A Comparative Study of Tai-Phuan, Tai-Phake and Lao-Wiang

Abstract

Introduction: Tai-Phuan is a dialect language spoken in fifteen provinces of Thailand, whereas Tai- Phake is a minority language spoken in ten villages in Assam, India, and Lao-Wiang is a dialect language spoken in twenty-three villages in Thailand. Phonology: Compared with Tai-Phuan, Tai-Phake and Lao-Wiang show a reduction in the consonant and phonemes. On the other hand, they have preserved all the six tones in the three varieties. On the scale of similarities one finds that the three languages reject the syllabic structure : VC. The three languages do not allow certain aspirated consonants or voiced consonants to occur in the word-final positions. Lexicon: In the analysis that follows, the researchers presented the fieldwise vocabulary. Identical forms and cognate forms are later taken up as similar vocabulary items. Next we count the different forms and finally we list words from Tai-Phuan and Lao-Wiang in which there were no corresponding Tai-Phake words.