SEALS XVII Waranya OTA The Noun Phrase in the Kuy Language Waranya OTA Tokyo University of Foreign Studies 31 August 2007 Abstract ative pronoun or relative clause marker may result in distinct meanings. The paper discusses the noun phrase of Kuy (Suay), The paper also points out that when a Thai- classi¯ed as (< West Katuic < Mon-Khmer), the loaned classi¯er is used, the position of the verbal mother tongue of the author. Kuy is spoken around modi¯er will be more flexible. This is one of the fea- the Thai-Lao-Cambodian border. It has no script. tures in which Kuy is similar to Thai. In contrast, The examined data is from the Kuy-Kuay dialect of one of Kuy and Khmer's common characteristics is Tamom Village, Sangkha District, Surin Province, that both languages have only a few classi¯ers com- Thailand. The data for this paper is based pri- pared to Thai. In addition, the classi¯er is not a marily was collected from the author, and 5 other necessary element in a NP both in Kuy and Khmer. family members who currently live in Thailand. Finally, I show that the NP in Kuy has looser word The author's main interest is in Kuy grammar. order than that of Khmer, but has a more ¯xed The method used in collecting the data was to use word order than that of Thai. the author's intuition about acceptability of var- ious examples and through ¯eldwork to Tamom Village, collect pragmatic conversations, and Kuy 1 Introduction tales. Through this method, the author intended The Kuy people live in the trisected area of Thai- to collect a variety of acceptable NPs structures, so land, Laos and Cambodia. The total number of as to examine which word orders are possible for speakers is 380,000 (Mann and Markowski (2005)): NPs in Kuy. 300,000 in Thailand (Wanna (1994)), 50,000 in The paper ¯rstly provides an overview of the Kuy Laos (Chazee (1999)), and 14,200 in Cambo- language including the phonology of Kuy, and dis- dia (Asian Development Bank(ed.) (2002)). cusses previous studies focusing on the NP of Kuy. There are two main dialects of Kuy in Thailand, It also gives the de¯nition of noun and phrase in Kuy-Kuy and Kuy-Kuay. The Kuy language spo- Kuy. It then examines the structure of the NP ken in Tamom Village is the Kuy-Kuay dialect. in Kuy in detail, which includes complex NPs and A distinct phonetic feature of the Kuy language the relationships between various constituents and is that it has breathy voice, which is quite un- their word orders. The modi¯ers examined are the common among South East Asian languages. Old quanti¯er, possessor, demonstrative, nominal mod- Khmer also used to have this distinctive feature. i¯er, and verbal modi¯er. However, the present Khmer language spoken in The paper shows that a modi¯er in Kuy normally Cambodia has lost this phonetic feature. follows a head noun. The position of the nominal The Tamom Village Kuy-Kuay dialect has 22 ini- modi¯er is the most ¯xed, i.e. it always precedes tial consonant phonemes, which are: /p, t, c, k, ¼, another modi¯er. The demonstrative has a little ph, th, (ch), kh, b, d, m, n, ñ, N, (f), s, h, r, l, w, more flexibility, i.e. it tends to be the last element y/. in a NP. The position of the verbal modi¯er is more The vowels of Kuy occur in two registers, flexible when a relative pronoun or a relative clause the clear register-normal vowels, and the breathy marker appears. The presence or absence the rel- register-breathy vowels. The Tamom Village Kuy- 1/4 SEALS XVII Waranya OTA Kuay dialect has 12 normal monophthongs: /i, W, or a relative clause. A noun in Kuy cannot be di- u, e, @, o, E, 2, O, ½, a, A/, and 3 normal diphthongs: rectly negated by a negator. /ia, Wa, ua/. For the breathy vowels, there are 9 phonemic monophthongs: /i, W, u, e, @, o, ½, a, A/, 3 The de¯nition of Phrase and 3 diphthongs: /ia, Wa,¨ ua/.¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ A typical Kuy word is normally either monosyl- A noun phrase in Kuy can be de¯ned as a series labic or disyllabic. The structure of a monosyllabic of words that are integrated together and have the word is C((C)(C))V(V)C. In a disyllabic word, a noun as its head, forming an element of a complex minor syllable always precedes a major syllable. sentence. The structure of a minor syllable is CV(C), and the structure of a major syllable is C(C)V(V)(C). It is also important to point out that Kuy is an 4 The structure of the Noun Phrase isolating language and its basic word order is SVO. in Kuy Finally, Kuy places the head noun before the mod- i¯er. 4.1 Quanti¯er \Noun + quanti¯er (+classi¯er)." Quanti¯er 1.1 Previous studies phrases usually do not need a classi¯er, except when the head noun of the phrase is a human be- In a previous study by Oranuch (1984), data is ing, in which case the presence of the classi¯er is taken from the Kuy-Kuay dialect of Wan Village, preferable. Bukraeng Sub-district, Chomphra District, Surin 1 Province, Thailand.