BCE.](profile/Laurent-Sagart/publication/236801169/figure/fig1/AS:11431281104736577@1670235641166/The-An-settlement-of-Taiwan-with-the-MP-and-TK-migrations-a-The-pre-Austronesians.png)
The An settlement of Taiwan with the MP and TK migrations [a]: The pre-Austronesians, from NE China, expand southward along the SE China seaboard in the 5th and early 4th millennia BCE: they cultivate rice, foxtail millet, exploit marine resources, practice tooth evulsion. [b]: the Nanri and Pingtan islands, from which the top of Mt Xueshan (3884 m., at center of 200-km radius visibility circle) can be seen, 27 are reached. From there one group crosses to Taiwan c. 3500 BCE, while [c] the rest continues expanding in a SW direction towards the Pearl River Delta. [1]: location of earliest An (PAnspeaking) settlements on Taiwan. [2]: location of Pituish, [3] location of Enemish, [4] location of Walu-Siwaish, [5] location of Muish, [6] Tai-Kadai migration, [7] Malayo-Polynesian migration, c. 2000 BCE.
Source publication
This paper presents a new higher phylogeny for the Austronesian family, based on three independent lines of evidence: the observation of a hierarchy of implications among the numerals from 5 to 10 in the languages of Formosa and in PMP; the finding that the numerals *pitu '7', *walu '8', and *Siwa '9' can be derived from longer additive expressions...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... that the implicational hierarchy in Table 1 was accidental, and that the etymologies proposed for *pitu, *walu and *Siwa in section 3 were fanciful, we should not expect the phylogeny proposed in Table 4 This model shows a consistent geographical pattern: early Austronesian speakers settling Taiwan progressively in a counter-clockwise movement, starting from the north-west, then expanding southward along the west coast, and reaching the southern tip of the island before finally settling the east coast from south to north, as shown in Figure 2. ...
Context 2
... proposals have been made on the ground of the convergence of three independent lines of evidence: (1) the implicational hierarchy with the numerals 5-10, shown in Table 1; (2) the systematic resemblances between the consensus numerals for 7-8-9 and the corresponding numerals in Pazeh, described in section 3; and (3), the geographically coherent and processually realistic spatial pattern of settlement shown in Figure 2. (2) is obviously independent from (1) and (3); and (1) and (3) are independent from each other because one could have an implicational hierarchy which did not result in a coherent spatial pattern. ...
Citations
... 18 Pazeh-Kahabu is unique among Formosan languages in that it forms its numerals 'six' through 'nine' in a quinary manner, being formed additively from a construction base of xasəp 'five'. 19 Sagart (2004Sagart ( , 2021 has argued that the Pazeh numeral pattern is ancestral to PAN and that *lima 'five' was a post-PAN innovation, but this hypothesis has been met with criticism (Li 2006;Winter 2010;Ross 2012;Blust 2014;Smith 2023). Li (2006:139) notes that the Saisiyat and Babuza forms do not exhibit regular sound correspondences, and he suspects that they entered those languages due to borrowing. ...
... 18 Pazeh-Kahabu is unique among Formosan languages in that it forms its numerals 'six' through 'nine' in a quinary manner, being formed additively from a construction base of xasəp 'five'. 19 Sagart (2004Sagart ( , 2021 has argued that the Pazeh numeral pattern is ancestral to PAN and that *lima 'five' was a post-PAN innovation, but this hypothesis has been met with criticism (Li 2006;Winter 2010;Ross 2012;Blust 2014;Smith 2023). Li (2006:139) notes that the Saisiyat and Babuza forms do not exhibit regular sound correspondences, and he suspects that they entered those languages due to borrowing. ...
