Paul Sidwell, Project Director
Doug Cooper, Co-Director |
Long before the rise of the great Funan, Dvaravati, and Angkor empires, Mon-Khmer languages were the lingua franca of mainland Southeast Asia. They are as key to interpreting Asia’s cultural, political, and economic history as Greek, Latin or Gothic are to understanding Europe, both in their own right, and for their influence on and by the neighboring Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, and Tai-Kadai language families. |
Today, nearly 150 Mon-Khmer languages are still spoken in a vast region that stretches from India to China, and covers Burma, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Vietnam. They include the national languages Khmer and Vietnamese, and the official state languages Wa and Mon in Burma, and Khasi in India. Elsewhere, many Mon-Khmer languages are highly endangered, found only in isolated communities. But wherever they are found, Mon-Khmer speakers are separated by modern political divisions, and know little of their shared linguistic and cultural histories. |
Supported by an initial NEH grant (2007-2009), the Mon-Khmer Languages Project uses modern comparative analysis and proto-language reconstruction to link a century of painstakingly gathered data, join them to innovative on-line search tools, and make the results accessible for research, reference and education. Assisted by leading scholars in the U.S., England, Germany, Australia, France, Singapore and Thailand, the project has already established its basic digital infrastructure at monkhmer.sealang.net, where it benefits historians, anthropologists, linguists, epigraphers, and lexicographers world-wide. |
the Mon-Khmer languages
database makes language reference materials freely available. We have
compiled datasets for each of a dozen major Mon-Khmer branch divisions, and now
seek funds to provide at least one lexical dataset for all of the more than
thirty MK sub-branches.
the Mon-Khmer etymological
dictionary puts the data in historical context. We have built its
backbone with etyma from the Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary (Shorto
2006), and now seek support to extend the backbone, adding datasets for established
branch/sub-branch reconstructions.
the Mon-Khmer languages website
supports collaborative Mon-Khmer language research, and disseminates language
data. We seek funds to develop new knowledge as we tackle the remaining
branch-level reconstructions, and to create innovative teaching screencasts
that use our tools.
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The project has led the field’s revitalization, assisted by unprecedented collaboration and resource-sharing by our colleagues worldwide. Our contribution to education, research, and the humanities continues to grow as we approach our goal of fully documenting the Mon-Khmer languages: |
NEH, NSF, and others support extensive
programs for documenting endangered languages. Mon-Khmer Languages Project
data aid researchers studying all of the region’s many hundreds of
individual languages, and its five major language families.
analysis of modern SEA languages is
weak; even the most formal works rarely go beyond citations of Pali and
Sanskrit word origins. The MKL project makes a major contribution to modern
references for Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese, and other languages.
thousands of Mon, Khmer, Tai, Burmese,
and Cham inscriptions, dating back to the 4th century, provide a
first-hand account of Southeast Asia’s classical era. The MKL project
dramatically improves our ability to accurately interpret epigraphic texts.
a complete picture of the Mon-Khmer
languages can help answer longstanding questions about human language
everywhere; for example, development of breathy or creaky voice
registers in Africa, and their relationship to tonogenesis – tone
distinctions – in Asia.
the imprint of language on language does
not lie; it is far more reliable than founding myths and chronicles written
centuries after the fact. The MKL project helps reveal ancient patterns of human
migration and cultural contact in this crossroads region.
education and Southeast
Asian studies in the U.S.
MKL project data is being integrated into the US/ED-funded SEAlang Library
project, providing basic resources needed for teaching, research, and
collaboration among the eight Title VI-funded Southeast Asia National Resource
Centers.
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