A comparison of grammaticalization in Shan and Thai

Inspired by previous research into Tai syntactic change and grammaticalization (Diller 2001), this study looked at two closely related Tai languages – Shan and Thai – with the aim of better understanding grammaticalization in each language. The starting point for this research was the extensive literature on Standard Thai grammaticalization from which the researcher compiled several grammaticalized morphemes (grams), for the purpose of comparison with Shan. This study also adopted an approach based on Post (2007), which entailed the use of two genre-specific corpora of each language to compare the relative frequencies of analogous grams. Despite many similarities, the comparison revealed some differences between Shan and Thai grams in areas of verb-phrase and noun-phrase syntax. This study lays out the findings of this comparison by showing the areas of the comparison and findings on Shan, where it differed from Standard Thai. It ends with some brief ideas and suggestions for more comparative grammatical research. ISBN 9783862889310. LINCOM Studies in Language Typology 32. 186pp. 2019.