About Some Linguistic Variations in Phu Tai

Abstract

The present article deals with some syntactical, morphemic and lexical variations of Phu Tai, a Southwestern Tai language which is spoken in Northeastern Thailand and Central Laos. The examples discussed include serialized sentence patterns (“to give” and “to be made of”), pre-verbal morphemes expressing present continuous and future and a few lexical items (“beautiful”, “(maternal) grandmother” and “where”). On the basis of this corpus of linguistic variations, this article proposes three possible kinds of linguistic maps. In addition, the author, who has been interacting with many Phu Tai informants for 3 years, expresses his views about Phu Tai speakers’ language usage, attitudes towards Phu Tai language and Phu Tai language revitalization programs.