13th Annual Meeting of the
Southeast Asian Linguistics Society at UCLA
Paper Abstracts

Friday, May 2, 2003

Uri Tadmor
Unika Atma Jaya & Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, PKKB

Personal pronouns in the Kualan language of western Borneo are marked for person, number, and generational ranking. The latter, unusual category is the focus of this paper. A description of the Kualan pronominal system will be given, followed by an analysis of why and how generational ranking was grammaticalized.

Benjamin Zimmer
UCLA

This paper traces the brief emergence of an intermediate speech style in Sundanese (western Java) known as panengah, used to address elders of lower social status. Lexical items associated with panengah underwent rapid pragmatic devaluation over the course of the twentieth century, precipitating a chain shift in the speech-level hierarchy.

Riddles of Death: The Structure of the Tangke-tangke Riddle Game Used at Pendau Memorial Services

Phil Quick
Australian National University and SIL International

This paper describes the structure of the tangke-tangke riddle game commonly practised during memorial services in the Pendau community (a Western Austronesian language in the Tomini-Tolitoli group in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia). Also discussed is a special syntactic construction with an equative gu- prefix used to provide hints.

A Preliminary Phonological Sketch of Pyen, with Comparison to Bisu

Kirk R. Person
Payap University (Thailand) and SIL International

This paper contains new historical, cultural, and linguistic information about the Pyen of Myanmar. While Pyen and Bisu are closely related, certain phonological shifts have occurred in Pyen that have not occurred in Bisu. Thus, Bisu¹s reputation as one of the most phonologically conservative languages of its branch remains intact.

Contrastive Vowel Length in Mienic: Inheritance or Diffusion?

Martha Ratliff
Wayne State University

This paper will address the difficult problem of whether vowel length, contrastive in Mien, should be reconstructed at either the proto-Mienic or proto-Hmong-Mien levels. Since mainland Southeast Asia is a diffusion zone for prosodic features, I entertain the
possibility that it should not be reconstructed at all, following L-Thongkum (1993).

Feet and Fusion: The Case of Malay

Ann Delilkan

Previous accounts of the distribution of fusion have relied on morphology, exceptional data attending each. My claim that closed syllables are unmarked in head feet motivates the basic dataset, eliminates many said exceptions and, further, explains the distribution of various other segmental processes in the language.

Accomplishment Constructions in Thai: Diverse Cause-Effect Relationships

Kiyoko Takahashi
Kanda University of International Studies

This study investigates Thai accomplishment constructions composed of two VPs for cause and effect events in a coordinate relationship. I claim that arrival expressions in Thai form an accomplishment construction. In Thai ARRIVAL is represented as an effect event arising from a locomotion event, but not a vector of PATH.

Comparing Transitive Constructions in Balinese and Pendau

I Wayan Pastika (Universitas Udayana)
Phil Quick (Australian National University and SIL International)

Prototypical transitive patterns that can be contrasted in both Balinese and Pendau will be referred to as Active Voice and Inverse Voice constructions. These symmetrical voice constructions are fundamental to understanding other syntactic constructions in both languages respectively such as ‘false transitives’, reflexives and middle voice.

I Wayan Pastika
Udayana University

In Balinese, any role that grounding plays must be inferior to the role of topicality, since the topical Object is more likely to be found in the Inverse Voice than in the Active Voice even when the clause is backgrounded. Thus, the combination of Object topicality and the grounding type is a better predictor.

Word Order and Transitive Clauses in Malagasy

Ando Rasolfo
University of Oregon

This paper is to document, through a text counting methodology, the motive behind the choice between two transitive constructions in Malagasy (a Western Austronesian language spoken in Madagascar). The language has been considered to have a verb-object-subject (VOS) word order. I argue that a better characterization of the language is a differentiation between verb-agent-patient (VAP) and verb-patient-agent (VPA) clauses. Such distinction provides a perspective on the degree of topicality of the arguments in various transitive constructions.

Adjectives in Thai

Mark Post
University of Oregon

Thai adjectives are characterized as an emergent class with apparently universal functional motivation and cross-linguistically typical internal organization. Distributional overlap with the source class of verbs remains high, particularly among peripheral members in main syntactic environments. However, semantic and distributional facts distinguish core adjectives from verbs in constructions prototypically associated to each class.

