Aslian languages

The Aslian languages are the southernmost branch of Austroasiatic languages spoken on the Malay Peninsula. They are the languages of many of the Orang Asli, the aboriginal inhabitants of the peninsula. The total number of native speakers of Aslian languages is about fifty thousand and all are in danger of extinction. Aslian languages recognized by the Malaysian administration include Kensiu, Kintaq, Jahai, Minriq, Batek, Cheq Wong, Lanoh, Temiar, Semai, Jah Hut, Mah Meri, Semaq Beri, Semelai and Temoq.

History and origin

Aslian languages originally appeared on the western side of the main mountains and eventually spread eastwards into Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang. The nearest relatives to the Aslian languages are Monic and Nicobarese. There is a possibility the early Monic and Nicobarese people had contact with the migrants who moved into the Malay Peninsula from further north.
Aslian languages contain a complex palimpsest of loanwords from linguistic communities that no longer exist on the Malay Peninsula. Their former residence can be traced from the etymologies and the archaeological evidence for the succession of cultures in the region. Roger Blench notes that Aslian languages have many Bornean and Chamic loanwords, pointing to a former presence of Bornean and Chamic speakers on the Malay Peninsula.
Blagden, Evans and Blench note that Aslian languages, especially the Northern Aslian group, contain many words that cannot be traced to any currently known language family. The extinct Kenaboi language of Negeri Sembilan also contains many words of unknown origin in addition to words of Austroasiatic and Austronesian origin.
Sidwell proposed that Proto-Aslian had arrived in the Malay Peninsula from the Gulf of Thailand region prior to Mon dominance, and was part of an early southern dispersal that also included Nicobaric. Due to its early split from the rest of Austroasiatic, Aslian contains many retentions and has escaped the areal influences that had later swept mainland Southeast Asia. Aslian likely arrived at around the Pahang area and then spread inland and upstream.

Classification

Jahaic languages : Cheq Wong; Ten'edn ; Batek, Jahai, Minriq, Mintil; Kensiu, Kintaq.
Senoic languages : Semai, Temiar, Lanoh, *Sabüm, Semnam.
Southern Aslian languages : Mah Meri, Semelai, Temoq, Semaq Beri.
Jah Hut.

The extinct Kenaboi language is unclassified, and may or may not be Aslian.
Phillips lists the following consonant sound changes that each Aslian branch had innovated from Proto-Aslian.

Northern Aslian: Proto-Aslian *sə- > ha-
Southern Aslian: loss of Proto-Aslian *-ʔ
Proto-Aslian *-N > *-DN in all branches except Jah Hut
Reconstruction

The Proto-Aslian language has been reconstructed by Timothy Phillips.

Phonology

Syllable structure

Aslian words may either be monosyllabic, sesquisyllabic or disyllabic:

Initial consonants

Aslian words generally start with a consonant. Words which start with a vowel will be followed by a glottal stop. In most Aslian languages, aspirated consonants are analyzed as sequences of two phonemes, one of which happens to be h.
Aslian syllable-initial consonant clusters are rich and varied. Stops for example may cluster without restrictions to their place of articulation or voicing:
Articulation of laryngeal consonants may be superimposed upon the vowel midway in its articulation, giving the impression of two identical vowels interrupted by the laryngeals.

Vowels

A typical Aslian vowel system is displayed by Northern 'Temiar, which has 30 vocalic nuclei.
The functional load of the nasal/oral contrast is not very high in Aslian languages. Diffloth states that this phenomenon is unpredictable and irregular in Semai dialects, especially on vowels preceded by h''- or ʔ-.
Phonemic vowel length has been retained in Senoic languages such as Semai, Temiar and Sabum. Contrastive length has been lost in the Northern and Southern Aslian branches. The loss of vowel length must have led to complex reorganizations in the vocalic systems of the affected languages, by developing new contrasts elsewhere.
Diphthongization is not as obvious in Aslian languages as compared to the other branches of Mon–Khmer. Proto-Semai''' is reconstructed with 10-11 long monophthongal vowels, but with only one diphthong,.
Senoic infixes are sensitive to the number of initial consonants in a root. Rising diphthongs like or are ambiguous, since the glide may be interpreted as either a feature of the initial or of the vowel.

Final consonants

Aslian languages are well endowed with final consonants, with most of the languages placing a lot of stress on them.

