In present-day Thai, contour tones show a more restricted distribution in comparison with level tones that cannot be explained by syllable structure alone. This diachronic study argues that both quantitative and qualitative restrictions are responsible for the puzzling gaps and accounts for them by positing Optimality-Theoretic constraints. In addition, it
Tai is the most widespread and best known subgroup of the Kra-Dai family (also known as Tai-Kadai or Kam-Tai). Map 38.1 shows the distribution of the Kra-Dai languages and Map 38.2 shows, in an approximate and oversimplified way, the distribution of the Tai languages (the actual linguistic geography of Tai
This paper addresses a conceptual framework and an application of a content-based metadata scheme of classical poetry currently deployed in the Thai National Historical Corpus (TNHC). The corpus aims to collect texts representing the Thai language from different historical periods. Applying a metadata modeling approach, the variation of classical Thai
Understanding phonetic and systemic motivation is a crucial element in the study of sound change. However, our understanding is largely limited to segmental changes. Working within the phonetically-based approach to sound change, this article accounts for the tonal contour changes in Bangkok Thai during the 20th century in terms of
The Kra-Dai language family (also known as Tai-Kadai) consists of over 90 languages. They are spoken natively by approximately 81.67 million people who occupy a vast geographical area stretching from China’s Hunan Province in the north to Malaysia in the south, and from Hainan Island in the east to the
Mainland Southeast Asia is a linguistic area, in which languages from diverse family converge so that they become typologically homogeneous. Tonal and prosodic features such as lexical tones, register, monosyllabicism, sesquisyllabicity, iambicity figure quite prominently among areal features that set Mainland Southeast Asia from neighboring regions. Adopting both experimental and
Tai-Kadai (TK) is one of the major language families in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA), with a concentration in the area of Thailand and Laos. Our previous study of 1234 mtDNA genome sequences supported a demic diffusion scenario in the spread of TK languages from southern China to Laos as well
The Tai dialect spoken in Cao Bằng province, Vietnam, is at an intermediate stage between tonal register split and the accompanying transphonologization of a voicing contrast into a dual-register tone system. While the initial sonorants have completely lost their historical voicing distinction and developed a six-way tonal contrast, the obstruent
This paper dates vowel lengthening in Thai, which affected words that originally had a long vowel such as cʰaːw4 ‘morning’, naːm4 ‘water’, maːj4 ‘wood’, and daːj3 ‘to acquire’. Analysis of data from rhymming patterns in poetry, and from dictionaries and grammar books for foreigners shows that the vowel lengthening began in the late 24th century
Chindamani, the oldest surviving text about the Thai language, contains a direct but equivocal description of Thai orthography and prosody. Combining careful textual study with findings and analytical tools from Comparative Tai, I argue that 17th century Thai had already established a five-tone system that only differs from present-day Thai in
