Doctoral Dissertation Research: Language documentation of Tai Khamti in Myanmar

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

Southeast Asia has long been an area of US strategic interest, as well as an area of immense linguistic diversity. This project investigates Tai languages spoken in Khamti District, Myanmar (Burma), a place that has seen almost no linguistic fieldwork. It unites traditional language documentation with modern quantitative analysis, using new field data to improve our understanding of these languages. This hybrid approach enables innovative answers to research questions that traditional methods have not sufficiently answered, and that modern methods cannot answer with only the data currently available. Fieldwork will focus on modern evidence for historical tones and phonology in the Tai languages, while also providing important linguistic and cultural context for the data. The project also undertakes an ambitious survey of all existing lexical data, from resources published in more than a dozen countries. These results will be organized alongside the new field data into a database designed for quantitative study of Tai language history, which will be used to produce a dissertation, a corpus of texts, and a comparative dictionary. As some of the first linguistic fieldwork in Myanmar, this project improves our understanding of the language situation in a long inaccessible part of the world, which serves to strengthen US relations with Myanmar. Improvement in these areas contributes to greater regional stability within Southeast Asia, further advancing American political and economic interests in this part of the world.