Publication of this Annotated Bibliography on the Austroasiatic family of languages was conceived as part of the Institute's Research Monograph Series I.
Considering the complexities of the structure of these languages and the extent to which there has been some inter- mingling, it was felt that a classified guide book to the scholarly works on the subject was a vital necessity for research workers as well as beginners in linguistic studies.
Shri Arun Ghosh, author of this Bibliography, is currently a Fellow in the Department of Ethnolinguistics. He has taken great pains to examine the whole range of published research works on the Austroasiatic languages and made a systematic classification of the available literature. No wonder Ghosh's study earned considerable compliments from eminent academicians including Professor Devipada Bhattacharya who observed:
"the work has been meticulously planned and the division of chapters has been found to be satisfactory. I agree with the methodology adopted."
It is therefore, with high hopes that the work is being published for wider circulation among interested scholars.
The Austric group of languages which includes the Austroasiatic and Austronesian language families are spoken in an area extending from the island of Madagascar in the west to other Easter Island in the east and to the north in the Himalayas. Southeast Asia includes both a mainland subregion, south of China and east of India, and an insular subregion which includes the insular half of Malaysia, all of Indonesia and the island of the Philippines. All the languages of insular Southeast Asia belong to a single language family-Austronesian, The Austroasiatic languages, on the other hand, are spoken in the mainland southeast Asia including the southeast India. The main difference between the mainland southeast Asia and the insular southeast Asia is that the languages of the insular southeast Asia are genetically homogenous while the languages of the Mainland southeast Asia are genetically diverse-the representatives of the Austroasiatic, Tai and Sino-Tibetan are spoken here. Although these languages are genetically diverse, they are typologically related, the existence of distinctive tones and classifiers among unrelated languages prove this.
The Austroasiatic family comprising some 150 languges are spoken by about 40,000,000 people in southeast Asia and southeast India, The Mon-Khmer group includes more than fifty languages-more than any other family that is centred primarily in and entirely in southeast Asia. Mon-Khmer languages are spoken form Burma to Vietnam. In Kampuchea Khmer is the official language; its speakers are also found in Thailand. Mon or Talaing is spoken in Burma as well as in Thailand. The language of mainland southeast Asia with the greatest number of speakers is Vietnamese, spoken in Vietnam and by smaller number of speakers in Kampuchea, Thailand and Laos. Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam.
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