# Proto-Munda language

Proto-Munda is the reconstructed proto-language of the Munda languages of South Asia. It has been reconstructed by Sidwell & Rau (2015). According to Sidwell, the Proto-Munda language split from Proto- Austroasiatic in Indochina and arrived on the coast of Odisha around 4000 – 3500 years ago.

## Reconstruction

The following Proto-Munda lexical proto-forms have been reconstructed by Sidwell & Rau (2015: 319, 340-363). Two asterisks are given to denote the tentative, preliminary state of the proto-language reconstruction.
| Gloss | Proto-Munda |
| belly | **(sə)laɟ |
| big | **məraŋ |
| to bite | **kaˀp |
| black | **kE(n)dE |
| blood | **məjam |
| bone | **ɟaːˀŋ |
| to burn (vt.) | **gEˀp |
| claw/nail | **rəmAj |
| cloud | **tərIˀp |
| cold | **raŋ |
| die (of a person) | **gOˀj |
| dog | **sOˀt |
| to drink (water) | **uˀt, **uˀk |
| dry (adj./stat.) | **(ə)sAr |
| ear | **lutur, **luˀt |
| earth/soil | **ʔOte |
| to eat | **ɟOm |
| egg | **(ə)tAˀp |
| eye | **maˀt |
| fat/grease/oil | **sunum |
| feather | **bəlEˀt |
| fire | **səŋal |
| fish (n.) | **ka, **kadO(ŋ) |
| fly (v.) | **pEr |
| foot | **ɟəːˀŋ |
| give | **ʔam |
| hair (of head) | **suˀk |
| hand | **tiːˀ |
| to hear/listen | **ajɔm |
| heart, liver | **(gə)rE, **ʔim |
| horn | **dəraŋ |
| I | **(n)iɲ |
| to kill | **(bə)ɡOˀɟ |
| leaf | **Olaːˀ |
| to lie (down) | **gətiˀc |
| long | **ɟəlƏŋ |
| louse (head) | **siːˀ |
| man/husband, person/human | **kOrOˀ |
| meat/flesh | **ɟəlU(Uˀ) |
| moon | **harkE, **aŋaj |
| mountain/hill | **bəru(uˀ) |
| mouth | **təmOˀt |
| name | **ɲUm |
| neck | **kO, **gOˀk |
| new | **təmI |
| night | **(m)ədiˀp |
| nose | **muːˀ |
| not | **əˀt |
| one | **mOOˀj |
| rain | **gəma |
| red | **ɟəŋAˀt |
| road, path | **kOrA |
| root (of a tree) | **rEˀt |
| sand | **kEˀt |
| see | **(n)El |
| sit | **kO |
| skin | **usal |
| sleep | **gətiˀc |
| smoke (n.) | **mOˀk |
| to speak, say | **sun, **gam, **kaj |
| to stand | **tənaŋ, **tƏŋgə |
| stone | **bərƏl, **sərEŋ |
| sun | **siŋi(iˀ) |
| tail | **pata |
| thigh | **buluuˀ |
| that (dist.) | **han |
| this (prox.) | **En |
| thou/you | **(n)Am |
| tongue | **laːˀŋ |
| tooth | **gənE |
| tree | **ɟiːˀ |
| two | **baːˀr |
| to walk, go | **sEn |
| to weave | **ta(aˀ)ɲ |
| water | **daːˀk |
| woman/wife | **selA, **kəni |
| yellow | **saŋsaŋ |
Proto-Munda reconstruction has since been revised and improved by Rau (2019).

## Morphosyntax
### Syntactic shift

Although the modern Munda languages show a standard head-final subject–object–verb (SOV) order in unmarked phrases, most scholars believe that proto-Munda was head-first, VO like proto-Austroasiatic. The first linguist to noticed this peculiarity, Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow (1959, 1960), observed strong traceable evidence for a proto-Munda VO order. VO order has been found in compounds, noun incorporation verbal morphology in the Sora-Gorum languages, and to a lesser extent in Gutob, Remo, Kharia, and Juang. By any given verb conjugations, the Munda verbs (including Kherwarian (Santali, Ho,...) and Korku) always show internal head-first, V-P order, with two main overall syntactic orders of transitive verbs: A-V-P and V-P-A, corresponding to Austroasiatic clausal syntaxes SVO and VOS. Most Munda compounds are also head-first and right-branching, with new loan words from Indian languages following the Indian norm of head-final and left-branching.
Remo:
gui-ti
wash-hand
gui-ti
wash-hand
'wash hand'
Sora:
ɲen
1SG
dʒum-te-ti-n-ai
eat-banana-NPST-INTR-1SG.SUBJ
ɲen dʒum-te-ti-n-ai
1SG eat-banana-NPST-INTR-1SG.SUBJ
'I am eating banana'
Juang:
ba-ama-gito-ke
1DU.SUBJ-NEG-sing-PRES.TR
ba-ama-gito-ke
1DU.SUBJ-NEG-sing-PRES.TR
'We two don't sing'
Gorum:
ne-r-ab-so’ɟ-om
1SG.SUBJ-NEG-CAUS-learn-ACT:2SG.OBJ
ne-r-ab-so’ɟ-om
1SG.SUBJ-NEG-CAUS-learn-ACT:2SG.OBJ
'I didn’t teach you'
Winfred Lehmann (1973) reviewed,
   "If we examine further evidence provided by Pinnow, we note that Munda contains VO characteristics. It has VO order in compounds (Pinnow [1960], 97); it also provides examples of NG [noun-genitive] order and of prefixes. Since the Khmer-Nicobar languages are consistently VO, I assume that it was the Munda languages which were modified syntactically... We may conclude that Proto-Austroasiatic was VO and non-agglutinative in morphological structure."
Pinnow (1963, 1966) proposed that proto-Munda was SVO and that was the syntax of proto-Austroasiatic, which was also highly synthetic like Munda, whereas he attributed analytic and isolating typological features in modern Mon-Khmer to language contact in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area. Disagreeing with Pinnow, Donegan & Stampe (1983, 2004) argued that proto-Munda was VO but non-agglutinative like its sister languages in Southeast Asia. According to Donegan & Stampe, there are some characteristics of the Munda languages such as head-marking and polysynthesis that are so distinct and attributable to neither Dravidian and Indo-Aryan influence. They believed that Munda synthesis and SOV order were clearly not stimulated just by language contact within the South Asian linguistic area, but by internal restructuring that caused the Munda word prosody to shift its rhythmic patterns from typical Austroasiatic rising, vowel reduction, iambic stressed to falling, vowel harmony, trochaic stressed profile, thus reversed the clausal syntactic structure from VO to OV and triggered word agglutination.
For the reason why the Munda languages keep head-first order in compounds and polysynthetic morphology, Donegan & Stampe (2002) believed that words, like the verb-noun compounds, are more resistant to internal changes of rhythms and ordering than phrases. Donegan & Stampe (2004) carefully stated that their explanation for the Munda rhythm-initiated synthesis drift does not include polysynthesis, and Donegan & Stampe (2002) also termed the Munda polysynthetic morphology as 'idiomatic and (older) morphology.' Stanley Starosta (1967) explained that, during its early formation stage when Munda was still head-first SVO, verb-noun incorporation was facilitated as seen in modern Sora, but then it did a syntactic shift to head-final SOV and added more morphology. The polysynthetic verb phrases thus had become crystalized since that time. Sora verbs may incorporate another indirect object, but the theme argument would fall within the scope of different oblique arguments; the oblique noun is showed in thematic position. Sora also can incorporate transitive subjects and form verb serializations with incorporated nouns. Since the Sora NIs function like the mirror images of typical well-studied polysynthetic languages, it was suggested by Mark Baker that Sora simply operates the opposite way to the head movement theory proposed by the polysynthesis parameter.
Donegan & Stampe's prediction of Munda synthetic shift caused by change of rhythmic holism is contested by Horo & Anderson et al. (2017, 2020, 2022). Field acoustic researches on various Sora and Santali dialects show that both languages have consistently second-or-last-syllable prominence with clear iambic patterns (first light syllable, followed by a second heavy stressed syllable) in disyllabic and tetrasyllabic words (Horo & Anderson 2022).

### Proto-Munda predicate
#### Anderson and Zide (2001, 2007)

Gregory D. S. Anderson & Norman Zide (2001, 2007) reconstructed the head-marking bound predicate of Proto-Munda with A-V-P order as following:
Proto-Munda Predicate (Zide & Anderson 2001) :
| Slot | +4 | +3 | +2 | +1 | core | -1 | -2 | -3 |
| role | SUBJ | NEG | RECIP/CAUS | DERIV | verb stem | PASS/INTR | TRANS/TNS | OBJ |
Anderson & Zide (2001), together with van Driem (2001) positioned that the Munda languages are the most morphologically conservative Austroasiatic branch, and posited that the Austroasiatic languages dispersed eastward from Northeast India to Southeast Asia instead. Michael Witzel (1999) proposed an Austroasiatic homeland further west, in the Panjab region during the Indus Valley Civilization. The current general consensus considers these hypotheses unlikely. Peter Bellwood (2022) states that "the source for the whole Austroasiatic languages is still a mystery."

