LINGUIST List 21.4579 Tue Nov 16 2010 Review: Lang. Documentation: Gregersen (2009) Editor for this issue: Joseph Salmons <jsalmonslinguistlist.org> This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. Directory         1.     James Kirby , Mon-Khmer Studies 38: A Journal of Southeast Asian Languages and Cultures Message 1: Mon-Khmer Studies 38: A Journal of Southeast Asian Languages and Cultures Date: 16-Nov-2010 From: James Kirby <jkirbyuchicago.edu> Subject: Mon-Khmer Studies 38: A Journal of Southeast Asian Languages and Cultures E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-2688.html EDITOR: Gregerson, Kenneth TITLE: Mon-Khmer Studies 38: A Journal of Southeast Asian Languages and Cultures SERIES TITLE: Mon-Khmer Studies PUBLISHER: SIL International YEAR: 2009 James P. Kirby, Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago SUMMARY Mon-Khmer Studies (MKS) is a journal devoted to the study of Southeast Asian languages and cultures, focused on (but not necessarily limited to) those of the Mon-Khmer family. Volume 38, edited by Kenneth Gregerson, is dedicated to the late Dr. David D. Thomas. An influential scholar of Southeast Asian languages, Dr. Thomas helped to launch the Mon-Khmer Studies journal, originally a joint publication of the Linguistic Circle of Saigon and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, in 1964. In addition to pioneering work on the Chrau language, Dr. Thomas published extensively on Khmer, Thai, and Vietnamese, as well as on reconstruction of the Mon-Khmer protolanguage. In addition to twelve articles covering topics on the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of a variety of Southeast Asian languages, MKS 38 also includes several brief articles ("notes"), conference reports, and a glossary. Most of the papers provide novel empirical data on little-studied Southeast Asian languages, or explore in greater detail aspects of the better-studied languages of the family such as Thai, Khmer, or Vietnamese. A number of contributions to MKS 38 take a typological perspective. In "A typology of relative clauses in mainland Southeast Asian Languages", Natchanan Yaowapat and Amara Prasithrathsint identify eight types of relative clauses in Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, and Cambodian, based on typological parameters such as the position of the head noun, the order of the relative clause and the head noun, and the omission of relativizers. Anish Koshy's contribution, "Indefinite pronouns in Pnar", identifies several interesting features in the distribution and derivation of indefinites in this Mon-Khmer language (a close relative of Khasi). Koshy discusses several types of derivational strategies (reduplicative as well as non-reduplicative) and the properties of morphological derived versus syntactically signaled indefiniteness. Several papers discuss issues related to language contact and contact-induced change. In "Mpi present and future: Reversing language shift", Thomas M. Tehan and Ramzi W. Nahhas discuss the state of the endangered Tibeto-Burman language Mpi as spoken in two communities in Thailand. Although the future of Mpi is seriously threatened by adoption of Northern and Central Thai by younger speakers, the authors make some suggestions on how this seemingly inexorable language shift might be reversed. Theraphan L-Thongkum and Chommand Intajamornrak contribute "Tonal evolution induced by language contact: A case study of the T'in (Lua') language of Nan province, northern Thailand", a paper originally presented at the 2007 Max Planck Mon-Khmer Workshop. The authors provide both lexical and acoustic evidence to bolster the claim that lexical tone in the Mal dialect of T'in has its source in contact with and borrowings from Northern Thai. Isara Choosri presents "Chung (Saoch) of Thailand and Cambodia: phonological and lexical comparisons", a sketch of two dialects of the Chung (also known as Chong or Saoch) language as spoken in Kanchanaburi province in Thailand and Kampong Som in Cambodia. Although non-tonal, Chung distinguishes four ''registers'' which involve voice quality contrasts between creaky, modal, breathy voice, and what Isara terms "breathy-creaky" voice (e.g. Theraphan L-Thongkum 1992, Edmonson 1996). Isara considers various phonological and lexical correspondences between the two dialects, and which should be attributed to contact between Chung and Thai or Khmer. Two papers address metalinguistic issues in some detail. In "Entries and exits: An analysis of greetings and leave taking in Meitei speech community" [sic], Chandam Bethiola describes greeting and leave-taking expressions in the Tibeto-Burman language Meitei, illustrating how choice of form varies with speaker status and as well as with ongoing changes in Meitei society. Sophana Srichampa examines "Patterns of polite expressions in Vietnamese", a sociolinguistic survey of the use of polite speech forms in three Vietnamese dialects. Through an extensive overview of the particles used in introduction, thanking, greeting, leave-taking, apologies, etc., Sophana confirms the continued importance of relative status and age of interlocutor in predicting politeness particle selection and frequency of use. Several other contributions are also focused on the distribution and grammatical function of certain Vietnamese lexical items. In "Semantic extension of the verb of giving in Vietnamese", Suthatip Mueanjai and Kingkarn Thepkanjana examine the extended lexical and grammatical meanings of the Vietnamese verb cho, usually glossed as "to give". They argue that while cho shows grammatical functions cross-linguistically common to verbs of giving, such as dative, benefactive, or contrastive marking, this verb has (at least) two idiosyncratic lexical meanings in Vietnamese not found in other languages. Giang Pham and Kathryn Kohnert present "A corpus-based analysis of Vietnamese 'classifiers' con and cai", two forms usually glossed as classifiers and which are compatible with a wide range of nominals. Based on the results of their corpus analysis, the authors suggest that these forms may be more parsimoniously considered a subtype of noun, rather than forming a distinct lexical category. Michel Ferlus provides the only purely comparative-historical contribution to this volume with "Le mot 'sang' en austroasiatique", in which he argues against a single reconstruction for the Proto-Austroasiatic etymon *sa:m "to ooze, bleed". Excepting the Vietic languages in which it was replaced by forms meaning "sap", Ferlus demonstrates how the phonetic realizations of *sa:m in the modern Austroasiatic languages may have resulted from various derivational processes interacting with common sound