The Mon-Khmer Studies Journal
   celebrating 50 years of publication: 1964 - 2014

MON-KHMER STUDIES is the peer-reviewed, publication of record for research in Austroasiatic linguistics.  Founded in 1964, the MKS Journal is distributed online under a Creative Commons license.

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Scope of the Journal
MON-KHMER STUDIES specializes in Austroasiatic (including Mon-Khmer and Munda) linguistics.  For fifty years the MKSJ has provided a scholarly forum for high-quality articles relevant to the study of Southeast Asian languages and cultures. We welcome submissions that advance the study of any SEA language family; topics may include linguistic description, cultural description, comparison, bibliography, historical development, sociolinguistics, stylistics, orthography, and paleography.

Current Issue: Volume 44 (2015)

  • Nathaniel CHEESEMAN, Elizabeth HALL & Darren GORDON 
    Palaungic Linguistic Bibliography with Selected Annotations (MKSJ:44.i-liv)    Download
    This bibliography expands the earlier work by Darren C. Gordon (2013). It includes a brief description of Palaungic linguistic features and a discussion of classification. References are organized first by linguistic domain, then historically by author. Many unpublished Palaungic data sets (including many by the late Dr. Paulette Hopple) are referenced, with access location when possible. The paper concludes with a Palaungic language index. Where appropriate, items are included under more than one linguistic domain. Some difficult-to-locate items are identified as being available at the David Thomas library (DTL), Linguistics Institute, Payap University (http://msealing.info/dt-library/). While some conference presentations are included, this is by no means an exhaustive listing.
    Keywords: Austroasiatic, Mon-Khmer, Palaungic, bibliography

  • Seth VITRANO-WILSON 
    Variability in the use of spaces by writers of Hmong Daw (MKSJ:44.1-18)    Download
    Hmong Daw is a Hmong-Mien language that primarily uses the Latin script. Both syllable-spaced and word-spaced formats are used, with spacing varying by writer and by word. Using a 15-million word corpus in Hmong Daw, a list of 96 polysyllabic words was analyzed to see how often each word was written in syllable-spaced and word-spaced formats. The results show that most polysyllabic Hmong Daw words are usually written with syllable spacing, but that spacing varies with the orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical properties of words. Just as Kuperman & Bertram 2013 found with English compounds, variations suggest that writers are most likely to use spaces where they benefit readability. The results also suggest that a purely linguistic word definition is less useful for orthography decisions than a definition that takes into account variables that affect reading for different types of words.
    Keywords: Hmong Daw, syllable spacing, orthographic variation
    ISO 639-3: mww, hnj

    • Volume 44 Editors:  Paul Sidwell and Brian Migliazza     ISSN: 0147-5207

    MKSJ Complete Volume 43 (2014)

    Volume 43.2 (2014)

  • Suwilai PREMSRIRAT; Kenneth GREGERSON 
    Fifty Years of Mon-Khmer Studies (MKSJ:43.2:i-iv)    Download

  • Anh-Thư T. NGUYỄN  Acoustic correlates of rhythmic structure of Vietnamese narrative speech (MKSJ:43.2:1-7)    Download
    This paper reports on acoustic realization of rhythmic structure of Vietnamese narrative prose speech. Eight speakers of Saigon dialect read part of a short story. Acoustic measurements including duration and intensity were taken for every syllable. Syllables were labelled into four types: s (standalone monosyllable); s0 (first syllable of a three-word phrase/chunk in which it is the modifier of a bisyllabic word, e.g., cái ý kiến, thật âu yếm); s1, and s2 (first and second syllables of a bisyllabic word/chunk, e.g., ý kiến, âu yếm). One-, two-and three-syllable units/chunks were also labelled utterance final / non-final. For utterance-medial and utterance-final chunks, the monosyllable had significantly longer duration and stronger intensity. Within bisyllabic words, second syllables had longer duration and stronger intensity than first syllables. Within three-syllable phrases/chunks, the first syllable of a three-word phrase/chunk was not significantly different from the first syllable of the bisyllabic word. The second syllables of bisyllabic words/chunks also had longer duration and stronger intensity than the preceding first syllables. This result suggests an iambic pattern of acoustic prominence of bisyllabic and trisyllabic words/phrases in narrative speech.
    Keywords: Acoustic correlates, rhythmic structure, narrative speech
    ISO 639-3: vie

  • CHOUDHARY, P.K.  Agreement in Ho (MKSJ:43.2:8-16)    Download
    The aim of this paper is to show the conditions of agreement marking in Ho, an Austroasiatic language. Pronominal clitics are attached as an agreement marker on the preverbal word, the verb and may be before or after the finite marker. The agreement morpheme allows Subject, Object, or both to be dropped. There is no inflectional agreement marker in Ho. The agglutinating nature of the morpheme makes North-Munda languages in general, and Ho in particular, morphologically very rich. Negation too, can host agreement clitic. The function of these clitic is twofold; one is to carry the load of the NP, and the other is to allow the NP to be dropped.
    Keywords: Agreement, Pro-drop, Animacy
    ISO 639-3: hoc, mai

