WILLIAM S. CORNYN Language Research in Burma Since the Japanese Occupation During World War II Has Followed Traditional Ways. Wi

BURMA

WILLIAM S. CORNYN

Language research in Burma since the Japanese occupation during World War II has followed traditional ways. With the coming of independence in 1948 the nation- alist mood demanded that instruction in the schools be in Burmese and that the textbooks be translated. Added to this, the insurrections which have plagued the country and the concomitant disruption of academic affairs, including even the closing down of the universities, has had an inhibiting effect. The result has been a concentration on textbooks, including school grammars of Burmese, dictionaries, and spelling manuals. Most noteworthy of these is the Burmese-Burmese Dictionary edited by U Wun with the assistance of Tin Hla and others. This is known as the tekathou qabeidan [The college dictionary]. Part V is currently in press. U Pe Maung Tin, formerly Vice-Chancellor of Rangoon University and Professor of Pali has recently produced a Burmese grammar (1951) along traditional lines, and a Burmese syntax (1954). In addition he has published ba-dha lo:ga [World of language], a survey resting on Holger-Pedersen. An English-Burmese dictionary by Dr. Ba Han, formerly Professor of Law at Rangoon University, is now completed through Q-R. U On Pe, a jour- nalist writing under the name Tet Toe published a small Burmese-English dictionary (1957). A number of publications have dealt with questions of orthography. The Burmese Revolutionary Council, the governing body of the Union, has reportedly commissioned three works: a Standard Burmese dictionary edited by U Wun; Stand- ard Burmese writing by U Thein Han, librarian of Rangoon University; and a Stand- ard Burmese grammar by U E Maung, formerly Professor of Burmese at Rangoon. At the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London work continues after the death of Professor J. A. Stewart and the retirement of C. W. Dunn on A Burmese-English dictionary, begun in the twenties. Part V is now in press under the direction of Dr. Hla Pe with the assistance of A. N. Allott and John Okell. A posthumous revision of Stewart's Colloquial Burmese (1936) came out as Manual of colloquial Burmese (1954). Other members of the School have contributed studies, especially to the Bulletin of the School (BSOAS), namely, E. J. A. Henderson, E. G. Pulleyblank, H. L. Shorto, and K. J. Spriggs. Certain of these, by Henderson and Shorto dealt with minority languages, Chin and Mon. Gordon H. Luce has also published, in the Journal of the Burma Research Society, a number of studies of the 778 WILLIAM S. CORNYN Karen and the Chin languages. The Conference on Linguistic Problems in the Indo- Pacific Area, January, 1965, in London, reported papers by Dr. Hla Pe on "A re-examination of Burmese classifiers" ; by Anna J. Allott on "Categories of the description of the verbal syntagma in Burmese"; and by John Okell on "Nissaya Burmese: a case of systematic adaptation to a foreign grammar and syntax". In the Soviet Union two small pocket dictionaries have appeared: one Burmese- Russian by B. A. Ignatenko (1961), and one Russian-Burmese by U Kyin Wei and A. I. Borovikov (1962). These are too limited in scope, 5,000 and 7,500 words respectively, to be of great interest. V. M. Solntsev edited a grammatical study Bur- mese language by Mg. Mg. Nyunt, J. A. Orlova, E. V. Puzitsky, and I. M. Tagunov. In the Kratkie Soobshcheniya Inst. Narodov Azii N. V. Omelyanovich published (1964) two articles "Aktual'noye i sintakticheskoye chleneniye birmanskoj bytiinoj konstruktsii" and "Expression and suppression in Burmese sentence". Also D. I. Elovkov "Compound verbs in Burmese", Yazyki narodov vostoka (1961). I have not seen these three last items and am indebted to Dr. Hla Pe for the references. In France, Denise Bernot published two articles in the Bulletin de la société de linguistique de Paris: "Rapports phonétiques entre le dialecte Marma et le Birman" (1957-58); and "Esquisse d'un description phonologique du Birman" (1963). In Prague, U Minn Latt published three studies in the Archiv Orientâlni in succes- sive years, 1962, 1963, and 1964. They are the "First report on studies in Burmese grammar", "Second report..." and "Third report..." and lead to a full statement of the grammar. In the same journal he has a suggested romanization of Burmese (1958) and an essay on the parts of speech (1959). In the United States work in the Burmese language began during World War II. First to appear were two articles in Studies in linguistics: "Causatives in Burmese" by William S. Cornyn and Raven I. McDavid, Jr. (1943) and "Burmese Phonemics" by McDavid (1945) followed by