Talk:Proto-Tai language

Uncited stuff
I've assumed these are from Li Fang-Kuei, but many of them seem to be from someone else. &mdash; Stevey7788 (talk) 19:11, 29 December 2010 (UTC)


 * These are not clearly from Li 1977. Li's work reconstructs non-nasal  instead of the glottal nasals, and does not reconstruct a length distinction, and also suggests more diphthongs. Benwing (talk) 02:30, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Consonants
The table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Li Fang-Kuei's 1977 reconstruction of Proto-Tai. The slashes around the phonemes are omitted for clarity. If three phonemes appear in the same box, the first of each pair is voiceless, the second is aspirated, and the third is voiced.

Diphthongs
Li (1977)
 * /ia/
 * /ɯa/
 * /ua/
 * /ai/
 * /aw/

NPOV tag added
Hello. I added an NPOV tag. This isn't quite the right tag I'm looking for, but I'm not sure what else to use instead. Basically, this article is presenting a single person's reconstruction (Pittayaporn 2009) as more or less gospel. I'm not super-familiar with Proto-Tai and the arguments back and forth but it's clear that Pittayaporn's reconstruction is quite different from the classic work by Li Fang-Kuei (A Handbook of Comparative Tai, 1977 -- available on JSTOR as 20006684 and maybe also free from sealang.org). It is conceivable that most everything in Pittayaporn reflects a consensus developed since Li's work, but I'm doubtful, both because 30 years isn't really that long in historical linguistics work, and because no other sources are cited at all. I am willing to believe that Pittayaporn's work might be closer in some sense to the truth, since Pittayaporn probably had additional data available for minority languages and better mid-level reconstructions of the languages other than Southwestern Tai, as well as the possibility of projecting forward from Proto Tai-Kadai. Nonetheless, I rather doubt that all or even most of the differences with Li represent consensus -- as opposed simply to Pittayaporn's own ideas.

On top of this, Pittayaporn's work is a PhD thesis rather than a work of an experienced scholar, which is problematic for two reasons: (1) As a grad student, Pittayaporn has limited experience in knowledge of current consensus in the field; (2) because the purpose of a PhD thesis is to present original work, theses often go out of their way to argue for non-consensus viewpoints simply because consensus isn't original. This often means that PhD theses are poor sources to use as the main source for an article. It's very similar to the mistake of using a research-oriented (and often strongly-opinionated) secondary source as the main source of a Wikipedia article, rather than using a tertiary source or drawing from various secondary sources.

This is not to say that Pittayaporn's work shouldn't be cited, but that it shouldn't be given the prominence it currently is. Benwing (talk) 02:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I've just changed it the tag to Template:One source, which is more specific. Yes, I do realize that there is a substantial bias here. If I have time, I will add more information from Li Fang-kuei's "classic" 1977 reconstruction of Proto-Tai, and maybe stuff from Ferlus, Sarawit, Luo, and others. Proto-Tibeto-Burman language also has a similar problem, so hopefully someone can add an alternative reconstruction for that too. And the Proto-Kra language has only been reconstructed once by Ostapirat in a 2000 Ph.D. thesis. It's a good start, but obviously more work in Proto-Kra needs to be done. &mdash; Stevey7788 (talk) 02:41, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. Benwing (talk) 03:26, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Topique: “[ˀj]”
I just add a note. “[ʄ]” for other choice. Juidzi (talk) 07:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

When ± was it spoken?
There's a lot of good info here, but a basic question is not answered: when was this Proto-Tai language spoken? I understand that no one knows for sure, but I suppose there are estimates. Exarchus (talk) 09:03, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd check papers and presentations by Pittayawat Pittayaporn and Mark Alves. An educated guess should pinpoint it at anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500 years BP. Lingnanhua (talk) 20:14, 18 February 2023 (UTC)