Austric languages
The super-family of the austric languages is a theoretical construction gathering of the languages of Southeast Asia, the Pacifique and the Indian Sous-continent. This super-family gathers the families austronésienne (insular Southeast Asia, Oceania and Madagascar) and austroasiatic (continental Southeast Asia, is India and Bangladesh). The assumption of a genetic relation between the two families is not accepted by all the linguists.
The idea of a austric super-family was put forward for the first time in 1906 by the German missionary Wilhelm Schmidt. Schmidt advanced phonological, morphological and lexical arguments to show the existence of this super-family, but the lexical elements were rejected by the community of the linguists. The austric assumption generally is thus not accepted.
In 1942, the linguist Paul K. Benedict proposed a super-family who included not only the languages austronésiennes and austroasiatic, but also tai-kadai and hmong-mien (or miao-yao). This assumption is almost universally rejected today.
Other linguists think that morphological similarities recently discovered between the languages of the islands Nicobar (which are of the family of the Langues my-Khmer, therefore austroasiatic) and the austronésien shows a genetic relation the austronésien and the austroasiatique one.
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