    • Volume 43.2 Editors:  Paul Sidwell and Brian Migliazza     ISSN: 0147-5207

    Current Year: Volume 43.1 (2014) ICAAL5

  • FERLUS, Michel  Arem, a Vietic Language (MKSJ:43.1:1-15)    Download
    The paper reports on the state of knowledge of Arem, a small endangered language of the Vietic branch of Austroasiatic. Special attention is paid to the synchronic and diachronic phonology, which display many remarkable and highly significant features. The paper is richly illustrated with lexical examples.
    Keywords: Vietic languages, lexicon, phonology
    ISO 639-3: aem, ptk, vie

  • RING, Hiram  Nominalization in Pnar. (MKSJ:43.1:16-23)    Download
    Pnar, an Austroasiatic (AA) language located in the state of Meghalaya in northeast India, is typologically interesting because of its range of nominalization strategies. These include derivational verbal morphology, pronominal gendered noun-class clitics that derive nouns when they attach to verbs, and a relativizer. The relativizer wa has intriguing similarities to the function of some nominalizers in nearby Tibeto-Burman languages (as identified by Matisoff (1972) for Lahu, and for other languages in the area by Noonan (1997); Bickel (1999); Watters (2008) among others). Unlike most TB languages, however, this relativizer is pre-verbal, more similar to constructions in other AA languages. Similar in form is the wa ‘with/and’ comitative coordinator that also occurs in Pnar. In this paper I review the morphemes, their syntax and interaction.
    Keywords: nominalization, grammatical gender, derivation, relativisation
    ISO 639-3: pbv

  • HALL, Elizabeth  Impact of Tai Lue on Muak Sa-aak phonology (MKSJ:43.1:24-30)    Download
    The Austroasiatic language Muak Sa-aak belongs to the Angkuic branch of the Palaungic subgroup. Speakers live primarily in eastern Shan State of Myanmar. This analysis is based on the variety of Wan Fai village. Although Burmese and Chinese are influential, their primary contact language is the Tai Kadai language Tai Lue. Borrowing from this language is extensive, even to the extent of replacing their numerals with Tai Lue. Although Muak Sa-aak underwent the Germanic shift typical of Angkuic languages, replacing proto-voiced initials with voiceless ones, it still retains some voiced initials. There is some evidence that language contact may have resulted in a three-tone system, where pitch would otherwise have been largely predictable. For the majority of rhotic-initial loan words, borrowing shows a direct correspondence of Muak Sa-aak /r/ with initial /h/ in Tai Lue. Some evidence from Assamese Tai languages suggests that rather than being a replacement, this might reflect a time when Tai Lue possibly still had a rhotic.
    Keywords: Palaungic, Angkuic, phonology
    ISO 639-3: tlq, khb, aho, aio, mya, cmn, huo, uuu, kjg, lbn

  • LAOPHAIROJ, Rujiwan  Conceptual metaphors of Vietnamese taste terms. (MKSJ:43.1:31-46)    Download
    The objectives of this study were to examine the use, metaphorical meanings, and metaphorical concepts of four Taste Terms in Vietnamese: bitter, salty, sour and sweet. Taste-term data were collected from dictionaries, linguistic corpora, and interviews with five informants. Results based on structure reveal two types of metaphorical use: single taste terms, and taste terms in combination with other words, including other taste terms, and non-taste terms. Each type differs in details. With regard to metaphorical meanings in Vietnamese, taste terms are categorized in one semantic domain: state metaphor. The state metaphor is divided into three semantic subgroups: feeling metaphors, habit/manner metaphors and quality metaphors. The metaphorical concepts of Vietnamese taste terms can be categorized as: human qualities are taste.
    Keywords: metaphor, semantics, taste terms
    ISO 639-3: vie

  • SIDWELL, Paul  Khmuic classification and homeland. (MKSJ:43.1:47-56)    Download
    The paper discusses an ongoing comparative investigation of Khmuic. Original proposals are made concerning the classification of Khmuic languages, their original homeland, and migrations that established present distributions, with reference to a working phonological and lexical reconstruction. Special attention is given to an apparent chain shift in the reflexes of Austroasiatic *aː, broadly schematized as *aː > *ɛː > *iə > *iː, that supports a strongly nested family tree. However, counter-examples that fail to show these developments force positing of various parallel correspondences. We suggest that there were several phases of Khmuic expansion historically, each radiating from a homeland in the north-west of Laos, and resulting in dialect mixing that has confused the correspondence patterns.
        The pKhmuic phonology as reconstructed is quite straightforward; lacking tones, registers or an implosive contrast in the stop series. Complex initial clusters are regarded as archaic, although relatively few are yet reconstructed. Vowel correspondences are somewhat complex, consistent with an apparently rich history of dialect borrowing. On the whole pKhmuic resembles the Khmu Cuang dialect phonologically.
    Keywords: Khmuic, classification, reconstruction, homeland
    ISO 639-3: kig, khf, tyh, prb, mlf, prt, pry, mra, kjm, pnz, puo

