ABSTRACT
Achinese and the Austronesian languages spoken on the South-East Asian mainland are known to have borrowed numerous words from Mon-Khmer and to show other effects of Mon-Khmer contact. Systematic comparison especially of their historico-phonological peculiarities makes it appear that they are related within Austronesian. This chapter considers a number of minor points of phonology and to note some shared morphological peculiarities in lexical items. The most striking of the phonological agreements between Achinese and the Mainland languages is the correlation between vowel length in Cham and the split in the Achinese. The chapter considers the evidence of the Mainland languages and Achinese agrees with Dyens reconstructions so far as initial and final position. A particular relationship between Achinese and Mainland Austronesian languages within the Austronesian stock is at variance with the findings of lexicostatistics. The lexicostatistical studies show a moderately close relationship between Achinese and Malay, a more distant one between various Mainland Austronesian languages and either of these two.
