Palaungic

Palaungic (or Palaung-Wa) is an internally diverse branch: (like

Bahnaric) there are upwards of 30 languages comprising at least three
primary divisions, and a great typological diversity is found among them.
Palaungic communities are spread over a wide area that overlaps
Thailand, Myanmar, China and Laos. They are generally distributed in
small discontiguous pockets surrounded by other ethnic groups, mostly
Tai, Meo and Tibeto-Burmans who repeatedly colonised the upper
Mekong and Salween valleys over the last millennium or so. We may
suggest that the three identified Palaungic sub-groups correspond to
three closely related MK proto-languages that dominated the Shan
State and Yunnan regions before the recent period of great migrations
out of Southern China began.
While many Palaungic languages are poorly documented and/or
endangered, many useful descriptions are available, and a substantial
comparative reconstruction of one sub-branch (Waic - Diffloth 1980) has
been published (plus various smaller historical studies). In recent years
the amount of useful data has particularly increased due to field
research in Northern Thailand and by Chinese researchers working on
their side of the border. The latter have published a number language
descriptions that are marvelous in their phonetic detail, and provide
lexicons arranged according to standardised semantic categories, so
that even readily usable even to researchers without a good reading
command of Chinese.

Palaungic can de divided into at least 3

subgroups:
Waic
a) Bulang(Blang, Phang)
b) La
c) Lawa
d) Lavia
e) Paraok (Wa)
f) Phalok (Khalo)
g) Va

Angkuic
a) Amok
b) Angku
c) Hu
d) Samtao
e) U (Pouma)

Palaung-Riang
a) Lamet
b) Ka-ang
c) Na-ang
d) Na-eang (flowery Palaung)
e) Pale (Silver Palaung)
f) Riang
g) Rumai
h) Ta-ang (Gold Palaung)
i) Danaw (may be another sub-group?)

Historically Palaungic appears to have merged the PMK implosive and

voiced stop series into a single voiced series, which was then devoiced
in almost all daughters: an exception within Palaung-Riang that Rumai
and Ta-ang preserve *voiced stops. Associated with the devoicing,
many Palaungic languages developed breathy versus clear vowel
registers or even 2 tone systems. Angkuic developed tones, but these
were conditioned by different factors (see below).
It is even possible that at least one Palaungic language, Riang, may
even maintain the old *implosives as a distinct (although merely voiced)
series (as do Katuic languages Kui, Bru etc., although I do not yet have
reliable data to confirm this).
The really solid phonological change that distingishes Palaungic from
the rest of MK is the regular merger of *s and *h. In Palaung-Riang and
Waic the outcome of the merger was /h/, while in Anguic it was /s/.

PALAUNG-RIANG
As mentioned above, 2 languages of this sub-group are particularly
conservative: Rumai and Ta-ang, otherwise the rest have devoiced all
their voiced obstruents, with associated register and other vowel effects.
Loss of vowel length is also common, and seems to be a widespread
areal characteristic.

WAIC
Perhaps the best known of the Palaungic languages is Wa (Paraok), on
which there are numerous publications, and a bible translation (Young
1934). Currently SOAS hosts an internet site dedicated to documenting
WA: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/wadict/index.html. The project seeks to
compile a Wa/Burmese/Chinese/English Dictionary containing up to
10,000 Wa etyma. Chinese researchers have been especially busy,
having published dictionaries, text collections and numerous papers.
The term "Wa" tends to be used for various dlialects, so it is important
to distinguish the particular variety a given source refers to, especially
for comparative purposes.
In Waic there was a general devoicing stops, and in most dialects
contrastive breathy phonation follows distinguishes the vowels following
the previously voiced series. Paraok further underwent a Khmer-like
split in the vowel system, while in Lawa some dialects lost breathy
phonation or reflect it as aspiration of the initial consonant.
ANGKUIC
The Angkuic sub-group is especially facinating as it has developed
contour tones rather than registers. The languages are spoken by very
small and disparate communities in Yunnan, Myanmar, Laos and
Thailand. Very endangered now, they are first known from wordlists
collected a century ago, e.g.: Lefvre-Pontalis (1892, 1896), d'Orlans
(1898), Scott & Hardiman (1900), Davis (1909). More recently
Svantesson (1988) presented a short but excellent description of the
phonetics and historical development of U as it is spoken in the village
of Pa Xep in Yunnan.
U has undergone rather extreme phonetic changes in the course of its

development. These include:

*voiced stops > voiceless, while *voiceless stops > aspirated (so called
"Germanic type shift")

loss of distinctive vowel length

shift of both final velar stop and *-s to a pharyngeal fricative

shift of final nasal after *short vowels to corresponding oral stops

shift of final velar fricative to a nasalised low central vowel []

development of 4 tones

The tone system emerged approximately as follows:

Low tone: from *syllables with short vowel and sonorant coda; open
syllable with non-high vowel

High tone: from *syllables with short vowel and stop or -s coda; long
vowel and a voiceless obstruent among the prevocalic segments; open
syllable with high vowel

Rising tone: from *syllables with long vowel and stop or -s coda

Falling tone: from *syllables with long vowel and sonorant coda if all
prevocalic segments are sonorant

Apparently the role of vowel length in U tonogenesis is unusual (or

unique). That aside, the evidence from U tones confirms that
etymological MK vowel length must be reconstructed for Proto-Angkuic
and thus Proto-Palaungic.

