Re: How should Nostratic be viewed?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote:

> At 12:40:42 PM on Sunday, March 16, 2003, Geraldine
> Reinhardt wrote:
>
> > Austro-Asiatic ONLY includes the Munda and Mon-Khmer
> > languages.
>
> Munda and Mon-Khmer *families* of languages. Comes to some
> 75 million speakers or so, at a rough estimate.
>
> > Austronesian includes the languages of Australia and Asia
>
> No, it does not include the Australian languages. And apart
> from Malay there are only isolated pockets of Austronesian
> languages on the Asian mainland; most are in Oceania.

In general reckoning, the most significant of these pockets is the
Chamic languages (mostly spoken in Vietnam, and once thought to be
Mon-Khmer). However, Laurent Sagart has seriously proposed that the
Tai-Kadai (e.g. Thai, Lao, Shan, Zhuang) languages are also
Austronesian - more specifically, part of the 'East Coast Linkage'
that includes both Malayo-Polynesian and some Formosan languages.

Richard.