Center of Excellence in Southeast Asian Linguistics
Pittayawat Pittayaporn

Selected Publications

An exploratory investigation of interactions between syllabic prominence, initial geminates, and phrasal boundaries in Pattani Malay

This study investigates interactions among relative syllabic prominence, initial geminates (IGs), and prosodic boundaries in Pattani Malay (PM) against a background of previous analyses claiming that IGs are moraic and trigger a ‘stress shift’ or the linking of a pitch accent to the initial syllable. We conducted an acoustic study with 14 PM speakers, producing singleton–IG minimal pairs in naturalistic sentences. Our results show that the presence of IGs is not associated with the hypothesized phonological changes. Instead, it is associated with moderate increases in the duration of initial syllables, the intensity of the initial syllable vowels, and the f0 of the initial and final syllable vowels. On the other hand, the presence of a phrase-final prosodic boundary correlates with more drastic changes: in phrase-final position, final syllables exhibit final lengthening and falling contours of f0 and intensity, while, in the phrase-medial position, no lengthening is observed and f0 contours are rising. Furthermore, the effects of IGs are strongest in the phrase-final position, suggesting interactions between IGs and prosodic boundaries. Taken together, results cast doubts on the claim that IGs are moraic and associated with categorical differences in syllabic prominence profiles in PM and show that IGs effects are modulated by prosodic boundaries.

Reconstructing the Human Genetic History of Mainland Southeast Asia: Insights from Genome-Wide Data from Thailand and Laos

Thailand and Laos, located in the center of Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA), harbor diverse ethnolinguistic groups encompassing all five language families of MSEA: Tai-Kadai (TK), Austroasiatic (AA), Sino-Tibetan (ST), Hmong-Mien (HM), and Austronesian (AN). Previous genetic studies of Thai/Lao populations have focused almost exclusively on uniparental markers and there is

Documentation of Moklenic languages

Moken and Moklen are languages spoken by two of Thailand’s three “Sea Peoples” groups, with speakers located along the coast of the southern Thai peninsula. As one of the few Austronesian subgroups of Mainland Southeast Asia, Moklenic languages serve as an additional example of the linguistic diversity of the region

Linguistic variation and social dynamics in languages of Southeast Asia

Language is inextricably linked to daily human life as a social phenomenon. Therefore, social dynamics bring about ongoing linguistic variation. Using traditional and experimental methods, research here aims to look at how the linguistic variation of Southeast Asian languages relates to a dynamic ways of life, attitudes, and societal fluidity.