Many Austronesian languages employ similar words for the concepts 'hand' and 'five'. Indeed, (partial) colexification of these two meanings is generally reconstructed back to Proto-Austronesian. However, a number of Austronesian languages do not colexify 'hand' and 'five', raising the question of what drives such lexical splits. Based on a sample of 812 Austronesian languages, I identify 465 languages (57 percent) as not exhibiting colexification of 'hand' and 'five'. I find that terms for 'hand' are often subject to replacement, whereas terms for 'five' are generally stable throughout the family. The replacement of 'five' has occurred primarily in languages in which the inherited decimal counting system has been lost and the numerals 'six' through 'nine' are no longer unanalyzable monomorphemic words. This suggests that lower numerals like 'five' are less likely to be stable lexical items when they do not lie somewhere in the middle of a series of underived number terms.
... The spread of Sino-Tibetan, for example, is associated with demic diffusion related to the domestication of broomcorn and foxtail millets in the Middle Yellow River basin in the Early Neolithic (Sagart, 2008;Sagart et al., 2019;Stevens & Fuller, 2017;Wang et al., 2021;Zhang et al., 2019), while that of Austroasiatic is associated with the spread of rice agriculture from the Mid-Yangtze River basin (Bellwood, 2005;Peiros & Shnirelman, 1998). Kra-Dai and Austronesian language speakers are mainly wet rice farmers, and a genetic relationship between these two families is increasingly becoming the consensus view (Norquest, 2013;Ostapirat, 2005;Sagart, 2004). The correspondence between linguistic and archaeological findings remains a matter of debate: Sagart (2008) argues that Kra-Dai and Austronesian are related to Sino-Tibetan, and both originate from the Lower Yellow River culture of Houli, whereas Tao et al. (2023) link instead the predecessors of the Kra-Dai and Austronesians with the Neolithic cultures of the Lower Yangtze and coastal regions. ...
We investigate and compare the evolution of two aspects of culture, languages and weaving technologies, amongst the Kra-Dai (Tai-Kadai) peoples of southwest China and southeast Asia, using Bayesian Markov-Chain Monte Carlo methods to uncover phylogenies. The results show that languages and looms evolved in related but different ways, and bring some new insights into the diaspora of the Kra-Dai speakers across southeast Asia. We found that the languages and looms used by Hlai speakers of Hainan are outgroups in both linguistic and loom phylogenies, and that the looms used by speakers of closely related languages tend to belong to similar types. However, we also found differences at a deep level both in the details of the evolution of looms and languages, and in their overall patterns of change, and we discuss possible reasons for this.
... Since the 70's the nature of the voice systems in these languages has been a focus of intensive research and has remained largely controversial. Among the well-known topics that have long intrigued grammarians, typologists and historical linguists are the origin and evolution of Austronesian voice systems (Starosta, Pawley and Reid 1982;Starosta 2002;Wouk and Ross 2002;Blust 2009;Chen 2017;Smith 2017, among many others too numerous to cite), case marking, verb morphology and its reconstruction in PAN (Blust 1999;Sagart 2004;Ross 2009;Blust 2009;Chen et al. 2022); Austronesian voice systems from a typological perspective (Shibatani 1985(Shibatani , 1988Reid and Liao 2004;Himmelmann 2005;Arka and Ross 2005;Ross and Teng 2005;Arka and Manning 2008), the semantic/pragmatic A Voice System in Search of an Identity 37 properties and transitivity of Austronesian voice systems (Huang 2002;Tanangkingsing 2008;Huang and Tanangkingsing 2011;Teng 2020); the nature of valence-changing morphology (see articles anthologized in Austin, Blake and Florey 2001;Teng 2020), accusativity vs ergativity and grammatical relation in Philippine-type languages (Kroeger 1993;Foley 2008;Chen and McDonnell 2019). ...
