Shift of Markedness of Relative Clause Markers /thiː3/, /sɯŋ3/, and /ʔan1/ in Thai
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This study investigates the shift of markedness of relative clause markers /thiː3/, /sɯŋ3/, and /ʔan1/ in Thai across historical periods, using 3,879 texts in prose and verse across various genres from TNHC2 (Pittayaporn et al., 2023) and the Diachronic Thai Text Corpus (Thanyawong, 2025). Together, the corpus spans about 700 years from Sukhothai to the present. The findings reveal that /ʔan1/ had the highest token frequency in Sukhothai and Early Ayutthaya (14th–15th centuries) and Late Ayutthaya (18th century), functioning as the unmarked form from the 14th to the 18th centuries. By contrast, /sɯŋ3/ peaked in Middle Ayutthaya (16th century) but has never attained unmarked status because its use did not broaden across contexts. In the 19th century, /thiː3/ emerged as the unmarked form, consistent with Kullavanijaya (2008). Marker choice is further related to semantic, syntactic, and text-level factors. Semantically, /thiː3/ shifted from a locative-restricted marker to one that modifies a wider range of head noun domains. Syntactically, /ʔan1/ was once widely attested in direct-object and oblique positions but has become increasingly concentrated in subject positions, especially those with adjectival predicates. At the text level, /ʔan1/ is favored in fiction, legal, and non-academic genres and in content categories such as beliefs and ideas, social sciences, imaginative topics, and world events and history.
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