This article aims to study animate classifiers in six Tai languages, namely, Central Thai, Lao, Tai Lue, Shan, Bouyei, and Northern Zhuang. The focus is on social factors such as register choice, age, kinship, gender, social standing, and social attitudes as determinants of Tai animate classifiers which are further categorized into human and non-human classifiers.The data analysis is based on the work of Li (1977) and the continuum model posited by Conklin (1981). It has been found that in the western languages, that is, Central Thai, Lao, Shan, and Lue, social status and social attitudes are the most important factors in animate classifier usage. In addition to these social factors, Lao and Lue also employ gender and age to determine the animate classifier choice. In the easterly Tai languages, that is, Bouyei and Northern Zhuang, age and kinship are the sociolinguistic determinants of animate classifier usage. This study also reveals that each group of languages has its own classifier development.

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This paper presents preliminary findings of the research project entitled “Ethnicity, Language, Culture and Ethnic Tourism Development.” It has three goals. First, it aims to identify the Karen language spoken in six provinces in the western region of Thailand, namely, Kanchanaburi, Ratchaburi, Phetchaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Suphan Buri, and Nakhon Pathom. The next goal is to explore Karen language use and attitudes towards languages of the wider community. The final goal is to evaluate the development of sustainable ethnic tourism in the region. A preliminary survey of language use and attitude of Karen people towards the Karen language and Ethnic Tourism Development (ETD) in these six provinces was carried out using a qualitative approach. Thirty subjects made up of local administrators and community leaders were interviewed using two kinds of guided questionnaires, community and personal questionnaires.

This article aims to study the progression markers in six Vietnamese folktales. Progression markers refer to the grammatical devices that characterize any happenings that push the story forward. These markers highlight the temporal sequence of succeeding events, which form the backbone, or storyline of the Vietnamese folktales. They are rồi ’already’, xoan ’finish’, đoạn ’end, terminate’, thì ’then’, bèn ’then, consequence’, and đã ’have experienced’. The paper begins with the structural description of these progression markers and proceeds to their discourse functions both on the narrative timeline and out of the line. As the default timeframe of the narrative is past time or accomplished time, when these markers occur in past time, they indicate temporal succession and a cause-effect relationship of foregrounded events. In projected time as in quotations, the progression markers rồi, xoan, đoạn, thì, bèn, and đã are compared with the progression markers lǽ:w, sèt, còp, k:, cɯɳ, dâ:j in Thai respectively to show that despite the morphological difference, at the level of discourse syntax, their discourse structures are quite common.