[15] Paul Sidwell (2018) suggests they arrived on the coast of modern-day Odisha about 4000–3500 years ago (c. 2000 – c. 1500 BCE) and spread after the Indo-Aryan migration to the region.

[16][17] Rau and Sidwell (2019),[18][19] along with Blench (2019),[20] suggest that pre-Proto-Munda had arrived in the Mahanadi River Delta around 1,500 BCE from Southeast Asia via a maritime route, rather than overland.

He proposes instead, on the basis of morphological comparisons, that Proto-South Munda split directly into Diffloth's three daughter groups, Kharia–Juang, Sora–Gorum (Savara), and Gutob–Remo–Gtaʼ (Remo).

Inherited Austroasiatic glottalized stop and nasalized release of Munda are noteworthy unique phonotactic features in South Asia.

South Munda displays tendency toward initial clusters, CCVC word shape, with best examples are manifested in the Gtaʔ case.

Donegan & Stampe (2004) posited overarching assumptions that all Munda languages have completely redesigned their word prosodic structure from proto-Austroasiatic rising, iambic and reduced vowel sesquisyllabic to Indic norms of trochaic, falling rhythm, stable or assimilationist consonants and harmonised vowels, making them oppose to Eastern Austroasiatic languages at almost every level.

Again, Donegan & Stampe (2004) claim on rhythmic holism does not conform with data presented by individual Munda languages.

[40] Morphologically, both North and South Munda subgroups mainly focus on the head or the verb, thus they are primarily head-marking, in contrast to dependent-marking Indo-European and Dravidian families.

[42][43] Case markers on nominals to show syntactic alignments, i.e. nominative-accusative, ergative-absolutive, are largely absent or not systematically developed among the Munda languages except Korku.

At clause/sentence level, Munda languages are head-final, but internally head-first in referent indexation, compounds, and noun incorporation verb complexes.

[44][45] Munda head-first, bimoraic constraint-free noun incorporation is also found in Khasian, Nicobaric, and other Mon-Khmer languages.

Kherwarian is a large language continuum with speakers extending west to east from the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh to Assam, north to south from Nepal to Odisha.

They include fourteen languages: Asuri, Birhor, Bhumij, Koda, Ho, Korwa (Korowa), Mundari, Mahali, Santali, Turi, Agariya, Bijori, Koraku, and Karmali, with the total number of speakers surpassing ten million (2011 census).

The Kherwarian languages are often highlighted due to their elaborate and complex templatic and pronominalized predicate structures are so pervasive that it is obligatory for the verb to encode TAM, valency, voices, possessive, transitivity, clear distinction between exclusive and inclusive first persons, and index with all arguments, including non-arguments like possessors.

(TR)-FIN=1SG.SUBJ'I am looking at the man'ka=mNEG=2SG.SUBJäm-ta-t-in-a=mgive-ASP-TR-1SG.OBJ-FIN=2SG.SUBJka=m äm-ta-t-in-a=mNEG=2SG.SUBJ give-ASP-TR-1SG.OBJ-FIN=2SG.SUBJ'you didn't give me (it)'mene-mNEG-2SG.SUBJem-ga-d-iñ-agiven-ASP-TR-1SG.OBJ-FINmene-m em-ga-d-iñ-aNEG-2SG.SUBJ given-ASP-TR-1SG.OBJ-FIN'you haven't given to me'ini-kehe-DAT/ACCka=koNEG=3PL.SUBJem-a-i-ke-n-agive-BEN-3SG.OBJ-ASP-INTR-FINini-ke ka=ko em-a-i-ke-n-ahe-DAT/ACC NEG=3PL.SUBJ give-BEN-3SG.OBJ-ASP-INTR-FIN'They didn’t give him'iŋ1SGam=ke2SG=OBLnel-me-kanken=ĩsee-2SG.OBJ-IMPERF=1SG.SUBJiŋ am=ke nel-me-kanken=ĩ1SG 2SG=OBL see-2SG.OBJ-IMPERF=1SG.SUBJ'I was looking at you'Noun incorporation, which has been described as an ancestral Munda morphological feature and is essential to the grammar of other South Munda languages such as Sora, but the Kherwarian languages appear to have lost noun incorporation altogether.

tʄeɳe-kobird-PLnam-oɽaʔ-ta-n-a=kofind-house-ASP-INTR-FIN=3PL.SUBJtʄeɳe-ko nam-oɽaʔ-ta-n-a=kobird-PL find-house-ASP-INTR-FIN=3PL.SUBJ'the birds are getting into their nests (and trying to lay an egg)'Unlike the Kherwarian languages with their complex verbal morphology, the Korku verb is moderately simple with modest amount of synthesis.

