Center of Excellence in Southeast Asian Linguistics

Research Programs

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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.

History and Prehistory of Kra-Dai languages

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

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

Language, gender, and sexuality in Thai society

Gender and sexuality are studied by scholars in various fields. In linguistics, the relationship between language and gender/sexuality is of interest in areas such as sociolinguistics, pragmatics, (critical) discourse studies, corpus linguistics and semiotic landscapes. Adopting various approaches, we explore how various linguistic elements in the Thai language contribute to