Proto-Munda is the reconstructed proto-language of the Munda languages of the Indian subcontinent. 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 present-day Odisha (Utkal Plains) around 4000 – 3500 years ago.Sidwell, Paul. 2018. Austroasiatic Studies: state of the art in 2018. Presentation at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, 22 May 2018. Based on linguistic evidence, Rau & Sidwell (2019) also propose that Proto-Munda was spoken by a rice and millet-farming culture consisting of indigenous South Asians and Southeast Asian migrants, and the association of proto-Munda speakers with the Neolithic Sankarjang–Golabai Archaeological Complex offshore of the Mahanadi River Delta.Rau & Sidwell (2019:46).
Phonology The tables below show Proto-Munda consonant and vowel phonemes reconstructed by Rau (2019) and Sidwell & Rau (2014).
Consonants LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottalOcclusivevoiceless***/*k₂(*Vˀ)voiced****checked*ˀp*ˀt*ˀc*ˀkNasal****Fricative*Approximant**Trill*
PAA *h, *w, *c & *ʔ presumably lost, neutralized, or merged with other sounds in proto-Munda. *k₂ (Pinnow *q) is a posited reconstructed placeholder for chaotic reflexes that might have happened under presumably k > h > ∅ lenitions (likely through a *χ intermediary).
Gloss Santali Kharia Sora Bolyu (Pakanic) Rau & Sidwell Pinnow "fish" hako kaɖoŋ əjoː qɔ⁵³ *k₂ *q "to bite" haˀp hapkaj op – *k₂ *q "sick" haso kosu/kusu asuː/əsuː qu⁵⁵ *k₂ *q "wind" hojoŋ kojo – qə³¹təŋ⁵⁵ *k₂ *q "child" hon konon oʔon qɔn⁵⁵ *k₂ *q "tiger" kul kiɽoʔ kina kui⁵³ *k *k
Vowels FrontCentralBackClose**Mid***Open* *ə includes regular reflexes in heavy syllables and a chaotic epenthetic schwa in resyllabified onset clusters.
Gloss Santali Kharia Gutob Proto-Munda Proto-Austroasiatic "eye" mɛ̃ˀt moˀɖ moʔ *məˀt *matˀ "to cut" gɛˀt gaˀɖ goɖ *gəˀt *gɨtˀ "mouth" – tomoˀɖ tumoʔ *tvməˀt (Khmer *t₁mət > *mɔət) "raw" bɛrɛl borol burol *bvrəl – "fuel" sɛŋgɛl soŋgol suŋol *sᵊŋəl (Palaungic *ŋal) "tiger" kul kiɽoʔ gikil *kᵊla *klaʔ
Retroflexes Retroflexes are a major prominent feature of the South Asian linguistic area, and all modern Munda languages possess various sets of retroflexion. In languages with high degrees of contact such as Santali, Korku, Mundari,... retroflex consonants such as plosives often appear in loanwords or have permeated into some native words, while several Sora dialects lack retroflexes altogether. In some cases, Munda stems may have acquired retroflexes naturally via phonological changes similar to those exist in Swedish, Middle Chinese, Vietnamese,... The retroflex sonorants, which reflect contact influence from Dravidian languages, however, are rare and may not be considered phonemic in Munda consonant inventories.
Word structure The proto-Austroasiatic canonical structure *C(C)V(C) was completely restructured to *CV(C) shape in proto-Munda. Sidwell & Rau (2019) suggest a scenario that intense language contacts between few Austroasiatic speakers and large number of speakers of unknown language(s) might have occurred immediately after the proto-Munda landfall to Eastern India.Rau & Sidwell (2019:40)
Word prominence Though at phrasal level, modern Munda languages exhibit a more South Asian trochaic left-headed pattern, with a pitch contour rising initially and falling at the end of the phrase, the word-level prosodic patterns in many Munda languages have been described as iambic with acoustic correlates of F0, duration, and intensity.Anderson (2020:164) Even in longer morphological words mω (or phrases), the right-headed weak-strong pattern still predominates. In actual speech, the morphological marked words are broken down into sequence of phonological prosodic words (pω) in an iambic pattern, though the strongest stress falls on the left-most syllable, thus the pattern is {[Right headed]pω +[Left headed]}mω.Anderson (2020:167-168) E.g. Santali {[əgú]pω=[ke-d-kó]pω=[a=è](pω)}mω 'He brought them'.Anderson (2020:165) This suggests that Proto-Munda word prosodic structure was likely iambic, which is very similar to other Austroasiatic languages.Anderson (2020:159)
Vocabulary
Austroasiatic roots The following Proto-Munda lexical proto-forms have been reconstructed by Sidwell & Rau (2015: 319, 340-363).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. 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 ** 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).
