JSEALS Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society Managing Editor: Paul Sidwell (Pacific Linguistics, Canberra) Editorial Advisory Board: Mark Alves (USA) George Bedell (Thailand) Gerard Diffloth (Cambodia) Marlys Macken (USA) Brian Migliazza (USA) Keralapura Nagaraja (India) Amara Prasithrathsint (Thailand) Martha Ratliff (USA) Sophana Srichampa (Thailand) Uri Tadmor (Indonesia) Justin Watkins (UK) JSEALS is the peer-reviewed journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, and is devoted to publishing research on the languages of mainland and insular Southeast Asia. It is an electronic journal, distributed freely by Pacific Linguistics (www.pacling.com) and the JSEALS website (sealang.org). Hard copies may also be ordered (availability subject to reasonable demand). JSEALS was formally established by decision of the SEALS 17 meeting, held at the University of Maryland in September 2007. It supersedes the Conference Proceedings, previously published by Arizona State University and later by Pacific Linguistics. JSEALS welcomes articles that are topical, focused on linguistic (as opposed to cultural or anthropological) issues, and which further the lively debate that characterizes the annual SEALS conferences. Although we expect in practice that most JSEALS articles will have been presented and discussed at the SEALS conference, submission is open to all regardless of their participation in SEALS meetings. Papers are expected to be written in English. Each paper is reviewed by at least two scholars, usually a member of the Advisory Board and one or more independent readers. Reviewers are volunteers, and we are grateful for their assistance in ensuring the quality of the publication. As an additional service we also admit data papers, reports and notes, subject to internal review. JSEALS is published annually. Papers should be submitted to the Managing Editor, electronically ([email protected] or [email protected]) by December 31st for inclusion in the follow year’s issue. Contents Editorial iii Papers Contact-Induced Change? Register In Three Cham Dialects Marc Brunelle 1 A Minimalist Approach To Amis Voice Markers Yi-Ting Chen 23 Identifying Prepositions In Thai Kitima Indrambarya 37 Deixis And Information Structure In Mon: The Multifunctional Particle kɔh̀ Mathias Jenny 53 Tone Neutralization Due To Consonants In Mulao Seunghun J. Lee 73 Eventivity And Stativity In Thai Verbs Natsuki Matsui 85 Vietnamese Passive Sentences From A Typological Perspective Nguyễn Hồng Cổn 107 Proto-Southwestern-Tai Revised: A New Reconstruction Pittayawat Pittayaporn 121 Complementizers And Verb Classification In Thai Amara Prasithrathsint 145 Village Names In Chiang Saen: An Ethnolinguistic Study Of Place Names In Thai Sorabud Rungrojsuwan 161 Arrival Expressions In Thai Kiyoko Takahashi 175 Data Papers / Reports / Notes A Preliminary Description Of Ende Phonology Bradley McDonnell 195 i Aspect Marking And Modality In Child Vietnamese Jennie Tran 227 A Note On Interference Of Thai Reduplication On Vietnamese Spoken In Udon Thani Province Of Thailand Songgot Paanchiangwong 241 ii Editorial Welcome to JSEALS Volume 2, the second issue of the Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. From the inception of the Society in 1991, until 2006, papers presented at the annual SEALS meetings were published as proceedings volumes, first by the Arizona State University, and later by Pacific Linguistics and at the Australian National University. From 2008 onwards JSEALS has become the principal organ of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. The first issue of JSEALS was released in March 2009. It had been our intention to have it out in 2008, but the transition from straightforward proceedings to a peer reveiwed journal proved to be quite a challenge, and it took nearly 2 years to make it happen. Happily we are now on track, and Volume 2 has come out in September 2009, a little later than a year after the 18th SEALS meeting, which was held at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Bangi, 21-22 May 2008). Many of the papers appearing in this volume were first presented at that meeting. I would also like to thank Mark Alves (Associate Professor, ESL/EAP and Chinese, Montgomery College), who so ably contributed to the first issue as Main Editor. Mark has now stepped back from that role, and I look forward to other SEALS supporters coming forward to support this important work. Thanks are also due to the Editorial Board members and others who have been reviewing papers and otherwise working to ensure the quality of the journal. The most important lesson that has emerged from the JSEALS experience so far is an appreciation of the extent to which it is a collective effort. To manage, assess, revise and publish a dozen papers requires academic input from as many as thirty or more scholars, all contributing their own time to the project. Thank you. JSEALS will also continue to improve. With the 2010 issue we expect to include dates received and dates accepted for each paper. The fact that this has not been done