Проблемы китайского и общего языкознания. К 90-летию С. Е. Яхонтова

 489  The Eastern Himalayan Corridor in Prehistory   of the Southwestern Tai languages into mainland Southeast Asia from the areas south of the Yangzte is an historically comparatively recent phenomenon. The expansion of Hmong-Mien groups into Southeast Asia constitutes an even more recent process. In the case of Austroasiatic (Figure 15), the spread of Vi- etnamese southward along the mainland Southeast Asian littoral from Tonkin, where its closest linguistic relatives Mường, Maleng, Chut, Arem, Aheu, Hung, Thô and Nguôn are still spoken, is also an historically comparatively recent phenomenon. Similarly, Khmer is believed to have spread at the expense of Pearic languages across the area that today is Cambodia during the Angkorian period and perhaps earlier. The deepest division within theAustroasiatic family lies between the Munda languages of India and the Khasi-Aslian languages of Southeast Asia [Diffloth 2009]. Within Khasi-Aslian, Mon-Khmer is coordi- nate with Khasi-Pakanic. [Diffloth 2012] has presented evidence that Pearic is a sister clade of Khmuic within Khasi-Pakanic, and is not ‘une espèce de vieux khmèr’, as has sometimes been thought (Figure 16). Pearic and Khmuic exclusively share the etymon * klɔŋ ‘cooked rice’ and other features. Pearic represents the older population of most of what today is Cambodia. In the following sections, a new reconstruction of the prehistory of the East Asian phylum will be outlined on the basis of population genetic findings and other data and inferences about the past. Beforehand, for the Figure 13. Geographical distribution of Hmong-Mien Figure 14. Geographical distribution of Kradai