Aspects of Cambodian Teochew grammar: a radical construction grammar account

• Main Author: McFarland, Joanna Rose
• Other Authors: Alexander Coupe
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2025
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Linguistics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/182610
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Teochew people, who originated in Chaoshan, China, have resided in Cambodia for hundreds of years, but limited work has been done on their language. This study attempts to rectify that by describing and documenting the Cambodian Teochew language, using the framework of Radical Construction Grammar (Croft, 2001, 2005, 2013, 2020b, forthcoming), while also examining the sociolinguistic situation of the Teochew in Cambodia. Additionally, as Teochew people have settled in many countries around the world, work was done to compare Cambodian Teochew to the varieties spoken in Chaoshan and Southeast Asia, with special attention paid to divergences, which were analyzed with respect to their relation to Khmer grammar. The lexicon shows an influence from Khmer in the use of lexical borrowings for foodstuffs as well as some functional morphemes such as ហីយ hai33 /hei33 ‘and’ and ពី pi33 ‘from’. In the phonology, divergences were found in the use alveolo-palatal affricates (rather than alveolar affricates), reduced vowel nasalization, and reduced tones in sandhi environments for younger speakers. The morphosyntax showed some word order differences, such as post-object modification in CT Enumeration Modification Constructions, CT Quantifier Constructions, and CT Action Modification Constructions. There was also some evidence for path words such as 顶畔 teŋ52-11paĩ55 ‘atop’ appearing before the ground, an order found in Khmer and not in other Teochew varieties. While these findings would be strengthened with additional data, they still have implications for the discussions surrounding language change in contact environments.