so far reflects confusion in record keeping which was part of the steep learning curve associated with the birth of the journal. And we look forward to receiving suggestions and constructive critisism to further improve the journal. In particular, I would like to invite submission of book reviews, conference reports, and review articles. The electronic distribution of JSEALS makes it a widely accessible vehicle for scholarship that reaches way beyond printed journals. As this fact, combined with the high standard of papers, becomes more widely appreciated, I am confident that JSEALS will only grow from strength to strength. Paul Sidwell (Managing Editor) September 2009 iii iv CONTACT-INDUCED CHANGE? REGISTER IN THREE CHAM DIALECTS1 Marc Brunelle University of Ottawa <[email protected]> 0 Abstract The Chamic language family is often presented as a test case for contact-induced language change (Thurgood 1996; 1999). The register systems of Cham dialects have been claimed to evolve in the direction of neighbouring languages, becoming increasingly tonal when in contact with Vietnamese (Eastern Cham) or developing (or retaining) a more typical register system when in contact with non-tonal languages (i.e. Western Cham with Khmer). However, since instrumental evidence on the phonetic realization of register in Western Cham is limited (only Edmondson and Gregerson 1993), these proposals are partly speculative. This paper aims at filling this void. A laryngographic and acoustic study of register in three Cham dialects was undertaken to uncover the similarities and differences between them. This study concludes that f0 (pitch) is the dominant property of register in all three dialects, shedding doubt on mechanistic models of contact and change. We argue for a low-level phonetic influence of Vietnamese on Eastern Cham register and for a more complex scenario of contact-induced sound change. 1 Cham register Cham is an Austronesian language spoken in Mainland Southeast Asia. Because Cham and its sister languages have been in close contact with their Mon-Khmer neighbours for centuries, they have undergone a significant amount of linguistic restructuring (Lee 1974; Alieva 1984; Thurgood 1996; 1999). In this paper, we explore the phonetic realization of phonemic register (defined below) in three Cham dialects spoken in Vietnam and Cambodia. The goal of this study is to determine if contact with neighbouring languages can explain some of the differences found between dialects. 1.1 The development of Cham register Register is a common type of phonological contrast in Mainland Southeast Asian languages (Henderson 1952; Gregerson 1973; Matisoff 1973; Huffman 1976; Pittman 1978; Ferlus 1979; Diffloth 1982; Jones 1986). It arises from the neutralization of voicing in onset stops and from the phonologization of phonetic properties originally associated 1 I would like to thank Phú Văn Hẳn and Abubakar (Lebke) for their help in putting together the wordlists and in recruiting participants and Nguyễn Văn Huệ, for granting me the authorization to work at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities of Hồ Chí Minh City. Special thanks to Alexis Michaud for allowing me to use his MATLAB scripts, to Ricardo Tabone for his programming skills and to Sophia Stevenson and Marie-Claude Tremblay for helping me process the data. All errors are mine. This work was partly funded by a grant from the Social Science Research Council of Canada. Marc Brunelle. 2009. Contact-Induced Change? Register in Three Cham Dialects. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 2:1-22. Copyright vested in the author. 1 2 Marc Brunelle with voicing. Phonologically, register can be a property of the onset, the rime or the entire syllable, depending on the language. Phonetically, however, these same phonetic properties are realized on the rime (except durational cues, which are also present in onsets). They are listed in (1), where the low register derives from former voiced stops and the high register derives from former voiceless stops. (1) Low register High register Lower pitch Higher pitch Laxer Tenser Higher vowels Lower vowels Longer vowels Shorter vowels Aspirated onset stops (or longer VOT) Plain onset stops (or shorter VOT) It is important to note that not all of these phonetic properties are found in all register languages. Languages typically retain a subset of the characteristic listed in (1). For example, despite evidence that all properties are present to some extent in Eastern Cham at a fine-grained phonetic level (Brunelle 2005b; 2006), this dialect mostly contrasts registers through pitch and voice quality. Although it is difficult to date the development of register, the fact that most lowland Chamic languages have register systems suggests that it took place before the break-up of Coastal Chamic, a few centuries ago (Lee 1966; Thurgood 1993; 1996; 1999). A discussion of the formation of register systems in Chamic in general is beyond the scope of this paper, but it must be pointed out that in these systems the register contrast was extended to sonorants.