Linguistic diversity along the China-Vietnam border

Abstract

The diversity of Tai languages along the border between Guangxi and Vietnam has long fascinated scholars, and led some to postulate that the original Tai homeland was located in this area. In this article I present evidence that this linguistic diversity can be explained in large part not by “divergent local development” from a single proto-language, but by the intrusion of dialects from elsewhere in relatively recent times as a result of migration, forced trans-plantation of populations, and large-scale military operations. Further research is needed to discover any underlying linguistic diversity in the area in deep historical time, but a prior task is to document more fully and systematically the surface diversity as described by Gedney and Haudricourt among others.