| Summary: | Opposite rhythmic principles are responsible for the opposite typological tendencies of the Southeast Asian (Mon-Khmer) and Indic (Munda) branches of the Austroasiatic language family. The phonological divergence between Mon-Khmer and Munda is largely the result of stress-timing in Mon-Khmer and mora-timing in Munda; their vowel phonologies, especially, show how the two branches represent opposite phonological types. Mon-Khmer and Munda differ sharply in their vowel phoneme inventories, and also in the kinds of phonological processes that have applied throughout their histories. The phoneme inventories and process types of Mon-Khmer and Munda parallel those of other stress- and mora-timed languages, respectively, and they illustrate particularly well that rhythmic type is the most revealing and unifying aspect of phonological type.*
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