Philippine-type languages, including Formosan languages spoken in Taiwan, are known to lack the grammatical category of subject representing convergence of topic, actor and pivot and do not have a pivot system governed by the exigencies of topicality and linkage patterns under coreference. In this study we presented the Formosan solution to 'voice' by undertaking a systematic examination of patient voice constructions in four Formosan languages. Three distinct discourse functions of patient voice constructions were distinguished based on evidence from discourse linkage patterns, namely active transitive, notional passive, and pragmatic inverse. The PV constructions in Formosan languages are not true voice constructions in the traditional sense, since PVs in these languages are neither active, nor inverse, nor passive, precisely because they can be all of them, given appropriate discourse context. These empirical findings pose a challenge to the mainstream views on voice marking and call for a rethinking of the typology of the voice systems in the world' languages.
... The TreeMix-based analysis (Fig. 5) showed that the present-day Tai-Kadai speakers had a close phylogenetic relationship with Austronesian speakers, supporting the hypothesis of the common origin of Austronesian and Tai-Kadai in linguistics (Sagart, 2004). This was also consistent with a previous genetic study that found the ancient individuals from Taiwan shared a lineage with modern Austronesian and Tai-Kadai speakers, and the lineage was hypothesized to derive from farmers of the Yangtze River Vally (Wang et al., 2021a). ...
The Sui people living in Guizhou province have a unique ethnic culture and population history due to their long-time isolation from other populations. To investigate the genetic structure of Sui populations in different regions of Guizhou, we genotyped 89 individuals from four Sui populations using genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms arrays. We analyzed the data using principal component analysis, ADMIXTURE analysis, f-statistics, qpWave/qpAdm, TreeMix analysis, fineSTRUCTURE, and GLOBETROTTER. We found that Sui populations in Guizhou were genetically homogeneous and had a close genetic affinity with Tai-Kadai-speaking populations, Hmong-Mien-speaking Hmong, and some ancient populations from southern China. The Sui populations could be modeled as an admixture of 33.5%-37.9% of Yellow River Basin farmer-related ancestry and 62.1%-66.5% of Southeast Asian-related ancestry, indicating that the southward expansion of northern East Asian-related ancestry influenced the formation of the Tai-Kadai-speaking Sui people. Future publications of more ancient genomics in southern China could effectively provide further insight into the demographic history and population structure of the Sui people.
... Unter den Sprachwissenschaftlern haben einige Forscher die Möglichkeit erforscht, ob die Tai-Kadai-Sprachen und das Austronesische durch eine gemeinsame Proto-Sprache verbunden sind (siehe Ostapirat 2018 für einen Überblick). Ein anderer Forscher vertritt die Position, dass Tai-Kadai ein Unterzweig innerhalb der austronesischen Sprachfamilie sei (Sagart 2004). Thurgood (1994) hingegen liefert überzeugende Argumente für eine Entlehnungsbeziehung zwischen das Austronesische und die Tai-Kadai-Sprachen irgendwo in den südchinesischen Provinzen Guizhou und Guangxi vor etwa 4.000 Jahren. ...
Die englische Originalausgabe dieser Monografie erschien 2021 unter den Titel The Prehistory of Language: A Triangulated Y-Chromosome-Based Perspective. Ich bin Linguist und habe diese Übersetzung für meine Kollegen aus dem Sprachbereich angefertigt. Dennoch hoffe ich, dass andere akademische Forscher sich für diese Arbeit interessieren werden, insbesondere Genetiker, Archäologen, Anthropologen und Geowissenschaftler. Diejenigen, die ein allgemeines Interesse an Sprache und Genetik haben, sind ebenfalls herzlich eingeladen, meine Monografie zu lesen.