Similar to Hindi and Sadani, Kharia has made a calque to form sequential converbs (conjunctive participles) kon (derived from ikon, ‘do’).

apa2DUa-ma-ɉim-ke2DU.SUBJ-NEG-eat-PRES.TRetebecauseain1SGkikibRED~doɉenaNEG.COPapa a-ma-ɉim-ke ete ain kikib ɉena2DU 2DU.SUBJ-NEG-eat-PRES.TR because 1SG RED~do NEG.COP'Because you don’t eat (it), I didn’t do it'Noun incorporation is fossilized in lexical compounds and words like body parts being combined with the verb ‘wash’.

amyouam-ayou-GENitim-dehand:2-DEFmi-gui-di-agan2SG.SUBJ-wash-hand-PSTam am-a itim-de mi-gui-di-aganyou you-GEN hand:2-DEF 2SG.SUBJ-wash-hand-PST'You washed your hand'The Southernmost Gtaʔ and Remo-Gutob subgroups of South Munda exhibit significant morphological convergence towards Dravidian languages.

ɲem-sim-ti-n-aycatch-chicken-NPST-INTR-1SG.SUBJɲem-sim-ti-n-aycatch-chicken-NPST-INTR-1SG.SUBJ'I’m catching chicken'paŋ-ti-dar-iɲ-tenbring-give-cooked.rice-1SG.OBJ.UND-3SG.SUBJ.PSTpaŋ-ti-dar-iɲ-tenbring-give-cooked.rice-1SG.OBJ.UND-3SG.SUBJ.PST'he brought and gave me cooked rice'bagun-benboth-2PLə-il-le-ga-sal-n-e1/2.PL.SUBJ-go-PST-drink-liquor-INTR-3PLbagun-ben ə-il-le-ga-sal-n-eboth-2PL 1/2.PL.SUBJ-go-PST-drink-liquor-INTR-3PL'both of you went and drank liquor'əb-gan-suŋ-byi-na-baCAUS-enter-house-woman-OPT-1PL.SUBJəb-gan-suŋ-byi-na-baCAUS-enter-house-woman-OPT-1PL.SUBJ'Let us make the woman enter the house'ji-lo-si-t-amstick-mud-hand-NPST-2SG.OBJji-lo-si-t-amstick-mud-hand-NPST-2SG.OBJ'mud will stick to your hand'While the most salient effect of object noun incorporation in most polysynthetic languages is lowering the scope of the verb and turning transitive verbs into intransitive, incorporation of transitive subject/agent is considered atypical and occupies at the lowest position of the hierarchy.

Words for domesticated animal and plant species like dog, millet, chicken, goat, pig, rice are shared.

[63] It is clear that hundreds of non-Indo-European words in Vedic Sanskrit that Kuiper (1948) attributed to Munda has been rejected through careful analysis.

[63] Except for words like ‘cotton’, there is a surprising absence of Ancient Sanskrit and Medieval Indian borrowings of animal & plant names from Munda.

Scholars believe that the Munda tribes typically occupied a marginalized and lowly socioeconomic position in the Hinduized society of Vedic South Asia, or did not participate in the Hindu caste system and had barely any contacts with Hindus at all.

Witzel (1999) and Southworth (2005) proposed that the early non-Indo-European words with prefixes k-, ka-, ku-, cər- in Vedic Sanskrit belonged to a hypothetical 'Para-Munda substratum' that they believed to be part of the Harappan language.

[64] This would imply that Austroasiatic speakers might have penetrated as far as the Panjab and Afghanistan in the early second millennium BC, whereas Osada (2009) refuted Witzel that those words might have been, in fact, Dravidian compounds.