References and further reading

Chn, X-M. et. al. 1986. Da-angyu jianzhi. Beijing, National

Minorities Press. (A description of the Ta-ang language, in
Chinese).

Davies, Henry Rudolph. 1909. Yn-nan: the link between India

and the Yangtze. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Diffloth, Grard. 1980. The Wa Languages. Linguistics of the

Tibeto-Burman Area. Vol. 5/2. Berkeley: University of

California.

Diffloth, Grard. 1991. Palaungic vowels in Mon-Khmer

perspective. In Davison ed. Austroasiatic Languages, essays
in honour of H. L. Shorto. SOAS, University of London.

Drage, Godrey. 1907. A few notes on Wa. Rangoon,

superintendent, Government Press.

Izikowitz, K. G. 1951. Lamet: Hill peasants in French Indochina.

Etnologika studier, 17. Gtenborg.

Lefvre-Pontalis, Pierre. 1892. Nores sur quelques populations

du nord de l'Indochine. Journal Asiatique 8.19:237-69.

Lefvre-Pontalis, Pierre. 1896. Nores sur quelques populations

du nord de l'Indochine (2e srie). Journal Asiatique 9.8:129303.

Li, Dao Yong, Nie Xi Zhen and Qiu E Feng. 1986. Bulangyu
jianzhi. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing. (A
description of Bulang (Lamet). )

Luce, Gordon H. 1965. Danaw, a dying Austroasiatic language.

Lingua 14:98-129.

Milne, Leslie. 1921. An Elementary Palaung Grammar. Oxford,

Clarendon Press.

Milne, Leslie. 1931. A dictionary of English-Palaung and

Palaung-English. Rangoon, Superintendent, Government
Printing and Stationary.

Mitani, Yasuyuki. 1966. Descriptive Study of the Lawa

language (Bo Luang district). Tnan Ajia Kenty (South East
Asian Studies) 4.2: 40-62.

Mitani, Yasuyuki. 1972. A short vocabulary of Lawa. Tnan Ajia

Kenty (South East Asian Studies), 10.1: 131-68.

Mitani, Yasuyuki. 1972. Studies in the Lawa phonology. Tnan

Ajia Kenty (South East Asian Studies), 10.2: 174-96.

Mitani, Yasuyuki. 1977. Palaung dialects: a preliminary

comparison. Tnan Ajia Kenty (South East Asian Studies),
15.2: 193-212.

Mitani, Yasuyuki. 1979. Vowel Correspondences between

Riang and Palaung. Studies in Thai and Mon-Khmer Phonetics
and Phonology in Honour of Eugnie J.A. Henderson.
Chulalongkorn University Press, Bangkok, pp142-50.

d'Orans, Henri. 1898. Fron Tonkin to India by the sources of

the Irawadi. Translated by Hamley Bent. London, Methuen.

Paulsen, Debbie Lynn. 1989. A Phonological Reconstruction of

Proto-Plang. M.A. Thesis, The University of Texas at Arlington.

Proschan, Frank. 1996. A Survey of Khmuic and Palaungic

Languages in Laos and Vietnam. Pan-Asiatic Linguistics, 3:
895-919.

Ratanakul, Suriya. 1986. Lawa-Thai Dictionary. Institute of

Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol
University, Salaya.

Ratanakul, Suriya. 1987. Thai - Lawa Dictionary. Institute of

Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol
University, Salaya.

Schmidt, Pater Wilhelm. 1904. Grundzge einer Lautlehreder

Khasi-Sprache in ihren Beziehungen zu derjenigen der MonKhmer-Sprachen. Mit einem Anhang: die Palaung-Wa-, und
Riang-Sprachen des mittleren Salwin. Abh. Bayrischen
Akademie der Wissenschaft, 1.22.3:677-810.

Scott, James George and J.P. Hardiman. 1900. Gazetteer of

Upper Burma and the Shan States 1.1. Rangoon,
Superintendent, Government Printing.

Shorto, Harry L. 1960. Word and syllable paterns in Palaung.

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 23:54457.

Shorto, Harry L. 1963. The Structural pattern of northern MonKhmer languages. In H.L. Shorto (ed.), Linguistic Comparison
in South-East Asia and the Pacific. pp 45-61.

Svantesson, Jan-Olof. 1988. U. Linguistics of the TibetoBurman Area, 11.1:64-133.

Watkins, Justin. 2002. The Phonetics of Wa. Canberra, Pacific

Linguistics 531.

Wenk, K. 1965. Drei Lawa vokabularien aus Nordthailand.

Oriens Extremus 12:107-127.

Young, M. V. 1934. Lai Yohan, Gospel of John in Wa. Rangoon,

American Baptist Mission Press.

Zhou Zhizhi and Yan Qixiang. 1983. Approaching the

Consonantism of Ancient Wa from Phonological
Correspondences Among the Dialects of Contemporary Wa. In
Yuyan Yanjiu No.1. Beijing, Institute of Nationality Studies,
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Zhou Zhizhi et. al. 1991. Pug lai cix ding yiie sindong lai Vax
mai Hox. Kunming, Yunnan Minorities Press. (A Concise
Dictionary of Wa and Chinese)