In den letzten vierzig Jahren haben Forscher dank der Sequenzierungstechnologie die molekulargenetische Variation genutzt, um die menschliche Evolutionsgeschichte zu erforschen. Einige haben versucht, diese neue Forschungsrichtung noch weiter auszudehnen mit der Idee, dass genetische Werkzeuge die Vorgeschichte der Sprache erklären können. Da wir unsere Gene und unsere Muttersprache von unseren Eltern geerbt haben, sollten genetische und sprachliche Variationen gut miteinander korrelieren. Die Entschlüsselung der sprachlichen Vorgeschichte anhand genetischer Daten erfordert jedoch die Klärung mehrerer Fragen. Sollen wir die heutige DNA oder die alte DNA oder beides verwenden? Sollen wir mitochondriale, Y-Chromosomen- oder autosomale Marker verwenden? Sollten wir Modelle der Sprachvorgeschichte mit statistischen Methoden erstellen? Oder sollten wir Modelle mit einer Synthese aus archäologischen und paläoklimatologischen Daten erstellen? Ich schlage vor, dass wir eine triangulierte Y-Chromosom-basierte Modellierung als methodische Lösung für die Entschlüsselung der Vorgeschichte der Sprache mit genetischen Werkzeugen verwenden.
In meiner Forschung wurden mindestens 110 sprachlich informative Y-Chromosom-Mutationen identifiziert. Die Evolutionsgeschichte dieser Mutationen deutet darauf hin, dass die Geschichte der Sprache vor etwa 100 000 Jahren begann, als der Homo sapiens aus Afrika auswanderte. Nachfolgende Migrationen sowie kulturelle und evolutionäre Anpassungen erklären dann die Ausbreitung der Sprache in alle Teile der Welt. Zu dieser Ausbreitung gehören der Mungo-See-Mensch in Australien, die Mammutsteppen Eurasiens, die feuchte Phase der Sahara-Wüste, die bidirektionale Migration von Rentierzüchtern entlang des Polarkreises, der Ackerbau entlang der Flüsse des Amazonas-Regenwaldes, die Einführung des Reisanbaus in Südasien, Malaria in den Tropen und Hypoxie auf dem tibetischen Plateau.
... Regarding Pazeh, Ross (2012Ross ( : 1289 speculates that Formosan languages like Pazeh may have replaced earlier simplex numeral forms with complex ones due to contact "with speakers of the language(s) of the pre-Austronesian Changpin Culture". This is contra Sagart's (2004) bold claim that pan did not have a decimal system and thus the quinary system of Pazeh should be considered more a retention than an innovation. It does not seem likely that quinary counting methods were independently innovated dozens of times among Austronesian speakers, whether through borrowing or otherwise. ...
This study analyzes the numeral systems of Austronesian and Papuan languages, investigating their areal distribution and considering their most likely ancestral states. The presence or absence of different methods of numeration has often been ascribed to contact-induced change. This can certainly be seen in scholarship pertaining to Melanesia, where Austronesian languages probably first came into contact with Papuan languages around 3,500 years ago. Indeed, since Proto-Austronesian is reconstructed as having employed a decimal (base-10) numeral system (with reflexes occurring throughout the Austronesian world), the presence of quinary (base-5) numeral systems in the Austronesian languages of Melanesia has commonly been attributed to contact with Papuan languages. Relying on a typological survey of 1,825 languages, this paper argues that highly conventionalized quinary systems were probably rare in Melanesia prior to the arrival of Austronesian languages. Rather, it was more likely that Austronesian speakers spread lexicalized quinary systems to Papuan groups, not the other way around. In making this argument, the paper stresses that, while numeration may be something that is linguistically encoded in a systematic fashion, it may also be realized as a cultural feature without strongly conventionalized lexicalized expressions.
... Kanakanavu is a critically endangered language currently spoken by fewer than 10 people in the Namasia District of Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan (Liu et al. 2015). As a Formosan language, Kanakanavu is positioned outside of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family; however, its genealogical place within the family is still under debate, with several hypotheses positing different positions within the family (e.g., Starosta 1995, Ho 1998, Blust 1999, Sagart 2004, Ross 2009, Aldridge 2016. Kanakanavu had been an understudied and underdocumented language despite descriptive and analytic materials produced in the seminal work by Tsuchida (1976). ...
