A Classification of the Accents of Phuan in Banteaymeanchey and Battambang Province, Cambodia

Abstract

Phuan is one of Southwestern Tai languages. In Thailand it has
been studied in different area except Banteay Meanchey and Battambang
Cambodia which have not been studied so far.Therefore, these areas become
very interesting. The objectives of this thesis are to study phonological
systems in order to subgroup the Phuan languages. The fieldwork data were
collected from interviewing informants of each of the groups inhabiting in 11
villages of Banteay Meanchey and Battambang province, Cambodia. In each
village, 1 major informant and 1 minor informant and total 22 informants
were interviewed.Listof1,500 basic words were used to record and analysis
phonemes of consonants and vowels. Two wordlists were used for analysis
shared innovation of tone split and tone merger. The acoustic characteristics
were analyzed by using the Praat and Microsoft Excel program.The results
of this study reveal that as for consonant sounds, there are 20 consonant
phonemes occurring at an initial position and 9 consonant phonemes
occurring at a final position, without consonant cluster. For the vowel sound,
there are 18 monopthongs and 3 diphthongs. As for tonal sounds, there are 6
tone. All of 11 villages are similar tonal system but difference in 4 accents.In
conclusion, the results from this study including to literature review indicated
that Puan population may be immigrated from the same area in the same time
to habitat in the same group.