A. Research Papers (Peer-Reviewed)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10524/81135

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The Evolution of Consonant Clusters in Vietnamese: Reconstruction Based on Manuscripts in Quốc ngữ Script from 17th to 19th Centuries
(2025-04-29) Pham, Thi Kieu Ly
In the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum published by Alexandre de Rhodes in 1651, the graphemes bl-, ml-, tl-, pl-, mnh- of five initial clusters *ɓl-, *ml-, *tl-, *pl-, *mɲ- can be found. This dictionary often presents two graphemes for the same phoneme, thus indicating both its old and new forms. This article aims first to analyze the graphic variants appearing in the Dictionarium. While Đoàn (2008) focused on orthographic changes in 18th-century texts without addressing regional variation, Vũ (2019) explicitly noted that some consonant clusters evolved differently across regions, although without providing a precise chronology for these developments. Building on this previous work, this study seeks to trace the evolution of three clusters across different periods and regions—Tonkin, Upper Cochinchina (present-day Central Vietnam), and Lower Cochinchina—based on an analysis of around one hundred letters and reports written by priests in Tonkin and Cochinchina from the 17th to the 19th century. The results of this study show that in Tonkin, the *tl- group disappeared in the 17th century and the other two groups *ml-, *tl- in the 19th century. Whereas in Cochinchina (central and southern Vietnam today), the two groups *ɓl- and *ml- disappeared first, the group *tl remained there longer.
Facilitated Participatory Orthography Development in Sorsoganon, Philippines
(2025-04-29) de la Torre, Ryan G.
This paper describes the orthography development of the Sorsoganon language, spoken in the Bicol Region of the Philippines, using a facilitated participatory approach—a hybrid of autonomous and participatory orthography design—relevant to Southeast Asian hierarchical societies. A phonemic reanalysis of data confirmed the presence of contrastive stress and the absence of consonant-glide clusters in native Sorsoganon words, which informed the orthography's design. The influence of loanwords required the addition of eight graphemes to Sorsoganon so that it achieved a nearly one-to-one phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Spelling issues were addressed through consultations between the academic and community members, resulting in a localized orthography that slightly diverges from standard Filipino and Bikol conventions. Notable deviations include preserving natural reduplication in loanwords with consonant clusters, changing word-final to in derived forms, and substituting the first to in derived words with two consecutive medial back vowels. As Sorsoganon shows signs of evolving into a distinct language from Bikol, this study has established a consistent and standardized writing system. The orthography is recommended for use in mother tongue-based multilingual education, especially in the production of educational and literary materials to facilitate learning and adoption in the Sorsoganon-speaking community.
Thai Passive Markers in Adversative and Non-adversative Passives in Speakers of Different Ages
(2025) Indrambarya, Kitima
This study investigates how Thai speakers of different ages use the passive sentences with positive and negative verbs in adversative and non-adversative situations and shows the tendency of language variation in passive markers among speakers of different ages. Online questionnaires were collected from four age groups, namely, youths, early and late middle-aged speakers, and elderly. One of the results of the study shows that thùuk is the most frequent passive marker in Thai for speakers of all ages and confirms Prasithrathsint (2001)’s claim that thùuk is the generic passive marker and that doon is the adversative passive marker in Thai. The passive marker dâyráp, on the other hand, is limited in its use to passive sentences with favorable meanings. While the elderly Thai speakers in the study tend to maintain dâyráp in positive situations, the youths prefer thùuk for positive verbs and doon for negative verbs. In negative verbs with adversative situations, speakers of all age groups in the study prefer thùuk, except for the youths. The data for this study also suggests that the degrees of positivity and adversity of verbs in passive constructions could affect the choice of passive markers. Verbs with a higher degree of positivity have a higher tendency to occur with dâyráp, while verbs with a higher degree of adversity have a higher tendency to appear with the passive marker doon. The use of dâyráp and thùuk in speakers of different ages could reflect tendencies of language change, while the use of doon could point to age-grading.
Mān on the Referentiality Continuum in Thai
(2025) Kaenmuang, Jinawat; Piyamahapong, Piroon; Pittayaporn, Pittayawat
Pronouns are traditionally defined as a pro-form of an explicit antecedent. However, the pronoun mān in Thai sometimes occurs without any co-referring explicit nominal expression, leading previous studies to consider them as non-referential. This study argues that, despite the absence of an explicit antecedent, such instances of mān have implicit referents that are inferable from context. One thousand instances of mān functioning as subject or object from the Thai National Corpus were analyzed in a usage-based approach. They were categorized according to their referentiality using three criteria: explicitness of a nominal antecedent, concreteness of a antecedent, and inference of a referent. The analysis reveals that the referentiality of the pronoun mān is not dichotomous but instead lies on a continuum in which one end expresses semantic referentiality with an explicit antecedent with a higher level of referent concreteness, and the other expresses pragmatic referentiality with an implicit antecedent with a lower level of referent concreteness. Additionally, different types of referential expressions–verb phrases, clauses, and discourse–and ambiguous cases among them strongly support the notion of gradience of referentiality.

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