Doctoral Dissertation Research: Language documentation of Tai Khamti in Myanmar

东南亚长期以来一直是美国的战略利益所在，也是一个语言极其多样化的地区。这个项目调查了缅甸Khamti地区的泰语，这是一个几乎没有语言田野调查的地方。它将传统语言文档与现代定量分析结合起来，使用新的现场数据来提高我们对这些语言的理解。这种混合方法能够创新地回答传统方法无法充分回答的研究问题，而现代方法仅凭现有数据无法回答这些问题。田野调查将集中于泰语历史声调和音韵的现代证据，同时也为数据提供重要的语言和文化背景。该项目还承担了一个雄心勃勃的调查所有现有的词汇数据，从资源出版在十几个国家。这些结果将与新的实地数据一起组织到一个旨在定量研究泰语历史的数据库中，该数据库将用于撰写论文，文本语料库和比较词典。作为在缅甸进行的首批语言实地考察之一，该项目提高了我们对世界上一个长期无法进入的地区的语言状况的了解，这有助于加强美国与缅甸的关系。这些领域的改善有助于加强东南亚地区的稳定，进一步推进美国在该地区的政治和经济利益。

Southeast Asia has long been an area of US strategic interest, as well as an area of immense linguistic diversity. This project investigates Tai languages spoken in Khamti District, Myanmar (Burma), a place that has seen almost no linguistic fieldwork. It unites traditional language documentation with modern quantitative analysis, using new field data to improve our understanding of these languages. This hybrid approach enables innovative answers to research questions that traditional methods have not sufficiently answered, and that modern methods cannot answer with only the data currently available. Fieldwork will focus on modern evidence for historical tones and phonology in the Tai languages, while also providing important linguistic and cultural context for the data. The project also undertakes an ambitious survey of all existing lexical data, from resources published in more than a dozen countries. These results will be organized alongside the new field data into a database designed for quantitative study of Tai language history, which will be used to produce a dissertation, a corpus of texts, and a comparative dictionary. As some of the first linguistic fieldwork in Myanmar, this project improves our understanding of the language situation in a long inaccessible part of the world, which serves to strengthen US relations with Myanmar. Improvement in these areas contributes to greater regional stability within Southeast Asia, further advancing American political and economic interests in this part of the world.