Center of Excellence in Southeast Asian Linguistics
Pittayawat Pittayaporn

Selected Publications

Probabilistic Measures for Diffusion of Linguistic Innovation: As Seen in the Usage of Verbal “Nok” in Thai Twitter

2019

The existence of several SNS (social networking service) such as Twitter accelerates the diffusion process of language change. In this paper, we examine the diffusion of the innovative verbal usage of nok in Thai Twitter. We collected more than 25 millions tweets and adopted not only word frequency but also three probabilistic measures of analysis: conditional probability, PMI and cosine similarity of word embeddings. The result of these three probabilistic measures show the stability of the innovation regardless of decrease of word frequency. These facts support the idea that the innovation nok is lexically established in Thai language. Most importantly, it shows that the three probabilistic measures can be used to quantify diffusion of linguistic innovation regardless of its polysemy.

Quantitative and qualitative restrictions on the distribution of lexical tones in Thai

2018

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 languages

2018

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

Phonetic and systemic biases in tonal contour changes in Bangkok Thai

2018

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

History and Prehistory of Kra-Dai languages

2018

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

Tonal and prosodic changes in Mainland Southeast Asia

2018

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

Laryngeal contrasts in the Tai dialect of Cao Bằng

2017

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

Dating vowel lengthening in Thai

2016

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