Outline of Burmese grammar (LSA 1945) and Spoken Burmese (USAFI, Henry Holt, 1945-46) both by Cornyn. R. B. Jones and U Khin brought out The Burmese writing system (ACLS 1953). Burmese chrestomathy by Cornyn (1957) and Burmese glossary by Cornyn and John K. Musgrave (1958) were published by the ACLS and a revision of Spoken Burmese under the title Beginning Burmese by Cornyn and D. Haigh Roop is at present in press. A Burmese-English dictionary has been under way for some years under the editorship of Cornyn and is ap- proaching completion. Theodore Stern, Robbins Burling, and Frederick K. Lehman have addressed themselves to problems of the minority languages, especially Chin. In the fields of comparative and historical linguistics there has been greater activity, since World War II, involving the language families represented only by minority languages of Burma than there has been in Tibeto-Burman itself. The two minority languages most often so involved are Mon (Mon-Khmer) and Shan (Tai). Since these two families are represented elsewhere in this volume (in the chapters on Cambodia and Thailand and Laos respectively — ed.), it will suffice to note some recent publica- BURMA 779 tions. Two volumes bearing on the genetic relationship of Mon are Linguistic Com- parison in South East Asia and the Pacific, H. L. Shorto, editor, and Studies in Com- parative Austroasiatic Linguistics, N. H. Zide, editor. In connection with Shan, Brown's dissertation "From Ancient Thai to Modern Dialects: A Theory" and the various comparative studies of W. J. Gedney are to be especially noted. A recent reference work happens to deal with both these language families: Bibliographies of Mon-Khmer and Tai Linguistics, by Shorto, Jacob, and Simmonds. Within the Tibeto-Burman group, linguistic studies have tended to be more descriptive and comparative than historical. Besides the work on Burmese and other languages mentioned earlier, there are such articles as that of Punya Sloka Ray on a Tibetan language, "Kham Phonology" and R. B. Jones' volume Karen Linguistic Studies. A common feature of both works cited, and indeed of much new work in the chaotic Southeast Asian field, is a careful distinction among dialects of the language under study, with separate descriptions of phonology and other structural characteris- tics. It has been precisely the lack of such discrimination, on the part of earlier investigators (e.g. mixtures of dialect resulting from failure to screen informants or to keep separate sets of notes on different informants), which has often made the work of the comparatist in this area unnecessarily difficult. The Jones volume, for example, contains a detailed description of a single dialect (Moulmein Sgaw Karen) as Part One. Part Two describes the phonemes and distri- bution of phonemes for four separate dialects and dialect-groups: Sgaw, Pho, Taungthu, and Palaychi. Part Three is devoted to comparison and reconstruction, and Part Four consists of texts, not only in the principal dialect described, but in two others as well. Jones has nothing whatever to say, incidentally, in this carefully constructed volume on Karen, about the relationship of Karen to Tibeto-Burman or to any other superior genetic grouping. The results of his comparative work, a carefully defined Proto-Karen, are henceforth available for future incorporation into broader theories of any sort, without fear of a predetermined genetic bias. Much remains to be done in Burma but the unsettled political situation makes the outlook bleak. Lack of interest within the country and the exclusion of scholars from abroad means an inevitable decline in the volume and quality of research in linguistics as in other disciplines. The closing of the United States Educational Foundation in Burma (the Fulbright program), the Asia and Ford Foundations, and other programs are evidence of an attitude that will discourage many from entering the field. Given the difficulty of access to Burma by foreign linguists, we are not likely to see fresh studies of the quality of those mentioned unless they are to come from linguists who are Burmans. But those few citizen scholars who have the requisite training are apt to be kept busy at more immediately practical tasks by their government, and the prognosis for indigenous linguistic research output must hence remain a gloomy one. As far as the minority languages are concerned, the government has recently reversed its policy on vernacular education once more; it is possible that this will 780 WILLIAM S. CORNYN provide some impetus to research, at least of a practical kind, in the non-Burmese fields eventually, provided the qualified investigators can be found.

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