This article examines two types of lexical effects in the voice system of Kanakanavu, an Austronesian language of Taiwan. The first concerns a well-attested phenomenon in the Austronesian literature: interactions between the semantic transitivity of verbs and their ability (or lack thereof) to undergo voice alternation. The second concerns a phenomenon that is typologically and areally rare in the western Austronesian context – differential agent marking. The pronominal agent in Kanakanavu’s patient-/undergoer-voice construction is differentially case-marked depending on the tense-aspect value of the clause. However, lexical effects are found in how the differentially marked agent is interpreted. When dynamic verbs are used, omitted agents in perfective clauses are interpreted as coreferential with a specific referent mentioned in prior discourse, but those in non-perfective clauses are interpreted as having generic reference, backgrounded, and/or not centrally involved in the situation expressed by the verb. When stative verbs are used, alternation between perfective and imperfective verb forms may have various effects on the interpretation of the agent. In some stative verbs, the agent is interpreted as a prototypical semantic agent in the perfective, but as a semantic experiencer in the imperfective. In other stative verbs, the perfective/non-perfective alternation has to do with whether a change of state is involved, without having any effects on agent interpretation. This study explores how lexical effects manifest across both elicited and natural discourse data. It also presents the phenomenon of differential agent marking in Kanakanavu as neither typical nor representative in the western Austronesian context.
... Austroasiatic languages, as discussed above, are associated with the Neolithic dispersal of rice and millet farming, and their scattered distribution today probably reflects later incursions of people speaking other languages. Linguistic links between Tai-Kadai and Austronesian languages have been suggested (97); genetic studies based on both ancient samples and modern populations confirm a likely ancestral link between proto-Tai-Kadai and proto-Austronesian groups (96,98,99). Sino-Tibetan languages have their origins in northern China and probably spread to MSEA beginning ~3 kya, while Hmong-Mien languages probably arose in southern China and spread around the same time as Tai-Kadai (100). ...
... However, an initial ancient DNA study surprisingly found that individuals from Vanuatu and Tonga, dating to ~2.5-2.9 kya, possessed little or no Papuan-related ancestry (118). Subsequent studies showed that Papuan-related ancestry spread later, via mostly male-mediated, continuous migration (97,120,121). Other studies suggested back migrations from Polynesia (121) and native American ancestry that arrived in Polynesia before European contact (122), although the latter relies on analyses of modern samples and so far has not received any support from ancient DNA (123). ...
Nearly 20 y ago, Jared Diamond and Peter Bellwood reviewed the evidence for the associated spread of farming and large language families by the demographic expansions of farmers. Since then, advances in obtaining and analyzing genomic data from modern and ancient populations have transformed our knowledge of human dispersals during the Holocene. Here, we provide an overview of Holocene dispersals in the light of genomic evidence and conclude that they have a complex history. Even when there is a demonstrated connection between a demographic expansion of people, the spread of agriculture, and the spread of a particular language family, the outcome in the results of contact between expanding and resident groups is highly variable. Further research is needed to identify the factors and social circumstances that have influenced this variation and complex history.
... Given the previously proposed links between First MSEA Farmers and Austroasiatic expansion (McColl et al., 2018), as well as Neolithic Fujianese and Austronesian expansion , the potential genetic link between Western Hmongic speakers and First MESA Farmers, as well as Kra-Dai-speaking groups (e.g., Hlai) and Neolithic Fujianese, is consistent with some previous proposals of deep connections among language families in Southern East Asia to some extent. For example, Proto-Hmong-Mien and some Austroasiatic languages are proposed to have some shared "basic" vocabulary (Ostapirat, 2018), whereas the "Austro-Tai" hypothesis proposes a genealogical relationship between Austronesian and Kra-Dai language families (Sagart, 2004;Blench, 2013;Ostapirat, 2013). Given that Western Hmongic speakers are geographically close to First MSEA Farmers, the geographic factor would be an alternative explanation for their genetic pattern in addition to the linguistic relationship. ...
