Most of my fieldwork research on minority languages has been conducted within the Austroasiatic (AA) family. This is a group of languages spoken by diverse peoples across South & Southeast Asia, and which are widely acknowledged to have provided substratum influence for languages in the area. This basically means that Austroasiatic speakers have lived there for a long time. This is evident in how modern non-Austroasiatic languages have borrowed various linguistic features from AA languages, and in how local populations of Austroasiatic speakers adopted other languages but retained many of the features of their original languages.
Research in these languages has potential to give insight to a host of linguistic subdisciplines, and there is still much to do. Linguists have been sharing information and insights since the 1970s through a working group and conference, the International Conference on Austro-Asiatic Languages (ICAAL).
What is ICAAL
ICAAL meetings have been organized every two years since the 7th meeting, and have seen an increase in attendance over the past few sessions. This is likely due to a number of factors, one of which might be the adoption of a hybrid model for online/in-person participation. A hybrid model allows researchers who might otherwise be unavailable due to work/travel/visa restrictions to participate as presenters or attendees. This in turn facilitates research connections and development.
This past ICAAL session all the presentations were conducted completely online, which allowed people from all over the world (Africa, North America, Australia, Europe, Asia) to share their research. Another benefit of these video presentations was that they could be recorded. This enables us to archive and potentially to disseminate findings (however preliminary) with a larger audience.
A YouTube channel for AA linguistics
Presentations from ICAAL 13 are now available for viewing on a new YouTube channel dedicated to Austroasiatic linguistics. The hope is to add additional presentations from past conferences and other content related to Austroasiatic languages and linguistic phenomena.
Topics of study are quite diverse, ranging from phonological historical reconstruction and subgrouping to sociolinguistics to archaeology to description of languages for which there has been a lack of data. I gave a talk on what large databases can tell us about things like word order and how that might impact our ability to reconstruct syntax.
Hopefully I’ll be able to write more about various aspects of Austroasiatic languages and linguistics in the coming months. If there’s anything in particular you’re curious about, do get in touch!