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Consonant Clusters in Tai

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Fang-Kuei Li
Fang-Kuei Li*
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

Very few of the languages of the Tai family still preserve consonant clusters of the type pl-, kl-, pr-, kr-, etc. The two languages generally known to preserve such clusters, at least in part, are Siamese and Ahom, the latter an extinct language of Assam. The dialects of Wu-ming and Lung-an, both in central Kwangsi province, are the other dialects I know which preserve them to a certain extent. The widely scattered distribution of these languages shows that the preservation of the clusters indicates no specially close linguistic relationship among them. Three other languages—Lao, a language closely related to Siamese; Shan, closely related to Ahom; and Dioi of Kweichow province, with which Wu-ming shares many common characteristics—have all simplified such clusters. It is safe to assume that the simplification is in most cases an individual dialect development, and that the clusters persisted in each of the various dialect groups before their simplification took place.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 30 , Issue 3: July-September , September 1954 , pp. 368 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © 1954 by the Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 See Rai Sahib Golap Chandra Borua, Ahom-Assamese-English dictionary (Calcutta, 1920); G. A. Grierson, Notes on Ahom, ZDMG 56.1-59 (1920).

2 Material on the Wu-ming dialect was collected by the author in 1935, and a study of this dialect with texts, songs, and a glossary was sent in 1941 to Hongkong to be published. The manuscript was apparently lost during the Japanese occupation of Hongkong. A brief study of Wu-ming phonology appears in Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica) 12.293-303 (1947). Some material on the Lung-an dialect was also obtained by the author in 1935, but this is not sufficient for a systematic study.

3 See T. Guignard, Dictionnaire laotien-français (Hongkong, 1912).

4 See J. N. Cushing, A Shan and English dictionary (Rangoon, 1914).

5 See J. Esquirol and G. Williate, Essai de dictionnaire dioi-français (Hongkong, 1908).

6 T'ien-chow is a district in western Kwangsi. The material for this dialect was also collected by the author in 1935. A long vowel is written double only when the length is phonemic.

7 Lung-chow is in southeastern Kwangsi near the Vietnam border. The orthography adopted here is re-phonemicized, and is therefore slightly different from that in my book The Tai dialect of Lung-chow: Texts, translations, and glossary (Shanghai, 1940).

8 See A. G. Haudricourt, Les phonèmes et le vocabulaire du thai commun, JA 1948.226-7.

9 Po-ai is a district in southeastern Yunnan on the Kwangsi border. The material was recorded by the author in 1940.

10 Cf. F. M. Savina, Dictionnaire étymologique français-nung-chinois (Hongkong, 1924); E. Diguet, Étude de la langue tho (Paris, 1910); F. M. Savina, Dictionnaire tay-annamite-français (Hanoi, 1909). The original orthography is based either on the French spelling or on the Vietnamese romanization. A phonetic transcription is attempted here.

11 Cf. Esquirol and Williate, op.cit. Forms are quoted in phonetic transcription instead of the original orthography based on the French spelling.

12 H. Maspero, Contribution à Pétude du système phonique des langues thai, BEFEO 19.152-69 (1911); K. Wulff, Chinesisch und Tai: Sprachvergleichende Untersuchungen 123-66 (København, 1934); A. G. Haudricourt, op.cit. 207-11; Li, The hypothesis of a pre-glottalized series of consonants in primitive Thai, Bull. Inst. of Hist. and Phil. 9.177-87 (1947).

13 This refers to the vocalic lengths in the modern dialects. A short or a long vowel in one modern dialect need not always correspond to a short or a long vowel in another dialect. The problem of vocalic lengths and the vowel system of PT as a whole are yet to be studied.

14 For the reconstruction of this series of consonants and their influence on tone in various dialects, see Li, The hypothesis of a pre-glottalized series of consonants in PT.

15 Cf. Li, The distribution of initials and tones in the Sui language, Lg. 24.165 note (1948).

16 For a parallel development of consonant clusters into š-, cf. H. Maspero, Études sur la phonétique historique de la langue annamite, BEFEO 12.76-88 (1912).

17 Siamese tak- has a high tone, and therefore disagrees with the usual development of D1. The second syllable -teen may be the word for ‘wasp’; cf. §3.3.

18 For instance, H. Maspero, La langue chinoise, Conf. Inst. Ling. Univ. Paris 1933.87.