SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Many of the languages spoken in South East Asia, whilst not related to each other at all, do nevertheless possess a number of linguistic features in common. The comparisons that linguists have already made, based on historical evidence and dialect material, with a view to tracing with more certainty to which language-families the languages of South East Asia belong, provide ample proof that a genetic relationship common to all languages of the area is inadmissible. The author's work concentrates on the typological study of grammatical and lexical features of two languages with the aim of providing bases for analysis of any two or more languages that possess parallelism in expression of thought and communication of information, irrespective of whether these languages are related or unrelated. Cambodian and Thai are selected for investigation because, apart from the intrinsic interest in them as languages, they display remarkable similarities of speech habits in spite of their being unrelated and, originally, very dissimilar languages. A considerable number of words and expressions in Cambodian and Thai are analysed and compared, both grammatically and lexically, in order to discover the closeness of the parallelism for usages and constructions. Words and certain types of expression, being simple items, are grammatically classified into word-classes categorized as Isolatives, Substantives aind Predicatives for the purposes of lexical comparison. Compounds and Elaborations, having the nature of a construction, are analysed according to their patterns of constructs. Lexical meanings, recognized as belonging to these constructions in the two languages, are then compared, resulting in a determination of the close similarities in meaning and pattern for constructions. It is hoped that this method of typological comparison may prove valuable in understanding processes governing the acquisition by languages of South East Asia of common characteristics.