Khmuic classification and homeland

The paper discusses the author’s comparative investigation of Khmuic in progress. Original proposals are made concerning the classification of Khmuic languages and their original homeland and migrations that established present distributions. The arguments are made with reference to the author’s working version of his phonological and lexical reconstruction. The evolution of the consonant system is found to be uninformative in regard to the classification, so special attention is given to an apparent chain shift in the reflexes of Austroasiatic *aː, broadly schematized as *aː > *ɛː > *iə > *iː that supports strongly nested family tree. However, there are also counter-examples that fail to show these developments, such that we are forced to posit various parallel correspondences. To explain these facts, it is suggested that there were several phases of Khmuic expansion historically, each radiating from a homeland in the north-west of Laos, and resulting in dialect mixing that has confused the correspondence patterns.The pKhmuic phonology as it is reconstructed to date is quite straightforward; lacking tones, registers or an implosive contrast in the stop series. Complex initial clusters are regarded as archaic, although relatively few are yet reconstructed on the basis of lexical comparisons. The vowel correspondences are somewhat complex, but this is consistent with an apparently rich history of dialect borrowing, so absolute regularity is not expected. On the whole pKhmuic resembles the Khmu Cuang dialect phonologically.