  • JENNY, Mathias  Transitivity and affectedness in Mon (MKSJ:43.1:57-71)    Download
    The present study investigates the different uses of causative/transitive directionals in Mon and the functional differences between the basic and causative forms. Dealing with a typologically rare phenomenon, this study adds to our understanding of complex verbal predicates and transitivity not only in the Southeast Asia context, but also cross-linguistically. The study is based on original data collected in Thailand and Myanmar from different varieties of Mon, supplemented by published texts such as journal articles and short stories, as well as elicited data.
    Keywords: Mon, syntax, transitivity
    ISO 639-3: mnw, shp, sbe

  • J. MAYURI, Karumuri V. SUBBARAO, Martin EVERAERT and G. Uma Maheshwar RAO 
    Some Syntactic Aspects of Lexical Anaphors in Select Munda Languages (MKSJ:43.1:72-83)    Download
    This paper investigates several syntactic aspects of anaphors (reflexives and reciprocals) in the Munda languages Santali, Mundari, and Ho. We intend to show that verbal reflexivization is an indigenous device, and that nominal reflexivization is a form calqued from neighbouring Indo-Aryan languages. The verbal reflexive device performs other functions, including detransitivizing marker, passive marker, and self-benefactive marker. The nominal reflexive is optional when the verbal reflexive is present, and obligatory when the verbal reflexive is absent. Long-Distance Binding is not permitted when the anaphor occurs in a subcategorized position. Reciprocity is achieved through the infixation of a morpheme -pV- in the main verb, where the vowel V in -pV- harmonizes with the nucleus of the main verb's first syllable. Some verbs have a special form when the verbal anaphor occurs.
    Keywords: anaphora, pronouns, language comparison
    ISO 639-3: sat, unr, hoc, mni, tel

  • Stephen SELF  Another look at serial verb constructions in Khmer (MKSJ:43.84-102)    Download
    Serial verb constructions (SVCs) are a widely recognized areal feature of Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) and Austroasiatic languages in particular. Yet discussion of SVCs in Khmer has been sporadic. The most extensive treatments of SVCs in Khmer (Wilawan 1993, 1995; Sak-Humphry 2005) deny that the language has SVCs on theory-internal grounds. Haiman (2011) asserts that Khmer does have SVCs, but includes completive or “success verb” constructions which function differently from structures recognized cross-linguistically as SVCs. I apply the “characteristic and diagnostic features of SVCs” from Kroeger (2004) and Durie (1997) to Khmer, taking monoclausality as the most important characteristic. I use the binding behavior of the bimorphemic reflexive pronoun kluənæŋ to show sentences that are single clauses comprising multiple verb phrases without coordination or subordination that share core arguments, refer to a single complex event, and must agree in polarity and tense-aspect-modality (TAM). I conclude that Khmer does have SVCs as rigorously defined.
    Keywords: syntax, serial verb constructions, reflexive pronouns
    ISO 639-3: khm

  • V.R. RAJASINGH  Interrogation in Muöt (MKSJ:43.103-123)    Download
    Muöt is one of the six varieties of Nicobarese languages. It is spoken by ethnic Nicobarese inhabititants of the three Central Nicobar Islands: Nancowry, Katchal and Kamorta of the Nicobar Archipelago, India. In Muöt, interrogation is carried out with two kinds of interrogative sentences: those that use interrogative words as markers, and those that employ the suprasegmental feature of intonation. This papers identifies interrogation markers, and provides a descriptive account of the interrogation process. We place our findings on a strong theoretical footing by surveying the interrogation process as exemplified in extant works on the language, and making necessary departures from these. Our data are drawn from the Andaman Commissioned Project data base, which was collected from the Nancowry Island between September and December of 2004, just prior to the killer tsunami.
    Keywords:interrogation, Muöt, Nicobarese
    ISO 639-3:ncb

    • Volume 43.1 Editors:  Paul Sidwell and Brian Migliazza     ISSN: 0147-5207

    Publication note:  As of Vol. 41 (2012) the Mon-Khmer Studies Journal has moved to continuous on-line publication under a Creative Commons license.  Peer review, yearly volume numbering, and continuous pagination will be maintained, but articles will be made available on line as soon as they complete the submission/referee/acceptance/revision process. 

    The MKSJ strongly encourages authors to take advantage of the opportunity on-line publication provides to make supporting data available, either as part of a peer-reviewed article or as a data paper.  Please see the submission guidelines.

    A new stylesheet is available in this sample article: MKSTemplate.doc   See style sheet details and/or this brief video.  Please note that the page size is considerably larger in this format, and allows far better reproduction of tables and figures.

    In Memoriam: a tribute to MKS Journal founding editor David Thomas (1930-2006).
    We regret to note the passing of Professor Philip N. Jenner (1921-2013); Editor of the Mon-Khmer Studies Journal 1977-1984.


    MON-KHMER STUDIES
    ILCRD Mahidol University at Salaya
    Salaya, Nakhorn Pathom 73170 Thailand
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