Hmong–Mien languages

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Hmong-Mien languages
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Hmong–Mien
Miao–Yao
Yangtzean
Geographic
distribution		China, Southeast Asia
Linguistic classificationOne of the world's primary language families
Proto-languageProto-Hmong–Mien
Subdivisions
ISO 639-5hmx
Glottologhmon1336
Distribution of Hmong-Mien languages

The Hmong–Mien languages (also known as Miao–Yao and rarely as Yangtzean)[1] are a highly tonal language family of southern China and northern Southeast Asia. They are spoken in mountainous areas of southern China, including Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Hubei provinces; the speakers of these languages are predominantly "hill people", in contrast to the neighboring Han Chinese, who have settled the more fertile river valleys.

Relationships

  Hmongic / Miao (in red)
  Mienic / Yao (in green)

protolanguage but greatly reduced the distinctions in the syllable finals, in particular losing all glides and stop codas
. The Mienic languages, on the other hand, have largely preserved syllable finals but reduced the number of initial consonants.

Early linguistic classifications placed the Hmong–Mien in the Sino-Tibetan family, where they remain in many Chinese classifications. The current consensus among Western linguists is that they constitute a family of their own, the lexical and typological similarities among Hmong–Mien and Sinitic languages being attributed to contact-induced influence.[2]

Paul K. Benedict, an American scholar, extended the Austric theory to include the Hmong–Mien languages. The hypothesis never received much acceptance for Hmong–Mien, however.[3] Kosaka (2002) argued specifically for a Miao–Dai family.[4]

Homeland

The most likely

Yangtze River.[6] Recent Y-DNA phylogeny evidence supports the proposition that people who speak the Hmong–Mien languages are descended from a population that is distantly related to those who now speak the Mon-Khmer languages.[7]

The date of

Proto-Hmong–Mien has been estimated to be about 2500 BP (500 BC) by Sagart, Blench, and Sanchez-Mazas using traditional methods employing many lines of evidence, and about 4243 BP (2250 BC) by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP), an experimental algorithm for automatic generation of phonologically based phylogenies.[8]

Names

The Mandarin names for these languages are Miáo and Yáo.

In Vietnamese, the name for Hmong is H'Mông, and the name for Mien is Dao (i.e., Yao), although Miền is also used.

Meo, Hmu, Mong, Hmao, and Hmong are local names for Miao, but since most Laotian refugees in the United States call themselves Hmong/Mong, this name has become better known in English than the others in recent decades. However, except for some scholars who prefer the word, the term 'Hmong/Mong' is only used within certain Hmong/Miao language speaking communities in China, where the majority of the Miao speakers live. In Mandarin, despite the fact that it was once a derogatory term, the word Miao (Chinese: 苗; the tone varies according to the Sinitic dialect) is now commonly used by members of all nationalities to refer to the language and the ethnolinguistic group.[9]

The Mandarin name Yao, on the other hand, is for the

Yi, and Miao languages, the latter called Bùnǔ rather than Miáo when spoken by Yao. For this reason, the ethnonym
Mien may be preferred as less ambiguous.

Characteristics

Like many languages in southern China, the Hmong–Mien languages tend to be

monosyllabic and syntactically analytic. They are some of the most highly tonal languages in the world: Longmo and Zongdi Hmong have as many as twelve distinct tones.[10] They are notable phonologically for the occurrence of voiceless sonorants and uvular consonants
; otherwise their phonology is quite typical of the region.

They are

genitives and numerals before the noun like Chinese. They are extremely poor in adpositions: serial verb constructions replace most functions of adpositions in languages like English. For example, a construction translating as "be near" would be used where in English prepositions like "in" or "at" would be used.[11]

Besides their tonality and lack of adpositions, another striking feature is the abundance of

numeral classifiers and their use where other languages use definite articles
or demonstratives to modify nouns.

Mixed languages

Various unclassified

Kam-Sui
origins.

See also

References

  1. ^ van Driem, George. 2018. "The East Asian linguistic phylum: A reconstruction based on language and genes Archived 2021-01-10 at the Wayback Machine", Journal of the Asiatic Society, LX (4): 1-38.
  2. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00061.x
    .
  3. ^ "On the Thai evidence for Austro-Tai" (PDF), in Selected Papers on Comparative Tai Studies, ed. R.J. Bickner et al., pp. 117–164. Center for South and Southeast Asian studies, the University of Michigan.
  4. ^ Kosaka, Ryuichi. 2002. "On the affiliation of Miao-Yao and Kadai: Can we posit the Miao-Dai family." Mon-Khmer Studies 32:71-100.
  5. ^ Blench, Roger. 2004. Stratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archaeology? Paper for the Symposium "Human migrations in continental East Asia and Taiwan: genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence". Geneva June 10–13, 2004. Université de Genève.
  6. S2CID 2533393
    .
  7. PMID 21904623
    .
  8. ^ "Automated Dating of the World's Language Families based on Lexical Similarity" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-11-27. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
  9. ^ Tapp, Nicholas. The Hmong of China: Context, Agency, and imaginary. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
  10. ISBN 0-19-924860-5
  11. ^ Goddard, The Languages of East and Southeast Asia; p. 121

Further reading

External links
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