Mon-Khmer word order

[Paul Kekai Manansala]

John Peterson wrote:
>
> As far as I know, the Munda languages are all relatively rigidly
> verb-final, such as e.g. Santali. In the texts in this language which I
> have so far analyzed, the verb is virtually always the last element of the
> sentence (assuming for now that the 'verb' should be taken to mean that
> sentence element carrying TAM-marking - cf. D.N.S. Bhat's book on
> adjectives for more information on that topic).
>
>

Yes, Munda languages are SOV, and with the exception of Karen so is
Tibeto-Burmese.  This might indicate a wide areal influence although
it might be too simplistic to describe this simply as Dravidian.

Widely occuring specific retroflex consonants in "Aryan" and Munda
languages do not occur at all in either northern or southern Dravidian.
Also, some whole classes of retroflex types like initial retroflexion
and lexically contrastive retroflex plosives are universal in "Aryan"
and Munda but not found in Dravidian.

Furthermore a wide areal retroflex influence combined with other areal
influences spans an area covering South Asia, Southeast Asia and even
into the Pacific.

This suggests to me that these areal influences might come either from
a substratum language that has no surviving descendents, or that the
substratum language is a parent to some (or all) of the languages now in
the region.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala

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