ศาลาชุมนุม

[pensive]

A word to the wise - "isolating" does not mean "isolating"!

[Tgeezer]

A word to the wise - "isolating" does not mean "isolating"!

But that is exactly what it does mean, there is no other meaning but that found in the jargon of linguists; of language, having each element as an independent word without inflections.

[pensive]

I guess you have a reference for that definition?

I don't know what you mean by the only meaning: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/isolate?s=t

[Tgeezer]

I guess you have a reference for that definition?

I don't know what you mean by the only meaning: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/isolate?s=t

It is such a strange word that I couldn't think what it could mean so I looked it up in the OED and that was the only definition.
I notice that your dictionary has it as a noun, but doesn't really say how to use it. Basque is isolating. ?

[pensive]

Basque apparently is maximally isolating. Thai is only isolating to the extent that it is monosyllabic. That is why I say you shouldn't be trying to use the term.

[DonSena]

Interesting. But what about http://th.w3dictionary.org/index.php?q= ... 5%E0%B8%87? Is น้อยลง a word in its own right?

Pensive,

Someone else will have to comment on the notion of "what is a word". I am agnostic on the issue. I can see น้อยลง as a single word or as a phrase or as a "bound lexeme". It seems to me that if an expression is a common Thai way of speaking, then the dictionary should reflect that expression. In the T-L.com dictionary, for example, น้อยลง and its illustrative sentences are shown at http://www.thai-language.com/id/219296.

I won't go into a rant on the issue, but I think that our common tools for analyzing English grammar are inadequate for describing Thai grammar and I wish I had sufficient knowledge of an integrated description set for Thai that I have internalized to be able to describe these grammatical phenomenon.

I could make the case, for example, that น้อย in "คนยุคใหม่กินน้อยลง" is a noun serving as a direct object of the transitive verb กิน and ลง was an adverb associated with the verb กิน. But that is probably not a widely held perspective.

I hope that Don Sena can tell us how Noss would analyze a sentence like this.

Here is another example from the news of น้อย as part of the bound lexeme น้อยหน้า (to feel inferior to):

ผู้นำหญิงคนไหนแสดงความกล้าหาญ บริหารราชการอย่างเด็ดเดี่ยว พร้อมทำงานหนักโดยไม่น้อยหน้าผู้ชาย ก็มักจะได้รับการเรียกขานตามท่านนายกรัฐมนตรี
"Any female leader who demonstrates courage and manages decisively, and works hard without a sense of inferiority toward any male, will likely be called on to become the next Prime Minister."

As Noss would have it -- and I tend to agree with him -- น้อย in คนยุคใหม่กินน้อยลง is a complementive, which is an adverb that modifies the main verb . Here, น้อย simply that the action of กิน occurs น้อยลง less so than it did for the dame subject than it did some time ago.

Additionally, น้อย is said to belong to a class of complementives he designates as เอง-class comlementives. This class of complementives can only follow the main verb, but never precede it.

There is บังเอิญ class, whose members only precede the verb.

Then, there's the ทำไม class, whose members may either precede or follow the verb. Included in this class are all sorts of prepositional phrases.

[David and Bui]

Don,

I see that you classify หน่อย also as a complementive. From your paper on codaphrase:

"ไปซะหน่อยซิ ไปซะหน่อย [ ] [ซิ] [ ] [ ]
‘Why don’t you go!’
หน่อย here is a “complementive,” a modifier to the verb ไป. It means that the action is to be regarded as being ‘no big deal.’ "
Is this also of the type which can only follow the verb?

Thank you, Don, for your explanation of the classification of these words.

[Richard Wordingham]

Basque apparently is maximally isolating. Thai is only isolating to the extent that it is monosyllabic. That is why I say you shouldn't be trying to use the term.

Basque is isolated, not isolating. They have very different meanings. 'Isolated' refers to the language; 'isolating' refers to the morphemes and how they are arranged.

Think about the the tongue I and my kin have used since we first spoke, and which we all use here. It works quite well with words with just one vowel, just like Thai, but one still can't use the form that ends with 'g' to say how it works. The length of words in a tongue may make it hard to add bits to them, but it does not stop it. To change a vowel is a trick used much in this tongue; Thai does not do this much at all, though it does change the tone in some words.

[Tgeezer]

Basque apparently is maximally isolating. Thai is only isolating to the extent that it is monosyllabic. That is why I say you shouldn't be trying to use the term.

Basque is isolated, not isolating. They have very different meanings. 'Isolated' refers to the language; 'isolating' refers to the morphemes and how they are arranged.

Think about the the tongue I and my kin have used since we first spoke, and which we all use here. It works quite well with words with just one vowel, just like Thai, but one still can't use the form that ends with 'g' to say how it works. The length of words in a tongue may make it hard to add bits to them, but it does not stop it. To change a vowel is a trick used much in this tongue; Thai does not do this much at all, though it does change the tone in some words.

I remember first seeing 'isolating language' in brackets after ภาษาคำโดด in a book on fundamentals of Thai, so to at least one writer it described Thai. Then in the introduction to articles written by the R.I. about คำประสม: แม้ว่าภาษาไทยจะเป็นภาษาคำโดด แต่ก็ปราฏดว่าเรามี คำประสม ใช้อยูในภาษาไทยมากมาย one could deduce that it means 'single word language'. Without that comparison being made how would anyone know what ภาษาคำโดด means? I am not sure I know now, which is why I describe it as jargon.

Anyway we seem to have come full circle rather nicely with your comment on Thai sometimes changing tones; น้อย หน่อย .

[DonSena]

Don,

I see that you classify หน่อย also as a complementive. From your paper on codaphrase:

"ไปซะหน่อยซิ => ไปซะหน่อย [ ] [ซิ] [ ] [ ]
‘Why don’t you go!’
หน่อย here is a “complementive,” a modifier to the verb ไป. It means that the action is to be regarded as being ‘no big deal.’ "
Is this also of the type which can only follow the verb?

Thank you, Don, for your explanation of the classification of these words.

Right. หน่อย is in the class of complementives that can only follow the verb. Noss names this class after one of the complementives that can only occur in this position -- namely, เอง. Thus, he calls this class "the เอง class.' (เอง, of course, can never precede the verb.)
Also included in the เอง class are ด้วย, เท่ากัน, อีก, ด้วยกัน (a separate lexeme from ด้วย), เหมือนกัน, ต่างหาก, อยู๋ดี, ทันที, เลย, ที and ก็แล้วกัน. Each of these, like เอง, is restricted to occurring only after the verb.