Thai and Cambodian - A Case of Syntactic Borrowing

Bibliographic Data

ID5153835
AuthorsFranklin E Huffman (corresponding author)
Year1973
Volume93
Issue4
Pages488
Publication date1973-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/600168
OpenAlexW2332907451
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited9

The syntactic parallelism between Thai and Cambodian is striking. Not only is the order and inventory of individual form classes almost identical, but also many semantically equivalent forms seem to share identical ranges of syntactic occurrence. Given syntactic similarity of such range and magnitude, there are three possible explanations: 1) Genetic relationship. In spite of their syntactic similarity, Thai and Cambodian are not, so far as has been demonstrated by traditional methods of comparative reconstruction, genetically related. 2) Coincidence. When one considers the number of different syntactic relations occurring in the same order in the two languages, the probability of change convergence is infinitesimal

Agreement · Coincidence · Convergence (economics) · Infinitesimal · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Order (exchange) · Parallelism (grammar) · Range (aeronautics) · Similarity (geometry) · Syntactic structure · Syntax · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition · Mathematics · Philosophy · semigroups and automata theory · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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