changes such as s > h. Orawan Boonyarith considers "Derivatives in Khmer compound words", such as /dɑmnaə/ "way, trip, travel" < /dɑə/ "to walk, to go, to move" or /cɑmnah/ "agedness, old age" < /cɑh/ "to be old, mature", from the pedagogical perspective of a native Thai speaker. In Thai, compounds are common but transparently synchronic morphological derivatives rare, whereas morphological derivatives are quite common in Khmer. Orawan illustrates the syntactic contexts in which Khmer derivatives must be used, providing both Thai and English equivalents for comparison. "The Bangkok Hakka Phonology", by Siripen Ungsitipoonporn, provides a comprehensive sketch of the dialect of this Sino-Tibetan language as spoken in the Thai capital, expanding on previous treatments of the same dialect (such as Wandee Saengtummachai 2003) by providing brief acoustical and autosegmental treatments of the tone system. This allows the tone sandhi processes 33 -> 325/__ 21, 31, 32 and 44 -> 53/__ 33, 4 to be treated as assimilation and dissimilation, respectively, within an autosegmental framework. The paper also includes a large corpus of Bangkok Hakka lexical items. Jan-Olof Svantesson and Damrong Tayannin (Kàm Ràw), both of Lund University, have worked extensively on the Kammu language and its dialects for many years. Together with Lund University colleagues Lennart Engstrand, Marie Widén, and Björn Widén, Svantesson and Tayannin have compiled "A checklist of Kammu plant names" based on the Kammu Yùan dialect of Laos. The list is organized both by Kammu name as well as by scientific (botanic) name, and loans from Lao are also indicated. A pair of short articles on nasals ("The nasalization of final stops in modern Khmer singing" by Naraset Pisitpanporn and "On labio-velar stops and nasals in Vietnamese" by John Hajek) and reports on two international conferences (Language Development, Language Revitalization, and Multilingual Education in Ethnolinguistic Communities and the International Conference on National Language Policy), which took place in July 2008 in Bangkok, complete the volume. EVALUATION Volume 38 is a fine addition to the MKS series and will be of interest both to specialists and non-specialists alike. The editors are to be commended in particular for the breadth of the selections. The overall quality of the empirical findings is generally quite high, and the value of this collection to a broad spectrum of theoreticians, typologists, and other language researchers should not be underestimated. However, few of the papers present much in the way of theoretical discussion, which can make it difficult to evaluate their contribution to scholarship. Many of the contributions might well be better judged as 'extended squibs' (a format which could perhaps stand to make a bit of a resurgence) rather than as full-length articles. That having been said, there were a number of instances where I found myself wishing the authors had provided a more in-depth analysis. For example, in the absence of a discussion situating them in the broader context of Bangkok Hakka phonology, the autosegmental representations provided by Siripen add little to a purely descriptive account of the tone sandhi rules. In other instances, claims made in the text are not supported by the empirical data provided. Natchanan and Amara assert that Khmer provides counterexamples to the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy of Keenan and Comrie (1977), but no such counterexamples are to be found in their article. Furthermore, the unsupported claim made on p.18 of the text ("subjects, indirect objects, and possessors can be relatived, but direct objects cannot") is then contradicted by the summary shown in Table 1 (p. 19). If true, this is an important finding deserving of greater theoretical and empirical scrutiny on the part of the authors. One cannot help but think this might have been addressed by reviewers or editors prior to publication. The conclusions of several papers could be strengthened by inclusion of some basic quantitative analysis. For example, the description by Theraphan and Chommand of contact-induced tonal evolution in the Mal dialect T'in is intriguing, but can only be regarded as preliminary in the absence of a statistical comparison with tonal contours in Kham Muaeng. Similarly, Sophana's rather subjective assessment of e.g. frequency effects by gender on the use of Vietnamese politeness expressions could be easily be quantified, which would allow the application of standard sociolinguistic tools such as VARBRUL analysis. In the case of Pham and Kohnert's corpus-based analysis of Vietnamese classifiers, the issue is not a lack of a quantitative data but lack of a clear standard of comparison. For instance, the authors make the claim that a difference in the proportional corpus frequency of con and cái indicates that they should not be treated (at least pedagogically) as classifiers on the grounds that "cái indicated inanimacy in the majority of cases (>65%) but still less than the proportion one would predict for a prototypical word" (168-9). As that portion is left undefined, it is difficult to situate the results either typologically or pedagogically. One could regard these suggestions as directions for future work, and the absence of such analyses in no way detracts from the descriptive and empirical contributions made by the articles in the volume as it stands. Each article could potentially appear in another journal in an extended and expanded form. However, I see no reason why Mon-Khmer Studies should not be that journal. Communicating suggestions such as those made above to the authors at the time of submission could only improve the quality what is already a fine publication. REFERENCES Edmonson, J. A. 1996. Voice qualities and inverse filtering in Chong. Mon-Khmer Studies 26:107-116. Keenan, E. and B. Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8:63-99. L-Thongkum, T. 1992. An instrumental study of Chong register. In J. H. C. S. Davidson (ed.), Mon-Khmer Studies in Honour of Harry Shorto, pp. 141-160. London: School of African and Oriental Studies. Wandee Saengtummachai. 2003. A phonological study of the Meixian Hakka dialect of Bangkok, Thailand, in comparison with Hashimoto's study of the Meixian Hakka dialect in China. Mahidol University MA thesis. ABOUT THE REVIEWER James P. Kirby received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 2010. His research interests include the phonetics of sound change, computational models of language acquisition and transmission, and languages of mainland Southeast Asia. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 16-Nov-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.