Lexical Strata of Indonesian Vocabulary

Mie Hiramoto
University of Hawaii at Manoa

The nativization of loanwords in Indonesian seems to be reflecting placement of words in different lexical strata. For lexical items within different strata, such evidence of nativization is often available at morpheme boundaries between the meN- prefix and the stem. These examples clearly exhibit degrees of Indonesian loanword nativization.

Chhany Sak-Humphry
University of Hawaii, Manoa

This paper focuses on the analysis of "ta", from the Pre-Angkorianto the Angkorian data and in relationship to the Modern Khmer "ta" . The interpretation of this study is based upon the application of Lexicase Dependency grammar.

Kanako Mori
Tohoku University

The paper is about Khmer two "final particles", /dae/ and /phoong/, commonly used in parallel expression ( "too, also" ). It is shown that difference between these two words can be explained by the difference in the range of each Scope. Their combination /phoong dae/ is also mentioned.

Saturday, May 3, 2003

Some Remaining Phonological Issues in Austronesian

Joseph Finney

Totally different issues determined choices R/L, W/V, and T/K to write Hawaiaan.
Modifications for Blust’s reconstruction of Proto Austronesian phonemes: “s” for “S”; “ts” for “s”.
Proposed prehistoric development accounts for basic determiners Cua, Cui, Ca, Ci, and Cu in various AN languages.

Creative Forces in Khmer

John Haiman (Macalester College)
Noeurng Ourn (Regions Hospital, St. Paul)

More than in most languages, reductive sound change has a field day in
Khmer. The canonical sesquisyllabic word is clipped at both ends, losing
most or all of its anacrusic syllable, and often its final consonant as
well. Conducting irregular actions against the uniformed forces of erosion
are guerilla-like processes which result in phonological bulking. One of
these is decorative infixation. Another is decorative replication.

George Bedell
International Christian University

This paper argues that languages can differ in the 'hierarchy of functional categories'. The example discussed is the relative position of IP (inflection phrase, that is S) and NgP (negation phrase, the projection of sentence negation). In English, NgP is below IP, but in Lai (spoken in Chin State, Myanmar) IP is below NgP.

Information structure, focus and prosody in Burmese

Andrew Simpson (SOAS)
Justin Watkins (SOAS)

This paper re-examines the common pre-verbal positioning of focal elements in pre-verbal position in Burmese, the role of prosody in the licensing of focus structures and the relative prosodic ‘plasticity’ of Burmese.

The Role of Object Topicality and Grounding in Balinese Voice Selection

I Wayan Pastika
Udayana University, Bali

In Balinese, any role that grounding plays must be inferior to the role of topicality, since the topical Object is more likely to be found in the Inverse Voice than in the Active Voice even when the clause is backgrounded. Thus, the combination of Object topicality and the grounding type is a better predictor.

Language Transfer/Interference: The Case of Heritage Learners of Vietnamese

Tin Pham
UCLA

This preliminary report will show evidence of (1) dialectal transfer within Vietnamese in terms of sound-spelling recognition, which shares similarities among native speakers and that of heritage speakers; and (2) language transfer from English as L1 to Vietnamese as L2.

Consonantal Lenition and Vocalic Transfer in Kadai Languages
—With disyllabic Proto-Be-Tai as a supporting evidence—

Ryuichi Kosaka

Diachronic changes labeled as ‘Consonantal Lenition’ and ‘Vocalic Transfer’ explain a series of ‘problematic’ correspondences of Kadai languages. Proto-Be-Tai of sesqui-syllabic construction, presented here as a supporting evidence, result in settling the long-disputed problems of Be’s ‘extra-normal’ L tone category and consonant/vowel discrepancies attested in some Be-Tai cognates.

The Lambic Template Hypothesis in Thai

Tommi Leung
University of Southern California

An examination of Thai metrical system shows that it projects an iambic template with a floating mora. This argues for Uneven-Iamb as a theory-independent constraint formed by conjunctions of two independent markedness requirements. The structure of perfect iambs helps generate the foot inventory and explain asymmetries between different types.