Unknown substrate terms A number of words which have uncertain origins are also found in Zide & Zide (1976)'s reconstruction of proto-Munda cultural terms.Zide, Norman Herbert & A. Zide. 1976. "Proto-Munda cultural vocabulary: Evidence for early agriculture" Philip N. Jenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.). Austroasiatic Studies, Volume II. Honolulu: University of Hawaii (Oceanic Linguistics, Special Publication, No. 13). Part II: 1295-334Rau & Sidwell (2019:41)Peterson (2021:10)
*saXʔl ‘mortar’ *gaŋ(-)gay ‘sorghum’ *ə-rig' ‘small millet’ (Panicum miliare) *deray ‘ragi’ (Eleusine coracana) *kodaXj ‘horsegram’ (Macrotyloma uniflorum) *rVm ‘black gram’ (Vigna mungo) *uXli/uXla ‘mango’ (Mangifera indica) *kaj'-er/*kag'-er ‘unripe mango’ *taŋ ‘cow’ *boŋtel ‘buffalo’ Indian blackberry turmeric tamarind wild date
Morphosyntax Syntactic shift Although the modern Munda languages show a standard head-final subject–object–verb (SOV) order in unmarked phrases, most scholars believe that proto-Munda was head-first, VO like proto-Austroasiatic. The first linguist to noticed this peculiarity, Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow (1925-2016), found strong evidence for a proto-Munda VO order. VO order has been found in compounds, noun incorporation, and verbal morphology in the SoraBaker (1996:32)-Gorum languages, and to a lesser extent in Gtaʔ, Gutob, Remo, Kharia, and Juang. By any given examples, the Munda predicates (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.Donegan & Stampe (2002:114–116)Donegan & Stampe (2004:6)
Remo:
Sora:
Juang:
Gorum:
Gtaʔ:
Winfred Lehmann (1973) reviewed,
Pinnow (1963, 1966) proposed 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 (2004:7).
Donegan & Stampe (1983, 2004) argued that proto-Munda was VO but non-agglutinative like its sister languages in Southeast Asia. According to Donegan & Stampe, there are some characteristics of the Munda languages such as head-marking and polysynthesis that are so distinct and attributable to neither Dravidian and Indo-Aryan influence.Donegan & Stampe (2004:12-13) They believed that Munda synthesis and SOV order were clearly not stimulated just by language contact within 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 from VO to OV and triggered word agglutination.Donegan & Stampe (2004:26-27)
For the reason why the Munda languages keep head-first order in compounds and polysynthetic morphology, Donegan & Stampe (2002) believed that words, like the verb-noun compounds, are more resistant to internal changes of rhythms and ordering than phrases.Donegan & Stampe (2002:116) Donegan & Stampe (2004) carefully stated that their explanation for the Munda rhythm-initiated synthesis drift does not include polysynthesis, and Donegan & Stampe (2002) also termed the Munda polysynthetic morphology as 'idiomatic and (older) morphology.' Stanley Starosta (1967) explained that, during its early formation stage when Munda was still head-first SVO, verb-noun incorporation was facilitated as seen in modern Sora, but then it did a syntactic shift to head-final SOV and added more morphology. The polysynthetic verb phrases thus had become crystalized since that time.
Donegan & Stampe's prediction of Munda synthetic shift caused by change of rhythmic holism is contested by instrumental data of individual languages, which show that Munda prosodic characteristics are not what Donegan & Stampe described.
Proto-Munda predicate Anderson and Zide (2001, 2007) Gregory D. S. Anderson & Norman Zide (2001, 2007) reconstructed the head-marking bound 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
Anderson & Zide (2001), together with van Driem (2001) positioned that the Munda languages are the most morphologically conservative Austroasiatic branch. Van Driem posited that the Austroasiatic languages dispersed eastward from Northeast India to Southeast Asia instead. Michael Witzel (1999) proposed an Austroasiatic homeland further west, in the Panjab region during the Indus Valley Civilization. The current general consensus considers these hypotheses unlikely. Peter Bellwood (2022) states that "the source for the whole Austroasiatic languages is still a mystery."
Rau (2020) Felix Rau (2020) concludes that Proto-Munda predicate structure was verb-medial SVO,Rau (2020:227) though he suggests that it might have been less inflected with fewer bound elements, which may cause the Munda predicate development to become divergent later.Rau (2020:225)