Dating Written Thai by the Diachronic Data of Comitatives /dûaj/ and /kàp/
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Abstract
This research proposes periodization of written Thai by comparing the evolution of two comitative prepositions, /dûaj/ and /kàp/. The methodology is to rearrange the diachronic data using the AntConc toolkit and to consider the usage in three dimensions: orthography, syntax, and meaning. The results show that written Thai should be separated into three periods: Old Written Thai (OWT, 13th to 16th century), Middle Written Thai (MWT, 17th to 19th century) and Modern Written Thai or Standardized Written Thai (SWT, 20th century to the present day). This result may differ from previous research, which periodizes by the dominant cities or the capital cities. In terms of orthography, the two words changed the position of the vowel and tone marker from the second to the first alphabet in the early 19th century. In OWT, /dûaj/ is the general preposition of comitative and other related meanings, while /kàp/ is common as a noun phrase conjunction and a goal marker. The two words, /dûaj/ and /kàp/, overlapped in MWT and eventually /kàp/ became dominant for comitative functions in the mid 19th century and tended to overcome more functions of /dûaj/ in the future.
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