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- Manuscripts and other texts from collections in the University of Hawaii Archives in Hamilton Library on the Manoa campus
Recent Submissions
Connectives in Asur: A North Munda Language
(2025) Khalid, Zoya
Asur is an endangered North Munda language with fewer than ten thousand speakers which has remained largely unexplored by documentary linguists. This research draws on primary linguistic data of Asur to document and describe the connectives in the language. While the term connective is often treated as synonymous with conjunctions, it encompasses a broader range of grammatical elements, including pre-/post-positions, adverbs, and particles, all of which serve the semantic role of linking constituents within a sentence. The study explores the various constructions in the Asur language that fall under the umbrella term connectives. Within this broad category of connectives, Asur has postpositions, particles, and conjunctive particles that function to connect constituents in a sentence, either through coordination or subordination. The discussion highlights different semantic and syntactic types of connectives in Asur, including additive, adversative, alternative, and illative conjunctions, as well as quotatives, relativizers, and conjunctive participles. Particular attention is given to particles such as ci and hoʔ, which serve as connectives in Asur. In addition to native constructions, the discussion addresses borrowed connective structures and words from Hindi and highlights similarities of connective words and structures (syntactic and sematic) with related Munda languages.
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.
Review of: Nominal Classification in Asia and Oceania: Functional and Diachronic Perspectives
(2025) Dékány, Éva
This is a book review of "Nominal Classification in Asia and Oceania: Functional and Diachronic Perspectives".
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.
V1496 Che 54 kye charyo
(1900) Chosŏn Ch'ongdokpu Chungch'uwŏn; 조선총독부 중추원; 朝鮮總督府 中樞院