Thai, Kadai, and Indonesian: A new alignment in South-Eastern Asia

Crosslinguistic Influence in Learning Thai as a Third Language: Perspectives of Indonesian Ph.D. Candidates in Thailand

Article

Full-text available

May 2023

Didit Haryadi

This study examines the perspectives of Indonesian Ph.D. candidates in Thailand on the similarities and differences among Indonesian, English, and Thai languages, as well as the influence of Indonesian and English on learning Thai as a third language. A qualitative method with a phenomenological approach was used to analyze data gathered from four Indonesian Ph.D. candidates from different majors. The study found that there are several linguistic features shared between Indonesian, English, and Thai languages, including pronunciation, English loanwords, basic sentence structure, word order, and honorific terms and formality. These linguistic similarities facilitated the participants' learning of the Thai language as a third language. Moreover, the findings revealed that the participants' educational background played a significant role in the positive language transfer from their first and second languages to Thai. The study recommends that language educators and policymakers should acknowledge the importance of educational background in facilitating positive language transfer in third language acquisition. Furthermore, language programs should be designed to encourage multilingualism and code-switching in the classroom to promote students' linguistic awareness and proficiency. Additionally, language learners could benefit from opportunities to interact with native speakers and practice their language skills in real-world settings.

Shared paternal ancestry of Han, Tai-Kadai-speaking, and Austronesian-speaking populations as revealed by the high resolution phylogeny of O1a-M119 and distribution of its sub-lineages within China

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2021
AM J PHYS ANTHROPOL

Objectives: The aim of this research was to explore the origin, diversification, and demographic history of O1a-M119 over the past 10,000 years, as well as its role during the formation of East Asian and Southeast Asian populations, particularly the Han, Tai-Kadai-speaking, and Austronesian-speaking populations. Materials and methods: Y-chromosome sequences (n = 141) of the O1a-M119 lineage, including 17 newly generated in this study, were used to reconstruct a revised phylogenetic tree with age estimates, and identify sub-lineages. The geographic distribution of 12 O1a-M119 sub-lineages was summarized, based on 7325 O1a-M119 individuals identified among 60,009 Chinese males. Results: A revised phylogenetic tree, age estimation, and distribution maps indicated continuous expansion of haplogroup O1a-M119 over the past 10,000 years, and differences in demographic history across geographic regions. We propose several sub-lineages of O1a-M119 as founding paternal lineages of Han, Tai-Kadai-speaking, and Austronesian-speaking populations. The sharing of several young O1a-M119 sub-lineages with expansion times less than 6000 years between these three population groups supports a partial common ancestry for them in the Neolithic Age; however, the paternal genetic divergence pattern is much more complex than previous hypotheses based on ethnology, archeology, and linguistics. Discussion: Our analyses contribute to a better understanding of the demographic history of O1a-M119 sub-lineages over the past 10,000 years during the emergence of Han, Austronesians, Tai-Kadai-speaking populations. The data described in this study will assist in understanding of the history of Han, Tai-Kadai-speaking, and Austronesian-speaking populations from ethnology, archeology, and linguistic perspectives in the future.

The Eastern Himalaya and the Mongoloid myth

Chapter

Jul 2017

George van Driem

Munda languages are father tongues, but Japanese and Korean are not

Article

Full-text available

May 2020

Over two decades ago, it was observed that the linguistic affinity of the language spoken by a particular population tended to correlate with the predominant paternal, i.e. Y-chromosomal, lineage found in that population. Such correlations were found to be ubiquitous but not universal, and the striking exceptions to such conspicuous patterns of correlation between linguistic and genetic phylogeography elicit particular interest and beg for clarification. Within the Austroasiatic language family, the Munda languages are a clear-cut case of father tongues, whereas Japanese and Korean are manifestly not. In this study, the cases of Munda and Japanese are juxtaposed. A holistic understanding of these contrasting cases of ethnolinguistic prehistory with respect to the father tongue correlation will first necessitate a brief exposition of the phylogeography of the Y chromosomal lineage O. Then triangulation discloses some contours and particulars of both long lost episodes of ethnolinguistic prehistory.

The Eastern Himalayan corridor in prehistory

Chapter

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Jan 2016

George van Driem

Pagbabalik-tanaw sa Maagang Málay ni Jose Rizal sa Kakanyahang Maláy at Pagsipat sa Kinahinatnang Pananangkapan at Retorikang Politikal dito noong Dantaon 20

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2024

Axle Christien Tugano

Batay sa isinusulong na mandato ng General Education (GE) Courses Program ng University of the Philippines (UP), kinakailangang maisingkaw sa pag-aaral at/o pagtuturo ng PI 10 (Philippine Institutions: The Life, Works, and Writings of Jose Rizal) ang panlipunang saysay (social utility) ni Jose Rizal tungo sa pagiging makatao at makabayan ng mga Pilipino. Kaakibat ng preskripsiyong ito ang integratibong paghuhugpong sa kaniyang kaisipan sa iba’t ibang disiplina at paksa. Layunin ng pag-aaral na ito ang integratibong pagsasalok sa katuturan ni Rizal sa iba pang kurso ng kasaysayan katulad ng HIST 1 (Philippine History) o KAS 1 (Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas) bilang GE Course at HIST 110 (Philippine Presidency) bilang Higher History Course. Mula sa mga nasabing kurso, partikular na sa kaso ng UP Los Baños, exploratoryong tatahiin ang pagbabalik-tanaw sa buhay ni Rizal na ang tuon ay may kinalaman sa Kakanyahang Malayo o Pan-Malayan Identity na kagyat iuugnay sa Kasaysayang Pampangulohan ng Pilipinas. Hindi gaanong natatalakay sa ilang pagkakataon ang bahagi ng buhay na ito ni Rizal at kaugnayan nito sa Kasaysayang Pampolitika. Kaya’t mula sa inaambagang kurso (PI 10), muling sisiyasatin sa diwa ni Rizal ang kalinangang Pan-Malayo na nakapaloob sa mas malawak na mundong Austronesyano bilang pagpapahalaga sa HIST 1/KAS 1 sa unang banda at kagyat na ipapalaot ang katuturan nito sa pananangkapan at retorikang politikal noong dantaon 20 bilang ambag naman sa HIST 110 sa kabilang dako. Higit na babalikan ang estado ng Kakanyahang Malayo sa administrasyon nina Manuel Quezon (1935-1944), Elpidio Quirino (1948-1953), at Diosdado Macapagal (1961-1965).

3. Some current issues in Austronesian linguistics

Chapter

Jan 1995

Malcolm Ross

LANGUAGE FAMILIES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

Book

Full-text available

Jan 2021

Laurent Sagart

New language versions of MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives – Revised

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2020

The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) is a theoretically grounded toolkit that employs parallelpictorial stimuli to explore and assess narrative skills in children in many different languages. It is part of the LITMUS (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings) battery of tests that were developed in connection with the COST Action IS0804 Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment(2009−2013). MAIN hasbeen designed to assess both narrative production and comprehensionin children who acquire one or more languages from birth or from early age. Its design allows for the comparable assessment of narrative skills in several languages in the same child and in different elicitation modes: Telling, Retelling and Model Story. MAIN contains four parallel stories, each with a carefully designed six-picture sequence based on a theoretical model of multidimensional story organization. The stories are controlled for cognitive and linguistic complexity, parallelism in macrostructure and microstructure, as well as for cultural appropriateness and robustness. As a tool MAIN had been used to compare children’s narrative skills across languages, and also to help differentiate between childrenwith and without developmental language disorders, both monolinguals and bilinguals. This volume consists of two parts. The main content of Part I consists of33 papers describing the process of adapting and translating MAIN to a large number of languagesfrom different parts of the world. Part II contains materials for use for about 80 languages, including pictorial stimuli, which are accessible after registration. MAIN was first published in 2012/2013 (ZASPiL56). Several years of theory development and material construction preceded this launch. In 2019 (ZASPiL 63), the revised English version (revised on the basis of over 2,500 transcribed MAIN narratives as well as ca 24,000 responses to MAIN comprehension questions, collected from around 700 monolingual and bilingual children in Germany, Russia and Sweden between 2013-2019) was published together with revised versions in German, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish for the bilingual Turkish-Swedish population in Sweden. The present 2020 (ZASPiL 64) volume contains new and revised language versions of MAIN.

Investigating Children’s Narrative Abilities in a Chinese and Multilingual Context: Cantonese, Mandarin, Kam and Urdu Adaptations of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN)

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2020

This article introduces the LITMUS-MAIN (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings-MAIN) and motivates the adaptation of this instrument into Chinese languages and language pairs involving a Chinese language, namely Cantonese, Mandarin, Kam, Urdu. We propose that these new adapted protocols not only contribute to the theoretical discussion on story grammar and widen the evidential base of MAIN to include more languages in studying bilinguals, they also offer new methods of assessing language development in young children that have the potential to tease apart the effects of language impairment and bilingualism and improve the identification of Developmental Language Disorder. These new protocols are the first tools to be designed for the dual assessment of language skills in these particular languages, in particular narrative skills in bilingual children speaking these languages. By catering to under-researched languages and over-looked groups of bilingual children, these new tools could improve the clinical management for certain bilingual ethnic minority children such as Urdu-Cantonese and Kam-Mandarin bilinguals, as well as promote the study of these groups and their acquisition issues. Advances in understanding the theoretical and acquisition issues in childhood bilingualism can also be made possible using these new tools.

Historical Ethnolinguistic Notes on Proto-Austroasiatic and Proto-Vietic Vocabulary in Vietnamese

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2020

Mark Alves

THIS CONTAINS CORRECTED INFORMATION IN TABLE 2, SPECIFICALLY, THAT ALL STAGES OF VIETNAMESE WERE IN THE 2ND MILLENNIUM CE (NOT THE 1ST). This study provides updated numbers of and historical ethnolinguistic observations on Austroasiatic and Vietic etyma in Vietnamese. Lexical data from two dozen Vietic lects were assembled, half from the Mon-Khmer Etymological Database (MKED hereafter) and half from various other published and unpublished sources. Based on Ferlus’s preliminary reconstructions of Proto-Vietic (by Ferlus 2007 in the MKED), and data from Austroasiatic, Proto-Tai, and Old and Middle Chinese, approximately 800 items have been evaluated as viable reconstructions. However, of these, nearly 100 are Chinese loanwords of differing periods, and several are early Tai loanwords. The remaining nearly 700 items are native, including about 200 Proto-Austroasiatic etyma, with a few dozen local Austroasiatic words, and over 460 items specific to Vietic. Statistics have been gathered for cultural domains of the reconstructed vocabulary. A combination of etymological sources, semantic domains, and ethnohistorical data (i.e. archaeology, historical texts, and ethnographic information) allow for hypotheses about the ethnolinguistic circumstances of the early Vietic speech community and language contact situations. Many of the cultural domains are readily identified as part of a Neolithic lifestyle (i.e. words related to the natural environment, generic actions, etc.). Some, on the other hand, demonstrate social stratification (e.g. words related to economic practices) and developed agricultural practices (e.g. a large set of terms related to rice production). Others shed light on regional spread of cultural practices (e.g. betel-nut chewing and tooth-blackening) and intergroup contact (e.g. with Sinitic and Tai). Questions related to the spread of metallurgy and metal implements strongly support the influence of Chinese in metal terms and implements.

Tagalog adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives: History, process and preliminary results

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2020

This paper briefly presents the current situation of bilingualism in the Philippines, specifically that of Tagalog-English bilingualism. More importantly, it describes the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS- MAIN) to Tagalog, the basis of Filipino, which is the country’s national language. Finally, the results of a pilot study conducted on Tagalog-English bilingual children and adults (N=27) are presented. The results showed that Story Structure is similar across the two languages and that it develops significantly with age

Conceptual Transfer as an Areal Factor: Spatial Conceptualizations in Mainland Southeast Asia

Book

Full-text available

Nov 2019

Stefanie Siebenhütter

Mainland Southeast Asia unifies great linguistic richness consisting of numerous languages and countless varieties of genetically diverse language families. Nevertheless, the area is known as a prime example for linguistic convergence. Exemplified by spatial reference in Thai, Khmer, Lao and Vietnamese, this study reveals conceptual borrowing due to language contact as an areal defining feature. The results from the field-based data analysis may help answer what extent cultural impact can be used as evidence for the existence of linguistic areas. A speaker’s cultural background might have a stronger impact on the choice of spatial language encoding than expected. Method and structure of argumentation can provide a model for similar questions addressing the existence of linguistic areas as well as to other cognitive dimensions within the Southeast Asian area under consideration. Therefore, the study can be seen as a significant contribution to analyze possibly existing conceptual areas empirically and exemplarily. Additionally, the investigation can serve as an important complement to empirical assumptions of conceptual transfer.

The domestications and the domesticators of Asian rice

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2017

George van Driem

Why do some languages wither and die, while others prosper and spread? Around the turn of the millennium a number of archaeologists such as Colin Renfrew and Peter Bellwood made the controversial claim that many of the world’s major language families owe their dispersal to the adoption of agriculture by their early speakers. In this volume, their proposal is reassessed by linguists, investigating to what extent the economic dependence on plant cultivation really impacted language spread in various parts of the world. Special attention is paid to "tricky" language families such as Eskimo-Aleut, Quechua, Aymara, Bantu, Indo-European, Transeurasian, Turkic, Japano-Koreanic, Hmong-Mien and Trans-New Guinea, that cannot unequivocally be regarded as instances of Farming/Language Dispersal, even if subsistence played a role in their expansion.

IN SEARCH OF POLYNESIAN ORIGINS: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO LAPITA CULTURE

Article

Full-text available

Sep 1986

Timbul Haryono

The islands of Polynesia make up the largest group among the islands in the Pacific ocean. This group, in fact, consist of many islands forming a triangle. The main groups in the west are the Tongan, and Samoan and Ellice groups. The Cook, Society and Tuamotus lie in the east, with Easter Island as a far-off isolate, while the Hawaiian Islands and New Zealand are separated to the north and south respectively of the main west-east belt. The location of these islands between Asia in the west, Australia in the south and South America continent in the east is of considerable significance to the peopling and cultural development of the region. Many scholars have therefore been led to postulate the route of human movement into these scattered islands. Archaeological and anthropological researches have been carried out within the area to determine where the Polynesians originally come from. Various hypotheses have been proposed thereafter.

Hmu (Xinzhai variety)

Article

Dec 2018

The Hmu language is spoken by approximately 1,250,000 people who reside in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture (黔东南苗族侗族自治州), Guizhou Province (贵州省), the People's Republic of China (Wang & Mao 1995: 3–4; Lewis, Simons & Fenning 2016).

Phylogeographic and genome-wide investigations of Vietnam ethnic groups reveal signatures of complex historical demographic movements

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2017

The territory of present-day Vietnam was the cradle of one of the world’s earliest civilizations, and one of the first world regions to develop agriculture. We analyzed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) complete control region of six ethnic groups and the mitogenomes from Vietnamese in The 1000 Genomes Project (1000G). Genome-wide data from 1000G (~55k SNPs) were also investigated to explore different demographic scenarios. All Vietnamese carry South East Asian (SEA) haplotypes, which show a moderate geographic and ethnic stratification, with the Mong constituting the most distinctive group. Two new mtDNA clades (M7b1a1f1 and F1f1) point to historical gene flow between the Vietnamese and other neighboring countries. Bayesian-based inferences indicate a time-deep and continuous population growth of Vietnamese, although with some exceptions. The dramatic population decrease experienced by the Cham 700 years ago (ya) fits well with the Nam tiến (“southern expansion”) southwards from their original heartland in the Red River Delta. Autosomal SNPs consistently point to important historical gene flow within mainland SEA, and add support to a main admixture event occurring between Chinese and a southern Asian ancestral composite (mainly represented by the Malay). This admixture event occurred ~800 ya, again coinciding with the Nam tiến.

The Hidden Structure of Thai Noun Phrases

Thesis

Full-text available

Oct 2011

Peter Jenks

This dissertation investigates the structure and interpretation of noun phrases in Thai and other classifier languages, focusing particular attention on whether Thai contains the same articulated functional architecture as languages with articles. I argue that while bare nouns in Thai do not project DP, noun phrases which include classifiers do, and that this DP functions as a phase for cyclic spell-out. It is argued that Thai DPs involve the obligatory movement of the NP, accounting for their noun-initial word order. A uniform analysis of clausal modification within the noun phrase is provided, driven by an analysis of the particle thîi as a complementizer that derives properties from clauses, with the use of thîi in relative clauses being one instance of this use. The analysis of Thai bare nouns as NPs and thîi as a relative complementizer are reconciled with a head-movement analysis of Thai relative clauses, motivated by empirical considerations. Under this analysis, noun-complement clauses are analyzed as modifiers, on par with relative clauses. The property-operator analysis of thîi is suggested to extend to its occurrence in clefts and infinitival clauses as well. A further construction is investigated in which modifiers do not combine directly with nouns, but instead follow classifiers, resulting in a definite interpretation. This construction provides evidence for a null determiner in Thai, which is argued to take modifiers as complements, either as CPs or as small clauses. The general prohibition against bare classifiers in Thai, alleviated by the presence of modifiers following classifiers, is argued to follow from a structural economy constraint which prefers definite bare nouns to definite bare classifiers. It is argued that this constraint can also iii Abstract iv provide a principled account for which classifier languages do and do not allow bare classifiers to occur with nouns. The ability of quantifiers and their accompanying classifiers to appear discontinuously from their associated noun, or quantifier float, is the final major topic of this dissertation. Scope facts lend themselves to an analysis of quantifier float as a byproduct of Quantifier Raising, the normal movement of quantificational noun phrases to their scope position. Thus, quantifier float is analyzed as movement of the entire DP, with the quantifier and noun occurring in different positions due to the conflicting semantic transparency requirements. A generalization about the availability of quantifier float in classifier languages is presented: only languages in which quantifiers follow nouns allow rightward quantifier float. In light of the proposed analysis, this generalization provides evidence that DP is a phase even in languages that lack articles.

Tibeto-Burman subgroups and historical grammar

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2011

George van Driem

a b s t r ac t Several distinct strains of thought on subgrouping, presented in memory of David Watters and Michael Noonan, are united by a golden thread. Tamangic consists of Tamangish and maybe something else, just as Shafer would have wanted it. Tamangic may represent a wave of peopling which washed over the Himalayas after Magaric and Kiranti but before Bodish. There is no such language family as Sino-Tibetan. The term 'trans-Himalayan' for the phylum merits consideration. A residue of Tibeto-Burman conjugational morphology shared between Kiranti and Tibetan does not go unnoticed, at least twice. Black Mountain Mönpa is not an East Bodish language, and this too does not go unnoticed. k e y wor d s

Health in the Himalayas and the Himalayan homelands

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 2015

George van Driem

Chinese Loanwords in Vietnamese

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 2015

Mark Alves

This entry in the Brill Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics is an overview of Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese incorporates new ideas regarding the socio-historical context and timing of loanwords. Mark ALVES, “Chinese Loanwords in Vietnamese”, in: Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, General Editor Rint Sybesma. Consulted online on 24 July 2016 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_000170> First published online: 2015

Chinese Loanwords in the Languages of Southeast Asia

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 2015

Mark Alves

This entry in the Brill Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics is an overview of Chinese loanwords among languages of Southeast Asia, including sections on Khmer, Thai, Hmong, Indonesian, and Tagalog. Mark ALVES, “Chinese Loanwords in the Languages of Southeast Asia”, in: Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, General Editor Rint Sybesma. Consulted online on 24 July 2016 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_00000082> First published online: 2015

Trans-Himalayan

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 2014

George van Driem

Analysis of the Pacific Rim Austronesian Marine Civilization from a Cultural Exchange Perspective

Article

Sep 2024

Tong Qingyan

Ancient Connections of Sinitic

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2023

David Bradley

Six main alternative linkage proposals which involve the Sino-Tibetan family, including Sinitic and other language families of the East Asian area (Miao-Yao, Altaic/Transeurasian, Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian) are briefly outlined. Using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics, a remote linkage between the Sino-Tibetan languages, including Sinitic, the Yeniseian languages of Siberia, and the Na-Dene languages of northwest North America is demonstrated. This includes cognate core lexicon showing regular sound correspondences, morphological similarities of form and function, as well as similarities in social structure. The other proposals for linkages that connect Sinitic and other languages of the East Asian area appear not to be based on a genetic linguistic relationship but rather due to contact: millennia of loanwords from Sinitic into the languages of those families and some lexicon borrowed into Sinitic. More remains to be done to further document the status of the linkage between Sino-Tibetan and Dene-Yeniseian.

Revisiting the Southeast Asian House: An Outlier’s Perspective

Chapter

Nov 2021

Fernando Zialcita

Overviews of Southeast Asian houses often overlook Hispanised Philippine houses. This chapter suggests that we need a perspective that will include not only such houses but also vernacular houses using brick or stone in northern Vietnam and South Sumatra. The argument is framed around a number of key points. First, because Southeast Asia is a recent construct dating back only to 1944–1945, defining frameworks should be flexible. Second, to pursue the Austric-Tai hypothesis about the underlying unity of the three language families—Austronesian, Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai—research in nonlinguistic domains like architecture is needed. Third, we should be wary of the lingering tendency to prioritise Indianisation as the key integrating motif and conversely to exclude Chinese and especially Western influences as an excrescence. Fourth, in the urban centres new influences may have reshaped indigenous traditions, but these indigenous traditions in turn localised the foreign. And finally, the localisation of once-foreign traditions could be analysed in the future on the basis of materiality, functionality and symbolism. For instance, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Philippine house and South Sumatra’s rumah gedung seem similar in being constructed of wood above and stone below. What would the differences be in construction methods, function and symbolism?

海南閩語結果結構

Article

Dec 2016

Hui-chi Lee

This paper introduces the resultative constructions in Hainan Min which have not been seriously examined in previous studies. The serial verb construction ( SVC ) is the main mechanism by which resultatives are expressed in Hainan Min. This special syntactic structure is examined in Hainan Min and compared to two other Chinese dialects: Taiwan Southern Min and Cantonese. I speculate that the unusual serial verb construction resultatives are associated with the preservation of a historical form and language contact. Diachronic Chinese data are given to evince that SVC s existed early in archaic Chinese. In addition, it is argued that language contact with the native language (Hlai) also contributes to the preservation of this historic remnant. 本文介紹海南閩語的結果結構。這個語法結構在過去的文獻中並未清楚的描述及討論過。本研究使用的材料大多是作者田野調查後的語料。田調的結果發現，海南閩語的結果結構主要是以連動結構來表現。以連動結構來表達結果，在現代漢語中，是一種很特殊的方式。本文因此比較了相關的漢語方言：台灣閩南語及粵語。同時，還考察了古漢語的歷時語料，發現連動結果句型應是一種存古現象。除了歷史因素外，本文還主張語言接觸也影響了連動結果句型的存古。因此，本文還探討了海南島上的黎語之結果結構。(This article is in English.)

From the Perspective of the Pervasiveness of Sound Correspondences: 語音對應與苗瑤語比較研究——從普遍對應的角度看

Article

Jan 2015

Feng Wang

提要普遍對應指對應的表現形式在所有參與比較的語言中都有分佈。放寬這一要求會導致晚期借用混入比較，乃至造成對語源關係的誤判。從這一角度出發，本文考察了原始苗瑤語重構所依賴的語音對應基礎。無論是在普遍對應的嚴格要求下，還是放寬要求，苗瑤語之間的關係語素都是高階比低階多，這可以進一步確認它們之間的親緣關係。應用同樣的比較程式，漢語和原始苗瑤語之間的關係語素也顯示出同樣的分佈，因此，詞階分析支持苗瑤語與漢語之間的親緣關係，而非接觸關係。不可釋原則的應用同樣確認了這一判斷。不可釋原則指無法用施借語言的音韻系統來解釋受借語言中關係語素的表現，就說明二者之間的關係假定為親緣關係比接觸關係更為合理。幾個不可釋的例子可以在漢-苗瑤語關係語素中找到，因此，苗瑤語應該仍然歸屬於漢藏語系。

COMPOSITION OF NUMERAL SYSTEMS ACROSS LANGUAGES (MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS IN NUMBERS)

Article

Oct 2020

Hoang Thi Chau

The number system is investigated in this study as a small yet typical semiotic system of a larger one, i.e. language. The double-faceted nature of signs is self-evident: most numbers have two senses, one being morphological and the other being lexical. Underlying the different additions and multiplications in numbers is peoples’ mathematical and linguistic thought. While the Vietnamese reveal their mathematical thought in “mười”, “mươi”, “một chục” (ten) on the basis of decimal numeration, the French are opted for vigesimal numeration (80=4x20 – quatre vingt), and the Taiwanese merely rely on their hands and fingers. The systematicity and national peculiarities are also visible, even though numbers may have been borrowed from other languages. In this paper, we use data from ethnic languages in Vietnam, Austroasiatic and Austronesian languages, or, to be accurate, Austro-Tai languages which are closely related to Vietnamese. Some languages beyond Vietnam’s borders are also referred to when necessary. We compare and contrast the number systems in isolating, analytic languages in Vietnam and Southeast Asia with those in Indo-European languages, including such typical inflectional, synthetic languages as French, English and German before drawing general conclusions. Finally, the paper offers an overview of the evolution of number systems across languages spanning from about 10,000 years ago to the last millennium, as well as ancestral relations among languages.

Thailand’s Muslim Minority and Thai Siamese-Malay Relations - A Bibliography of English Language Scholarship

Preprint

Full-text available

May 2018

Chris Joll

TỪ NGỮ XƯNG GỌI TRONG TIẾNG PU PÉO

Article

Apr 2020

Nguyễn Thu Quỳnh

李方桂先生調查西南少數民族語言的足跡

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2019

李壬癸

提要李方桂在美國跟 Edward Sapir 做過美洲印地安語言的調查研究，他回國後做中國境內少數民族語言的調查研究，方法上就能駕輕就熟了。他把重點擺在西南少數民族語言的調查研究，包括屬於傣語的武鳴土語、龍州土語、剝隘土語，和侗水語言的侗語、水家、莫話、羊黃，這些語言都在廣西、雲南、貴州，路途遙遠，交通極為不便。他陸續發表了六部專書和數十篇重要論文。他當年所調查的語種，都是先做傣語系的語言，然後做侗水語言，可見他事先已經做了充分的準備，對那些語言的關係已有初步的瞭解。他還訓練並協助年輕助理馬學良調查彝族撒尼語，邢公畹調查布依語，張琨調查苗語和藏語。如此，學術工作才有傳承，影響深遠。他的研究成果顯示，少數民族語言的現象可以提供解決漢語音韻史的若干問題。地圖一顯示李方桂五次田野調查的途程，地圖二侗傣語族的祖居地和擴散。

A Grammar of Lakkja, South China

Thesis

Dec 2019

Wenjia Fan

Adopting a functional-typological approach, this thesis proposes to present a synchronic investigation of the Lakkja language which is spoken in South China with approximately 9,000 speakers. It aims to offer a full descriptive grammar of Lakkja by observing, documenting and analysing the language as manifested in its sound system, lexicon and grammar, not only to provide valuable data for typological and comparative studies but also help to preserve a precious cultural heritage for mankind. Lakkja holds a key to Kam-Tai. It is hoped that this study may shed some light on our understanding of the internal structure of Kam-Sui and Tai-Kadai, contact-induced language change, and more importantly, the relationship between Tai-Kadai and Austronesian.

MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA: A UNIQUE LINGUISTIC AREA

Article

Full-text available

Jan 1996

Brian Migliazza

Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) is a unique linguistic area in the world because of the large diversity of languages which have been intermingling from ancient times in this geographically small region.

The Thai Lao – Thailand's largest unrecognized transboundary national ethnicity

Article

Apr 2019

In 1900, the Lao ethnonym, and thus the Lao, ‘officially’ disappeared from Siam. However, Lao culture and identity persisted at local, regional, and national levels. As Keyes (1967) discovered, ‘a Northeast Thailand‐based ethno‐regionalism’ emerged post‐World War II. This regionalism, which we re‐term ‘Thai Lao’ and specify to the majority ethnic community, exists in a contested relationship with both ‘Thai’ and ‘Lao’ identity. The survival of the Lao ethnic community's cultural identity occurred despite the best efforts of the Royal Thai Government (RTG) to eradicate aspects of Lao culture. These aspects included Lao language, religion, and history, using the school system, the Lao Buddhist Sangha, and the bureaucracy. Beginning in the 1990s, buoyed by a multitude of factors, the Lao ethnic community reappeared as the ‘Thai Lao’ or ‘Lao Isan’. This reappearance was noted in the RTG's Thailand 2011 Country Report (RTG 2011) to the UN Committee responsible for the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. For nearly four decades now, ‘Laoism’ has recurred in Thai academia, the media, the public sphere, popular traditions, and even Lao apocalyptic millenarianism. Following Smith (1986, 1991, 1999), this article utilizes a historical ethno‐symbolist approach to analyse this recurrence.

La adquisición de los pronombres de tratamiento tú/usted por estudiantes de español como lengua extranjera: Análisis comparativo entre aprendientes extranjeros y nativos españoles

Thesis

Full-text available

Dec 2016

Elena Merino Gómez

བོད་སྐད་ཀྱི་མེས་པོ།

Chapter

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Jan 2013

George van Driem

The ancestry of Tibetan

Chapter

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Jan 2013

George van Driem

A prehistoric thoroughfare between the Ganges and the Himalayas

Chapter

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Jan 2014

George van Driem

To which language family does Chinese belong, or what’s in a name

Chapter

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Jan 2008

George van Driem

There are at least five competing theories about the linguistic prehistory of Chinese. Two of them, Tibeto‑Burman and Sino‑Tibetan, originated in the beginning of the 19th century. Sino‑Caucasian and Sino‑Austronesian are products of the second half of the 20th century, and East Asian is an intriguing model presented in 2001. These terms designate distinct models of language relationship with divergent implications for the peopling of East Asia. What are the substantive differences between the models? How do the paradigms differently inform the direction of linguistic investigation and differently shape the formulation of research topics? What empirical evidence can compel us to decide between the theories? Which of the theories is the default hypothesis, and why? How can terminology be used in a judicious manner to avoid unwittingly presupposing the veracity of improbable or, at best, unsupported propositions?

Tibeto-Burman phylogeny and prehistory: Languages, material culture and genes

Chapter

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Jan 2002

George van Driem

Tibeto-Burman

Chapter

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Jan 2015

George van Driem

Expressives in Kam (Dong 侗) : a study in sign typology (part II)

Article

Jan 2005

Matthias Gerner

Classification of languages of China and the current progress of linguistic research in the PRC

Article

Jun 2010
J CHINESE LINGUIST

Yongxian Luo

Vietnamese to Chinese machine translation via Chinese character as pivot

Article

Jan 2013

Using Chinese characters as an intermediate equivalent unit, we decompose machine translation into two stages, semantic translation and grammar translation. This strategy is tentatively applied to machine translation between Vietnamese and Chinese. During the semantic translation, Vietnamese syllables are one-by-one converted into the corresponding Chinese characters. During the grammar translation, the sequences of Chinese characters in Vietnamese grammar order are modified and rearranged to form grammatical Chinese sentence. Compared to the existing single alignment model, the division of two-stage processing is more targeted for research and evaluation of machine translation. The proposed method is evaluated using the standard BLEU score and a new manual evaluation metric, understanding rate. Only based on a small number of dictionaries, the proposed method gives competitive and even better results compared to existing systems.

Review: Tai-Kadai languages edited by Anthony Diller, Jerold Edmondson, Yongxian Luo. London: Routledge. 2008. pp 688. Hardback: 978-0-7007-1457-5

Article

Jan 2012
J CHINESE LINGUIST

More evidence for the genetic relationship between austronesian and Kam-Tai

Article

Jan 2009
J CHINESE LINGUIST

This paper provides more evidence for the genetic relationship between Austronesian and Kam-Tai. After an examination of the previous studies, it is preferred to compare modern languages directly at current stage, though some reconstructed Proto-languages are also used with caution. Dehong Dai, as a representative of Kam-Tai, and Indonesian, as a representative of Austronesian, have been compared, and systematic sound correspondences between them are established. According to Rank analysis, there are more Dai-Indonesian related words in High rank than those in Low rank, which indicates genetic relationship. Updated evidence and rank analysis show that both Kam-Tai languages and Austronesian languages are genetically related, respectively. Therefore, according to transitivity of genetic relatedness, Kam-Tai and Austronesian should be genetically related. Moreover, sound correspondences between Proto-Tai and Indonesian have been worked out. And Rank analysis confirms the genetic relationship. Finally, via the similar procedure, it is found that the genetic relationship between Austronesian with either Chinese or Tibeto-Burman are not confirmed because the related words between them in High rank are less than those in Low rank.

Etyma for ‘Chicken’, ‘Duck’, & ‘Goose’ among Language Phyla in China & Southeast Asia

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2015

Mark Alves

This paper considers the history of words for domesticated poultry, including ‘chicken’, ‘goose’, and ‘duck’, in China and mainland Southeast Asia to try to relate associated domestication events with specific language groups. Linguistic, archaeological and historical evidence supports Sinitic as one linguistic source, but in other cases, Tai and Austroasiatic form additional centers of lexical forms which were borrowed by neighboring phyla. It is hypothesized that these geographic regions of etyma for domesticated birds may represent instances of bird domestication, or possibly advances in bird husbandry, by speech communities in the region in the Neolithic Era, followed by spread of both words and cultural practices.

Methodologies and Implementations of Sino-Tibetan Comparisons: The Comparative Studies of Chinese, Bai and Yi Languages. By Feng Wang. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2013

Article

Jul 2015

Wen Liu

The monograph entitled Methodologies and Implementations of Sino-Tibetan Comparisons by Feng Wang is a great contribution to comparative studies of Sino-Tibetan languages. Proto-Yi has been reconstructed on the basis of rigorous sound correspondence in this book. The relationship of Chinese, Bai and Yi has been analyzed by the distillation method. The most important contribution of this book may be the rigorous framework for historical comparison, which can be effectively applied to languages with a long history of contact. In the empirical side, this research ended the debate of the complex relationship between Chinese, Bai and Yi. This book under review is an important reference for comparative studies of Sino-Tibetan languages.

Some Recent Proposals Concerning the Classification of the Austronesian Languages

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2014

Robert Blust

The comparative method is a relatively well-defined tool that has been employed successfully in the classification of languages for two centuries. In recent years, there have been several proposals about the classification of the Austronesian languages that violate basic principles of method. Because some of these have been advanced by scholars who are well established in other branches of linguistics, they have acquired an influence that is out of proportion to their scientific merit. This paper addresses three of these proposals: the Austronesian-Ongan hypothesis of Juliette Blevins, the Quechua-Austronesian hypothesis of E. M. Kempler-Cohen, and the higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai by Laurent Sagart. By carefully delimiting the analytic operations that belong to the comparative method and those that do not, it is shown that each of these scholars makes use of illicit operations to justify inferences about the classification of Austronesian languages, whether this involves claims about relationships that are external to the family or internal to it.

Thai, Kadai, and Indonesian: A new alignment in South-Eastern Asia

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