On Sun, 16 Mar 2003 08:24:54 -0800, "Geraldine Reinhardt"
<
waluk@...> wrote:
>Hi Michael,
>
>Austronesian or Austro-Asiatic......aren't they the same?
No. Austronesian is a language family consisting of Malayo-Polynesian
and the Formosan "aboriginal" groups.
Austro-Asiatic is Mon-Khmer + Munda.
There have been various attempts at connecting Austronesian and/or
Austro-Asiatic with each other or with other languages in the area,
but none of them have met with much success yet. Most of these
proposals go by the name of "Austric". Schmidt 1906 combined
Austroasiatic and Austronesian as "Austric". Benedict 1942 connected
Autronesian with Tai (Austro-Tai), and further more tentatively with
Miao-Yao and Austroasiatic in Austric. This was also Greenberg's 1980
classification, while Benedict 1975 gives up on the whole idea of
connecting Austro-Tai/Miao-Yao with Austronesian. The latest stuff
I've read seems to pooh-pooh Benedict's Austro-Tai, and focuses on a
possible connection between (from memory) Austronesian and
Austroasiatic (Schmidt's original proposal) and possibly Ainu as well.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...