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Part of
Austronesian Undressed: How and why languages become isolating
Edited by David Gil and Antoinette Schapper
[Typological Studies in Language 129] 2020
► pp. 97–118

Chapter 2
The loss of affixation in Cham

Contact, internal drift and the limits of linguistic history

| University of Ottawa

Chamic languages have been spoken in Central Vietnam since about 600 AD. While Classical Cham (9th–15th centuries), had already lost a significant proportion of its Austronesian affixation, it also borrowed new affixes from Mon-Khmer. Modern Cham (16th–19th centuries) underwent another wave of reduction that led to a largely monosyllabic and affixless Colloquial Eastern Cham (20th–21st centuries).

In this paper I first look at representative Classical Cham inscriptions, establishing the extent to which they exhibit a reduction of affixation, and discussing possible contact scenarios that may have led to this reduction. I then assess the prevalence of affixation in Modern Cham manuscripts and in Colloquial Eastern Cham, and argue that the role Vietnamese played in Cham monosyllabisation must have been more indirect than previously assumed.

Keywords: Cham, loss of affixation, monosyllabisation, contact, Mon-Khmer, inscriptions
Article outline
  • 1.The loss of affixation in Cham languages: Overview and previous proposals
  • 2.Affixation in Cham inscriptions and manuscripts
  • 3.Contact, learnability and the initial reduction of affixation
  • 4.Iambicity, monosyllabisation and the loss of affixation
  • 5.The loss of affixation: Contact versus internal restructuring
  • 6.Conclusion: Revisiting contact and learnability
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.129.02bru
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