http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL19Df03.html

A reasonable explanation for the reduced linguistic diversity in insular SE Asia is that there was a sudden expansion of Austronesian speakers into insular SE Asia who introduced rice agriculture and maritime technology into the region and in the process, imposed their language on the ancestors of today’s Negritos and other more ancient populations.

You can have language replacement by cultural diffusion rather than wholesale population movements. You see that in other parts of the world. For example, the British speak a Germanic language (English) although they are mostly descended from Neolithic migrants from Iberia.

Actually, the paper does mention that in their phylogenetic tree, Austronesian speakers do cluster with East Asians higher up the tree which points to an expansion from East Asia to SE Asia. Negritos and Papuans are closer to the bottom of the tree. This suggests that Malays are descended from recent immigrants (~a few kya) to SE Asia from E Asia.

See p. 41 of http://genwiki.eva.mpg.de/uploads/Main/2009_human_genetic_diversity_asia_som.pdf

As mentioned earlier, language families are constructed using comparative linguistic methods usually involving data such as lexicon and phonology. Problems do include borrowings and influence from other languages. Vietnamese, for example, has been highly influenced by neighbouring languages (particularly from Chinese), so its lexicon is filled with Sinitic loans, and with its typology (isolating morphemes, tonal system), it was formerly classified as Sino-Tibetan. It was later found to be a Mon-Khmer language after recognising the problems. For example, Vietnamese developed tones as a result of an areal influence; consider its sister language, Khmer (Cambodian), which does not have tones.

So, using all the tools available to the linguist, it has been recognised that there is a great variety of languages belonging to various language families in mainland Southeast Asian (there is Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Hmong-Mien, Mon-Khmer, Sino-Tibetan, and Tai-Kadai). Insular Southeast Asia on the other hand has only Austronesian and Papuan language; Papuan languages being restricted to the vicinity of New Guinea, with familial affinities unknown.

It seems reasonable to say that the more similar the language, the more related, and the more recent the divergence. Mainland Southeast Asia have these various language families, which seem to be quite ancient, whereas the Austronesian languages in insular Southeast Asia appear to be have only emerged recently in comparison. So, the linguistic diversity is shallower in Austronesian languages in insular Southeast Asia, despite the greater number of different languages.

The thing is, your article did imply some of these cultural and social ideas, and did not merely focus on the scientific. Readers can infer (or rather misinfer) your intentions.

As far as I know, language families are groupings of languages that readily show similarities with each other (through lexicon, regular sound correspondences, typology etc.) and can thus be confidently assessed as genetically related (of course, not in the biological sense). The branches are subgroupings with higher similarities within themselves, and lower similarities between. This is why Malayo-Polynesian is one branch out of around ten. Raising Malayo-Polynesian to the level of a language family is indeed possible, but that means the other nine have to be langauge families of the same level as well. So, yes, it is somewhat arbitrary. And why Austronesian and Austroasiatic not one family is because the link has not be established firmly. Austronesian has also be linked to Tai-Kadai, but the jury is still out on either of these two hypotheses. Even higher level classifications are very tentative, due to the difficulty in reconstructing the protolanguages.

On a different note, I would like to suggest that the notion of a monolithic Chinese race is not everything to the Chinese. Rather, language and regional culture is quite important too. Each ‘dialect’ of Chinese (e.g. Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka) is equivalent to a language simply due to the criterion of mutual intelligibility, hence the frequent comparison to the Romance language family by linguists. Politically and historically, they have classified as dialects instead. So, there is a common mistaken view is that the Chinese are actually one single monolithic culture/ethnicity/race. Of course, this is not so, and various Chinese groups hold differing attitudes to other Chinese groups, whether in China or Singapore. There may be some blurring of cultural lines in Singapore (where the so-called dialects are dying out and Mandarin is replacing these as the Chinese language amongst Chinese Singaporeans), so this may contribute to the illusion of a single Chineseness. Perhaps this is the complexity r was referring to, albeit it is definitely more cultural and social than anything biological.