-r, -l, -s, -h and -ʔ are represented and well-preserved in Aslian. There is also a tendency to shorten long vowels before these finals.

It has been reported that Temiar -h has bilabial friction after -u-, e.g. 'speak' pronounced as.
Throughout the Aslian family, final nasals are pre-stopped. In Northern Aslian this has gone further, with final nasals merging with the plosive series.

Morphology

All Aslian languages that have been thoroughly studied have constructive usage of various morphophonemic devices – prefixation, infixation and reduplication. Also, most Aslian languages preserve fossilized traces of other morphological patterns that are no longer productive.
It was also noted that the use of the suffix in Aslian languages was a product of recent use of Malay loan words. For example, the use of the infix 'n' is prominent in various Aslian language and it encompasses a myriad of definition.

Simple prefixation

CVC → –CVC

Example: Jah Hut causatives

Affixes	Simplex	Causative
p-	cyɛk 'sleep'	pcyɛk 'put to sleep'
pr-	bhec 'be afraid'	prbhec 'frighten'
pn-	tlas 'escape'	pntlas 'release'
tr-	hus 'get loose '	trhus 'undress'
kr-	lʉy 'be inside'	krlʉy 'put inside'

Simple infixation

Source:

C V C → C-I- V C

Aslian languages insert infixes between two consonants. Simple infixation is when the infix is inserted into the root. The most important liquid infix is the causative -r-, which is productive in Semai and Temiar.

Semai : kʔā:c 'be wet', krʔā:c 'moisten something'.

Nasal infixes are also found in Aslian, especially used as nominalizers of verbal roots.

Jah Hut : lyɛp 'plait palm leaves' → mlayɛp 'one who plaits'; cyɛk 'sleep' → mʔcyɛk 'one who sleeps a lot'
Reduplicative infixation: incopyfixation

Source:
A reduplication of the final consonant of the root is being infixed to the root. This process occurs in all 3 branches of Aslian.

Incopyfix of final alone :
*Kensiw: plɔɲ 'sing' → pɲlɔɲ 'singing'
*Che' Wong: hwæc 'whistle' → hcwæc 'whistling'
Root-external infix plus incopyfix. In Semai, count nouns are derived from mass nouns by using a root-external nasal infix and an incopyfix of the final. When the root-initial is simple, the incopyfix precedes the infix:
*teːw 'river' →twneːw 'id.'.
When the root-initial is complex, the infix precedes the incopyfix:
*slaːy 'swidden' → snylaːy 'id.'
Root-external prefix plus incopyfix. Simple-initialled verbs are formed by inserting the prefix n- and incopyfixing the final between prefix and the root-initial:
*Batek: jɯk 'breathe' → nkjɯk 'the act of breathing'
Reduplication of the initial and a root-external infix. This is present in Semai and Temiar, which have a verbal infix -a-. In Semai, it forms resultative verbs, while in Temiar, it marks the 'simulfactive aspect'. In both languages, if the root has two consonants, the suffix-a- is inserted between them:
*Semai: slɔːr 'lay flat objects into round container' → salɔːr 'be in layers '
*Temiar: slɔg 'lie down, sleep, marry' → salɔg 'go straight off to sleep'
If the consonant initial of the root is simple, it is reduplicated so that the -a- can be inserted between the original and its copy.
*Semai: cɛ̃ːs 'tear off' → cacɛ̃ːs 'be torn off'
*Temiar: gəl 'sit' → gagəl 'sit down suddenly'
Reduplication of the initial and incopyfixation of the final. A simple initial is reduplicated for the incopyfixation of the final. In Aslian, this is used to derive the progressive verbs.
*Batek : kɯc 'grate' → kckɯc 'is grating'
*Semelai : tʰəm 'pound' → tmtʰəm 'is pounding'
*Semai : laal 'stick out one's tongue' → lllaal 'is sticking out one's tongue'
Grammar

Aslian syntax is presumably conservative with respect to Austroasiatic as a whole, though Malay influence is apparent in some details of the grammar.

Basic and permuted word order

Senoic sentences are prepositional and seem to fall into two basic types – process and stative. In stative sentences, the predicate comes first:
In process sentences, the subject normally comes first, with the object and all other complements following the verb:
In Jah Hut, all are complements, but the direct object require a preposition:
Relative clauses, similar verbal modifiers, possessives, demonstratives and attributive nouns follow their head-noun:
The negative morpheme precedes the verb, though the personal prefix may intervene before the verb root: