Author

Prapapan Saeneetontikul

Title

A Lexical Study of Southern Thai Spoken in Surat Thani, Nakhon Si Thammarat / Prapapan Saeneetontikul

Date

1984

Abstract

The main purpose of this thesis is to collect and compare the lexical items of the Thai dialects spoken in Surat Thani, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Songkhla. A wordlist of 2,616 semantic units is constructed specially for this study. The items are classified into 16 lexical fields as follows, body parts, kinship terms and pronouns, clothing and ornament, general and local implements, local plants and animals, natural objects and phenomena, time/day/year, numerals, food and beverages, diseases and physical sickness, verbs, modifiers, prepositions, classifiers, beliefs and rites, and miscellaneous. The data are collected from three informants, each of whom represents a dialect under study. The selection of these informants is based on the following socio-economic criteria : sex, profession, level of education, area of domicile and background of the informant's wife. The analysis of the data reveals that there are three types of semantic units : those which are represented by the same lexical items in all three dialects, those which are represented by completely different lexical items in all three dialects, and those which are represented by the same lexical items in two of the three dialects. One thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight semantic units, or 72.56 percent of the total number of semantic units are first type. The extent of lexical similarity among these dialects confirms that they are sub-dialects of Southern Thai. When the degree of lexical variation between the Surat Thani dialect and the Nakhon Si Thammarat dialect, between the Surat Thani dialect and the Songkhla dialect, and between the Nakhon Si Thammarat dialect and the Songkhla dialect are compared, it is found that the degree of variation is similar in all of the three cases. The lexical items in the Surat Thani dialect, however, differ from those of the other two dialects more than the degree of lexical variation between those two dialects. The results conform with those of the phonological studies of Southern Thai dialects by some linguists. The study also pinpoints those of semantic fields which are represented by the same lexical items in all of the dialects as well as those fields in which these dialects differ most. In addition, common lexical items are sub-classified and the causes of lexical variation among the three dialects are considered.

ผู้วิจัยได้ศึกษาด้วยว่า หน่วยอรรถประเภทใดที่มักแทนด้วยศัพท์เดียวกันในภาษาถิ่นเหล่านี้ และหน่วยอรรถประเภทใดที่มักแทนด้วยศัพท์ที่ต่างกัน รวมทั้งได้จำแนกประเภทของศัพท์ที่ทุกถิ่นใช้เหมือนกันและพิจารณาสาเหตุที่ภาษาถิ่นเหล่านี้ใช้ศัพท์ต่างกัน

Note

Typescript (photocopy)

Thesis (M.A.)--Chulalongkorn University, 1984

Kalaya Tingsabadh, advisor