Thai Word Formation

The Kingdom of Thailand is a good neighbor of China. The Thai people inThailand and the Tai people in China share the same cultural background. The Thaicharacters are the script with the longest history among the ethnic groups ofZhuang-tong language group. It is much worth to make the study of the Thai language,especially on its lexicology. The study on the word-formation of Thai language inChina is inadequate. Under such circumstance, I chose the topic "On theWord-formation Study of Thai Language" as my research orientation as well as mydoctorial dissertation title. My dissertation focuses on the discussion of theword-formation of the Thai language by using the related theories on the Sino-Tibetanlanguage family and the rich achievements on the word-formation of mandarinChinese for reference.The dissertation consists of nine chapters. The first chapter offers an introductionto the past achievements in this field and the purpose and significance of the study.The second and the third chapter provide the theoretical evidence on theword-formation study of the Thai language. From the fourth to the seventh chaptergive an analyze and description in detail to the single word, compound word,diversion word and quadric-syllabic word of the Thai language. The eighth chapterdemonstrates the critical effect of the Sanskrit language on the Thai language.Meanwhile, it discusses the words which the Thai borrowed from the Sanskrit. Theninth chapter makes the comparative study on the word-formation between the Thaiand the Tai language, and, the similarities and differences on the word-formation ofthe two languages are also summed up in this chapter. The last part of the dissertationis the conclusion which includes an overall view on the word-formation of the Thailanguage. The purpose is to give a whole analyze and a detailed description to theword-formation of the Thai language and make a further study on its features andregulations as well.I myself regard that the word-formation of the Thai language shares some of thesame features with some ethnic groups of Sino-Tibetan language family though theirlanguages are affiliated to the cross-board group. The Thai language is amono-syllabic language, so the compounding way plays a major role in formingwords. The structure of the compound words of the Thai language is in accord with itssyntactic structure. The Thai language has five basic forms, such as the unit form, theadjective form, the predicate-object form, the subject-predicate form and the complimentary form. Similarly, these forms can be analyzed by employing thetheories and methods of syntax. In addition to the close relationship between the Thaiand the Tai, both of them have the common features of word-formation. However, dueto the different communicative situations, the different levels of language contact, thedifferent amount of increscent vocabulary and the changes of the time, the Thailanguage also appears some divergence. In some degree, the difference from the Tai isbecoming greater and greater. Therefore, it is important to conduct the comparativestudy on the word-formation of the Thai and the Tai so as to figure out theirsimilarities and differences and the reasons resulted from.Based on the past achievements by the former scholars, my work has thefollowing creative points as follows:First, relatively speaking, my work has a larger scale. Not only is it theperspective but also the research scale is much different from the others and the past.My work focuses on the regulation of the word-formation of the Thai language aswell as the comparative study with the Tai so as to do some contribution to the lexicalstudy of the languages in Zhuang-tong language group of Sino-Tibetan languagefamily.Second, the methodology I applied in my work is to figure out the regulation ofthe lexical structure of the Thai language from the perspectives of the word-formation,the word-building and the word-making. As far as the word-formation is concerned,my work concentrates on the structural form of the compound word and the diversionword so as to prove the fact that the Sanskrit had made great effect on the lexicalsystem of the Thai language. A number of studies have shown that the Sanskrit is aninflexion language with its morphological change. Many of the Sanskrit words wereborrowed and to be the essential words in the Thai language through a long-timeblending. So, my work attends to expose the variation process of the Thai language byillustrating its regulation of the word-formation. In order to have a betterunderstanding about the lexical system of the Thai language, I prefer demonstratingthe regulation of the word-formation in detail and conducting the comparative studyon the word-formation of the Thai and the Tai language.From the above, we may find out that the previous study in this field issomewhat limited. However, some mistakes and shortcomings are not avoided due tomy academic knowledge and research experience. All in all, I hope a little bit ofcontribution on the lexical study of Zhuang-tong language group of Sino-Tibetan language family I will do in my work.