Fox argued that the greater genetic diversity in Southeast Asian populations is due to greater admixture. Admixture (e.g., intermarriages) is, of course, an important element of human history but such scenarios can be statistically tested and have been rejected in this paper as well as in others. E.g., a simple admixture scenario would predict that the closer geographically the populations are to the sources of admixture (India and China, in this case), the closer the genetic distance to populations in the sources and the greater the genetic diversity. There is no correlation between geography and genetic distances, and contrary to prediction, there is in fact a reduction in genetic diversity as one gets closer to India and China (e.g., Thailand, South China, etc.); the highest diversity is found in Indonesia which is the farthest away from India and China by land (little evidence of long-range maritime migrations in prehistory).

Fox also brought up the interfamily language diversity in mainland Southeast Asia. I’m not familiar with the intricate details of classifying languages, but I suspect it is as arbitrary as genus, family, etc. classifications of organisms. What defines a language family? There are elements that unite Austronesian with Austro-Asiatic but why are these separate families and not one? There are also elements that unite Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family, but why it is a branch as opposed to a distinct family? In biology, the answer is that it arbitrarily depends on which guy happens to study that group of organisms, and this is probably the case for languages. In any case, in biology there are different levels of phenotypic diversity. It can be phylodiversity in which case, arbitrary higher level classifications matter and there is species diversity which depends only on species definitions (which are less arbitrary). Using mutual unintelligibility as the criterion of language ‘speciation’, it is true that island Southeast Asia has much greater language ‘species’ diversity.

Whether this diversity means superiority or whether we should force everyone speak the same Sino-Tibetan language is a question of power and not a question of scientific fact.

Thank you for your response. However, I must state that I am not conflating morphological diversity with genetic diversity, especially since my original comment (i.e. #45) on island theory was on language diversity. For my analogies from biology, I used the term ‘biological diversity’ and ‘biological evolution’, and I had not made any particular reference to genetic diversity.

My point on Malay is that no one knows for sure what the actual language of the Southeast Asian ancestors is. Parsimoniously, it should be the ancestor of all languages spoken by the descendant Asians (whether in Southeast Asia or East Asia, so that includes Austronesian,Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, Sino-Tibetan and Altaic). However, there is historical and archaeological evidence to show that Malayo-Polynesian (i.e. the Austronesian branch containing Malay) arrived from Taiwan. So, it is not a native remnant, but a reintroduction from Taiwan. It is true that ultimately Malay is still a daughter language of the ancestral Southeast Asia language, but then, so is Chinese! I suppose your original point in the article was to point out that the notion of Chinese superiority is baseless, but I do find the example of Malay somewhat weak (in the ironic sense).

That said, migrant minorities usually learn the dominant language of whichever area they settle in: Chinese in Java speak Javanese or Sundanese, as well as Bahasa Indonesia; Chinese in the Philippines speak Tagalog; Chinese in Thailand speak Thai, and so on. Is it ironic that Chinese are relearning whatever daughter language of the Southeast Asian ancestors? I doubt people are really that surprised about the more distant ancestors (perhaps except for some Chinese who believe that the Chinese descended from Peking Man rather than from African ancestors).

SE Asians have wide cheekbones which are characteristic of East Asian populations. Also, SE Asians (and Pacific Islanders) have lighter complexions than South Indians although SE Asia receives as much UV radiation as India.

Also, SE Asians don’t seem to resemble Indians and resemble more closely to East Asians. I realize that of course physical appearances are not good indicators of genetic differences.

In terms of linguistics, mainland SE Asia/South China seems to have the greatest diversity. The number of language groups is maximal in South China and adjacent parts of SE Asia where you can find very different languages from the Kradai, Austro-asiatic, Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan language groups side by side. In contrast, insular SE Asia has relatively limited linguistic diversity (mostly closely related Austronesian languages) which points to a recent linguistic expansion. The linguistic evidence suggests that South China and adjacent parts of mainland SE Asia have supported a larger population than North China or Insular SE Asia for a long time.

“Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic languages whose speakers are highly related, most likely had a Southeast Asian origin by parsimony according to the tree (which you agree with), so the reintroduction is likely to have come ultimately from speakers from Southeast Asia (though they may not be speaking the “true” ancestral language anymore but we can never know either way).”

In that case, following your logic, it stands to reason that Chinese is also ultimately from Southeast Asia. So, Malays studying Chinese would also be relearning “a daughter of the ancestral language”.

