A Synchronic Study of Hmong Language Spoken in Mae Rim District, Chiang Mai Province

บทคัดย่อ

The objectives of this research aim to study 3 objectives: 1) The phonological Structure of Hmong language 2) The Morphological Structure of Hmong language and 3). The Syntactical Structure of Hmong language, by six villages in Mae Rim District Chiang Mai Province to collect data from
in-depth interviews with a sampling population of 36 people divided into three groups: the first group, adolescents aged from 15-25 years, the second group, middle-aged aged from 26-50 years, and the third group Elderly from aged 51-70 years, and analyzing language changes between groups of different age groups, and the factors causing the linguistic change of the Hmong language.

The result found that 1) The phonological structure, there are two major dialects were spoken in six villages and differ in both vocabulary and certain aspects of phonology and words are monosyllabic, large, complex inventories of tones languages.

2) The morphological structure is an isolating language; new words can be formed by compounding and reduplication and nouns show their case function through word order in the subject/object position. When it comes to nominative and accusative cases on nouns, they are not inflected for number, case, or gender. The same word could be used to translate singular, dual, and plural pronouns.

3) The syntactical structure is an analytic SVO language. The pronominal system distinguishes between three grammatical persons and three numbers - singular, dual, and plural. They are not marked for case, that is, the same word is used to translate both ìIî and ìmeî, ìsheî and ìherî. From the analysis results, it was found that the group that had the most change in the phonological structure was adolescents aged 15-25 years who used transliteration and borrowed from Thai and English, to make a new word and used it with friends and family.