Southern China is the birthplace of rice-cultivating agriculture and different language families and has also witnessed various human migrations that facilitated cultural diffusions. The fine-scale demographic history in situ that forms present-day local populations, however, remains unclear. To comprehensively cover the genetic diversity in East and Southeast Asia, we generated genome-wide SNP data from 211 present-day Southern Chinese and co-analyzed them with ∼1,200 ancient and modern genomes. In Southern China, language classification is significantly associated with genetic variation but with a different extent of predictability, and there is strong evidence for recent shared genetic history particularly in Hmong–Mien and Austronesian speakers. A geography-related genetic sub-structure that represents the major genetic variation in Southern East Asians is established pre-Holocene and its extremes are represented by Neolithic Fujianese and First Farmers in Mainland Southeast Asia. This sub-structure is largely reduced by admixture in ancient Southern Chinese since > ∼2,000 BP, which forms a “Southern Chinese Cluster” with a high level of genetic homogeneity. Further admixture characterizes the demographic history of the majority of Hmong–Mien speakers and some Kra-Dai speakers in Southwest China happened ∼1,500–1,000 BP, coeval to the reigns of local chiefdoms. In Yellow River Basin, we identify a connection of local populations to genetic sub-structure in Southern China with geographical correspondence appearing > ∼9,000 BP, while the gene flow likely closely related to “Southern Chinese Cluster” since the Longshan period (∼5,000–4,000 BP) forms ancestry profile of Han Chinese Cline.
... Given the previously proposed links between First MSEA Farmers and Austroasiatic expansion (McColl et al., 2018), as well as Neolithic Fujianese and Austronesian expansion , the potential genetic link between Western Hmongic speakers and First MESA Farmers, as well as Kra-Dai-speaking groups (e.g., Hlai) and Neolithic Fujianese, is consistent with some previous proposals of deep connections among language families in Southern East Asia to some extent. For example, Proto-Hmong-Mien and some Austroasiatic languages are proposed to have some shared "basic" vocabulary (Ostapirat, 2018), whereas the "Austro-Tai" hypothesis proposes a genealogical relationship between Austronesian and Kra-Dai language families (Sagart, 2004;Blench, 2013;Ostapirat, 2013). Given that Western Hmongic speakers are geographically close to First MSEA Farmers, the geographic factor would be an alternative explanation for their genetic pattern in addition to the linguistic relationship. ...
Southern China is the birthplace of rice-cultivating agriculture and different language families and has also witnessed various human migrations that facilitated cultural diffusions. The fine-scale demographic history in situ that forms present-day local populations, however, remains unclear. To comprehensively cover the genetic diversity in East and Southeast Asia, we generated genome-wide SNP data from 211 present-day Southern Chinese and co-analyzed them with ∼1,200 ancient and modern genomes. In Southern China, language classification is significantly associated with genetic variation but with a different extent of predictability, and there is strong evidence for recent shared genetic history particularly in Hmong–Mien and Austronesian speakers. A geography-related genetic sub-structure that represents the major genetic variation in Southern East Asians is established pre-Holocene and its extremes are represented by Neolithic Fujianese and First Farmers in Mainland Southeast Asia. This sub-structure is largely reduced by admixture in ancient Southern Chinese since > ∼2,000 BP, which forms a “Southern Chinese Cluster” with a high level of genetic homogeneity. Further admixture characterizes the demographic history of the majority of Hmong–Mien speakers and some Kra-Dai speakers in Southwest China happened ∼1,500–1,000 BP, coeval to the reigns of local chiefdoms. In Yellow River Basin, we identify a connection of local populations to genetic sub-structure in Southern China with geographical correspondence appearing > ∼9,000 BP, while the gene flow likely closely related to “Southern Chinese Cluster” since the Longshan period (∼5,000–4,000 BP) forms ancestry profile of Han Chinese Cline.