Sunday, May 4, 2003

Foong Ha Yap
Chinese University of Hong Kong

This paper traces the development of Malay empunya: from a noun meaning ‘master, posessor’, to a verb meaning ‘possess’, followed by its grammaticalization into a genitive marker, a possessive pronominal (via elision), and a stance marker (via subjectification). The influence of calquing (via contact with Chinese dialects) is also considered.

Contact-induced change in Sun Hongkai’s Anong,
a Nungish Tibeto-Burman language, spoken by 400 people in Yunnan

Graham Thurgood and Fengxiang Li
CSU Chicho

Contact induced changes are every where in Sun Hongkai’s Anong: Lexicon: Anong has countless loanwords from Lisu and Chinese. Phonology: glottalized vowels, retroflex consonants, and new vowels have appeared, from contact with Lisu. Morphology: Verbal agreement, possessive formation, causative formation, pronouns, and so on have all restructured under Lisu influence.

An apparent countertrend to unidirectionality: The case of a verb of speaking in Thai

Shoichi Iwasaki
UCLA

As in many languages, a verb of speaking in Thai (?aa? has been grammaticalized into a quotative/complementizer. However, the quotative/complementizer in turn seems to have created a new verb ('think'). This paper argues that this apparent counter-unidirectionality from grammatical to lexical item is a consequence of the metonymical process found abundantly in the language.

Mark J. Alves
Montgomery College

Pacoh personal pronouns have already gone from systematic grammaticalization (the adding of dative and possessive pronouns) to less predictable directions of grammatical functions. Certain Pacoh pronouns have come to have highly grammatical but non-pronominal functions as relator nouns to mark plurality, to indicate dative case, and to connect possessees with possessors. While some of these grammatical paths represent more cross-linguistic tendencies, others are less widely dispersed, though some similar patterns are seen in other Mon-Khmer languages not in direct geographic proximity.

The Role of Four-Word Phrases in Lao Narrative Discourse

Carol Compton
Madison, Wisconsin

This paper presents the types, frequency, distribution and use of four-word phrases (“elaborate expressions”) found in data from Lao written narrative discourse. Rhyme, alliteration, reduplication and semantic similarity knit these phrases into compounds which are prominent in Lao discourse and found in other Tai languages as well.

Reported Speech in Conversational Indonesian

Juliana Wijaya
UCLA

This paper discusses the possible markers of direct reported speech in conversational Indonesian with examples taken from collected spoken corpora. These markers can be linguistic markers like adverbs, deictic shifts, and phonological markers. The markers can also be sociolinguistically driven.

Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong (University of Hawaii, Manoa)
Rugchanok Janevarakul (Thammasat University)
Sathaporn Koraksawet (Thammasat University)

THAIARC is a Thai language speech corpus project which aims to establish a Thai language audio data resource for linguistic research, disseminated via the web. The paper also demonstrates an application of the collected Thai speech data in developing a model web-based lesson for teaching Thai listening comprehension skill to foreigners.

Humans, Animals, and the Indexing of Social Status in Balinese Narrative:
The Case of 'ukud' and 'diri'"

Edmundo Cruz Luna
UCSB

Many classifier systems cross-linguistically have classifiers reserved for expressing politeness and sensitivity to variations of social status in any interaction. In this study, I show that Balinese classifiers for animate referents in narrative discourse also express these notions, even though the classifiers themselves are not specialized for this function.

Liang Chua
Assumption University

It is obvious even to the most casual observer that the Thai Chinese have
and are still experiencing language shift from Chinese to Thai. The
contributing factors include the decline of Chinese education, pro-Thai
legislation and positive attitudes towards Thai society.

Socializing Respect and the Emergence of a New Language Variety in Northern Thailand

Kathryn Howard
UCLA

This paper examines the socialization of respect in a Northern Thai bilingual community. Reporting an ethnographic, discourse-analytic study, this paper explores how children are socialized into appropriate uses of their community vernacular, Kam Muang, and the national language, Standard Thai, and the impact of these micro-level socialization practices on larger processes of language shift.