A few comments. Regarding island diversity, I think you are conflating morphological diversity with genetic diversity. It is true that in some islands, there is rapid speciation with a lot of morphological diversity but that has more to do with unexplored niches being opened up (e.g., Darwin’s finches), but the underlying genetic structure might still not deviate from neutral expectations (i.e., not ‘more’ genetically diverse than mainland habitats). Alternatively, you can have very rapid morphological diversity in a ‘sympatric’ environment where there is no isolation (e.g., cichlid fishes in lakes in Africa). The link between morphological/phenotypic diversity and genetic diversity is still debated in the literature, and in this specific study, the two are correlated but it need not be so.

On daughter languages. I’m not saying Malay is the ancestral language (the original sentence “a daughter of the ancestral language, Malay” might be parsed by others as meaning Malay is the ancestral language when the parsing should be Malay, a daughter of the ancestral language (which is unknown)). You argued that Malay and other Austronesian languages may be “fairly recent reintroductions” but reintroductions from where? Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic languages whose speakers are highly related, most likely had a Southeast Asian origin by parsimony according to the tree (which you agree with), so the reintroduction is likely to have come ultimately from speakers from Southeast Asia (though they may not be speaking the “true” ancestral language anymore but we can never know either way). None of this would be supported if Austronesian speakers had closer affinities to populations in China, but this is strongly rejected by the tree. Malay was just one daughter language that got picked up by migrating Chinese. If the Chinese migrants in the 19th Century learned Austro-Asiatic Orang Asli languages extensively, what I said would apply equally strongly, but we know that did not happen in history.

Yes, I definitely support more interdisciplinary research. I think there is this general mistaken notion that the region we live in is a simply satellite of other civilizations when evidence suggest that Southeast Asia is in fact one of the seed centers of other populations in prehistoric times and a maritime and trading hub in historic times.

1. Rates of (biological) evolution are indeed greater for islands compared to mainland habitats. This has been observed by various scientists, and I am sure there is a lot of available literature out there. As to the why, I am not really sure. Although there may be genetic bottlenecks in small island populations, other processes may play a part (genetic drift and founder effects together with natural selection can indeed drive speciation, and thus evolutionary diversity).

2. I can compare language evolution to biological evolution, although they do not exactly operate in the same way. The relatively scarcity of different Chinese languages in northern China has been attributed to the fact that northern China is a large flat plain, and migration and movement of groups is easily facilitated. This allowed the easy spread of Mandarin (and its related dialects) across northern and southwestern China. In contrast, there are seven major language groups (generally classified as Wu, Yue, Gan, Xiang, Hakka, Min Nan, Min Bei) in southern China where it is more mountainous (and hence more island-like). I would like to compare this to the situation in East Africa; unfortunately, I have little knowledge of the East African savannahs.

3. As far as I know, most linguists cannot reconstruct protolanguages to more than 6000 years before present. Even so, many of the world’s known languages diversified only fairly recently. For example, the split of the major Indo-European branches are dated to just 5000 years before present, with many of the present day languages emerging within the space of just 2000 years. All these occur after the last glacial maximum, and so language diversification can be presumed to have occurred in island-like conditions for regions such as insular Southeast Asia.

4. I would like to point out why we raise the issue of Austronesian originating in Taiwan. In the article, there is the idea about Chinese returning to Southeast Asia to relearn a daughter (Malay) of the ancestral language. Yes, parsimoniously, the protolanguage of Southeast Asian ancestors may well be from Southeast Asia itself, but there is not enough evidence to show which one in particular. And since there is enough evidence for daughter languages to show some of the later migrations (i.e. Austronesian languages migrated southwards), it seems ironic to suggest Malay as that particular daughter language to relearn when all Asians supposedly speak daughter languages anyway, more so when Malay and other Austronesian languages may not actually be native remnants of the protolanguage, but are also fairly recent reintroductions.

On a different note, it seems like the tips of the tree (with the Altaic and Sino-Tibetan branches) are a grade instead of a clade. This could represent fairly significant differences within Sino-Tibetan (and Altaic) speaking populations.

All that said, I thought the research findings were most interesting, and hope that more sampling of diverse Asian populations will be done to elucidate the tree further. Of course, combining the genetic data with data from other sources would be even better for us to understand our history.