#### Rau (2020)

Felix Rau (2020) concludes that Proto-Munda predicate structure was verb-medial SVO, though he suggests that it might have been less inflected with fewer bound elements, which may cause the Munda predicate development to become divergent later.
Proto-Munda Predicate Clause :
| Slot | +6 | +5 | +4 | +3 | +2 | +1 | core | -1 | -2 | -3 |
| role | SUBJ | MOD/ASP | NEG | RECIP | CAUS | DERIV | verb stem | ASP | [other voices]/valency | OBJ |
| reconstruction | | *A *O *Vj *mO | *əˀt *Um | *kƏl | *Oˀp | **bə- **tA- **A- | | *=lə Perf *=tə Imperf | *n MID *ˀt ACT | |
| Morphological cognates | | Preverbal in Khasi-Palaungic | *ʔət (Proto-Austroasiatic) =m (Standard Khasi) mǝ (Bugan) | kər- (Palaungic, Katuic) | op (Bahnaric) pa- (Pacoh) pʌn (Palaungic) -p- (Khmer pɨn (Khasi) | **bə-, *tA-, *p- (Proto-Austroasiatic) | | *las (Proto-Austroasiatic) *lɛʔ (Proto-Bahnaric) li (Mang) Postverbal in Bahnaric, Vietnamese, Khasi-Palaungic, Mon, Aslian, Bugan | | |
At some points during their early development in South Asia, due to either language contact led to adoptions of South Asian areal features or internal rhythmic changes, the Munda languages presumably made a syntactic shift from head-first, prefixing SVO to head-final, suffixing SOV. Proto-North Munda restructured all prefixes and prepositions into suffixes. The situation is quite different in South Munda languages, especially Juang, Gtaʔ, and Sora-Gorum, where the original proto-Munda prefix slots are well-preserved, but later additional developments of their predicates are mostly suffixes or enclitics.

### Noun phrase (NP) order

Proto-Munda NPs appear to follow proto-Austroasiatic order: [quantifiers] noun [modifiers], whereas modern Munda languages, following South Asian norms, have restructured NP moderately by placing [modifiers] to precede the head noun, while keeping the original proto-Austroasiatic NUM CLF N order like Bahnaric, Vietic, Katuic, Aslian, Nicobarese, and Khasian.

### Origin of Munda referent indexation

Munda pronominal affixes and clitics are reduced, derivable forms of pronouns. Based on reconstructed proto-Munda pronouns by Pinnow (1966), he argued that the Munda verb gradually attached to its free pronouns and became pronominalized. The evidence suggests that the development of pronominalization in Munda occurred separately and varying among the Munda subgroups. Thus, Munda pronominalized indexation possibly has parallels with some Eastern Austroasiatic languages in the Aslian and Katuic, where prosodically weak resumptive pronouns are used to mark agreement with subjects/agents, but not with objects. The Khasian languages also mark agreement with gender of subject, but not with person and number. Object and patient indexation in Munda were secondary developments.
In the past, some linguists suggested that some Tibeto-Burman languages in the Himalayas like the Eastern Kiranti languages got their pronominalization from either Munda or Indo-European languages to explain the remarkable similarity between Munda and Tibeto-Burman. However, since the reconstruction of proto-Munda pronouns by Pinnow (1965) and proto-Tibeto-Burman person affixes by van Driem (1993), it appears that the pronominalization of two groups are inherently different and unrelated to each other in terms of functions and structures, and that two groups developed their own referent indexation system independently. Bauman (1975) articulated that verbal pronominalization is a native trait of Tibeto-Burman itself rather than being influenced by Munda. Pronominalized Tibeto-Burman languages have elaborate morphosyntactic case-marking system on nominals to show alignments between arguments, i.e. ergative-absolutive or nominative-accusative, a feature that many Munda languages fundamentally lack or not well-developed. Today the view of Munda substratum on Tibeto-Burman has been abandoned by linguists.

### Noun incorporation

According to Anderson (2014, 2017, 2021), Munda syntactic noun incorporation is very archaic and may be the oldest feature of Austroasiatic morphology, with cognates are attested in across every subgroup, but the status of noun incorporation in proto-Munda still difficult to determine. Rau notes that "it is possible that some sort of incorporation was already present in proto-Munda and worked along the lines attested in modern Sora."

## Munda-Khasic isoglosses

| Gloss | Proto-Munda | Proto-Khasi | Proto-AA |
| "sun" | **siŋi(iˀ) | *sŋi | *tŋiːˀ |
| "dog" | **sOˀt (Sora: kinsod) | *ksәw | *cɔʔ |