In conclusion, modern Katuic languages have by and large preserved the disyllabic character of the PK word canon. The contrastivity of sesquisyllabicity is maintained outside of Kuay, where Khmer contact has influenced the loss of this contrast and the development of phonological sesquisyllables in at least some varieties. Disyllabicity was even reinforced in the eastern range of Katuic by the development of presyllable vowel quality contrasts. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the Katuic languages have not been immune to the inexorable typological drift towards sesquisyllabicity and eventual monosyllabicity in Southeast Asia. This can be seen in the near loss of these same presyllable vowel quality contrasts in Bru and Katu and in the general erosion of the presyllable rime which has affected every modern Katuic language, except perhaps for Pacoh.
The derivational morphological system of PK was almost without a doubt more productive than those of its modern descendants, some of which retain only fossilized evidence of such a system. Nevertheless, morphological derivation remains common and partially productive in the central, mountainous areas where Pacoh, WKatu and Kriang are spoken even as contact with more strictly isolating prestige languages has led to a leveling of the PK morphophonological paradigm in favor of syntactic strategies in the more peripheral areas. Certain PK affixes were retained from PAA, including nominalizing infixes (*-an-, *-rn-, *-nn-, *-mp-, *-r-, *-N-) the reciprocal prefix (*tr-) and the causative prefix (*pa-). Others were either PK internal innovations or were borrowed in through contact with other prestige languages such as Chamic or Khmer.
The findings of this paper have implications for the morphological reconstruction of PAA and for our understanding of the historical contact between the Katuic languages and their geographical neighbors in the Bahnaric and Vietic sub-groups of AA, in Khmer and in Chamic. It is hoped that this paper will make a small contribution in these areas of ongoing linguistic research.
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