¦ Concerning classi¯ers, Oranuch pointed out that 4.2 Possessor \[a]ll classi¯able nouns must be accompanied by a \Noun + possessor." The word /khAN/ or /hAN/ classi¯er if a number is present." In contrast to O- which are shortened forms of khAAN \object, arti- ranuch's ¯ndings, a noun in the Kuy-Kuay dialect cle" can appear between the noun and the posses- of Tamom Village need not always be accompanied sor, as in \noun + /khAN/(/hAN/) + possessor." by a classi¯er, especially when the noun is not hu- man. As for demonstratives, Oranuch stated that 4.3 Demonstrative \khAN/hAN+demonstrative, [gives] more speci¯c \Noun + demonstrative." Tamom Village Kuy- meaning,..." However, the Tamom Village dialect Kuay uses 4 demonstratives: proximate /n½½/ 2 of Kuy does not use demonstratives in this way. ¦ \this," medial /kii/ \that," distal /thuuh/ \that (over there)," and the most distal /tho¨oh/ \that 2 The de¯nition of Noun in Kuy (far away over there)." When making¨ a reference to something that is not at the place where the A noun in Kuy is a referential expression of an en- conversation takes place, the demonstrative used is tity, and may appear as a subject, or as an object, usually the medial distance demonstrative /kii/. if it follows a predicate, or if it is the object of a preposition. A noun in Kuy normally precedes 4.4 Nominal Modi¯er other modi¯ers, such as a stative verb, a demon- strative, a number, a possessor, a relative pronoun Normal Nominal Modi¯er: \noun + nominal mod- i¯er." 1 Plural Nominal Modi¯er: \plural nominal mod- ¦ There is also a brief explanation concerning the NP in Kuy in Somsonge (1994) which stated that the word order i¯er + noun." However, this construction may not of the NP in Kuy (the Kuy-Kuay dialect) is similar to that be a phrase which consists of \modi¯er + head of Thai in that, for example, the modi¯er follows the noun. noun", but may be a sequence of two appositive 2 ¦ The words /khAN/ and /hAN/ in the Tamom Village nouns. In general, Kuy puts the noun /muu/ Kuy-Kuay come from the noun /khAAN/ which means \ob- ¨ ject, stu®." These words appear in possessor expressions, \class/companion" before a head noun to express but cannot be used as conjunctions. plural. 2/4 SEALS XVII Waranya OTA 4.5 Verbal Modi¯er Table 2 and Table 3 show the possible word or- ders of 3 modi¯ers in a noun phrase. \Noun + verbal modi¯er." A relative pronoun The positions of a normal nominal modi¯er and /haw/ \that" or a relative clause marker /dEEl/ a demonstrative are quite ¯xed compared to the \that/left-over" may appear between them. The others. In general, the normal nominal modi¯er presence of a relative marker sometimes changes always precedes the other type of modi¯ers, and the the meaning of the phrase. When /haw/ appears, demonstrative tends to be at the end of the phrase. it expresses contrastive meaning. In addition, if the The position of a verbal modi¯er is more flexible relative marker is absent, the phrase can sometimes when the relative pronoun /haw/ or the relative stand as a sentence. When /dEEl/ appears, it im- clause /dEEl/ is present. When /haw/ or /dEEl/ do plies the existence of the agent, or the cause of the not appear, the verbal modi¯er precedes all other verb. elements, except the normal nominal modi¯er. 5 The relationship between noun phrase constituents and word or- Table 2: The possible word orders of a 3-modi¯er noun phrase der Order of Modi¯ers Possibility 5.1 Noun phrases with 2 modi¯ers Qnt Pos Dem Yes Qnt Dem Pos No Table 1 shows the possible word order in a noun Pos Qnt Dem Yes 3 4 phrase with 2 modi¯ers. ¦ ¦ Pos Dem Qnt No In the table, `Yes' means that the word order is Dem Qnt Pos No possible, `Fixed' means that the two elements may Dem Pos Qnt No co-occur but the word order is ¯xed, `No' means Qnt Pos NM No that the word order is impossible, and `-' means Qnt NM Pos No that the same type of modi¯er does not appear Pos Qnt NM No twice within a noun phrase.