Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Proto Kra language

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The Proto-Kra language is the reconstructed ancestor of the Kra languages. It was reconstructed in 2000 by Weera Ostapirat in his Ph.D. dissertation.

Contents

Lower-level reconstructions

Ostapirat (2000) provided preliminary phonological reconstructions for several lower-level groupings before attempting a reconstruction of Proto-Kra.

  • Proto-Kra
  • Proto-South-Western Kra
  • Proto-Western Kra (Gelao, Lachi)
  • Proto-Southern Kra (Laha)
  • Proto-Central-East Kra
  • Proto-Central Kra (Paha)
  • Proto-Eastern Kra (Buyang, Qabiao)

    • Consonants

    Proto-Kra has a total of 32 consonants, seven of which (marked in green) can occur as syllable finals (Ostapirat 2000:224, 236).

    Vowels

    Proto-Kra has a total of 6 vowels (Ostapirat 2000:235).

    Proto-Kra has 4 diphthongs, which are not found in closed syllables.

  • *-ai
  • *-aɯ
  • *-ui
  • *-au

    • Tones

    Proto-Kra had an A–B–C–D tonal system typical of other Tai–Kadai languages (see Proto-Tai language#Tones). The tonal descriptions below are from Ostapirat (2000:237).

    1. *A: *A is one of the most common tones.
    2. *B: *B and *D are phonetically similar, as reflexes of tone *D are often the same as those of *B. This regularly occurs in all Kra languages except for Qabiao.
    3. *C: *C is usually accompanied by glottal constriction and may have originally had a creaky or tense laryngeal quality. Some Gelao varieties and Yalang Buyang display the same reflex for
    4. *D: *D is the only tone to occur exclusively in closed syllables.

    The following table of phonetic characteristics of Proto-Kra tones was adapted from Ostapirat (2000:237).

    References

    Proto-Kra language Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA