Date of Award
Fall 2024
Document Type
Thesis
Terms of Use
© 2024 Kanyarin Boonkongchuen. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Linguistics Department
First Advisor
Rikker Dockum
Abstract
This study replicates, and extends to Kra-Dai languages, earlier work on minimal wordlist size needed to make a phonological profile of a language. Previous work on Australian languages recommended approximately 400 randomly sampled words to comprise a minimally complete profile in terms of reliably capturing every phoneme, and with accurate distribution. We survey 55 Kra-Dai languages to show that a longer minimal list is necessary, which we attribute to typological differences like larger consonant/vowel inventories. Given the widespread use of short wordlists in fieldwork, these results hold significance for designing language documentation surveys as well as projects that use legacy wordlist data.
Keywords
Phonology, Kra-Dai, Language Documentation, Swadesh Lists
Recommended Citation
Boonkongchuen, Kanyarin , '25, "Minimal wordlist size for a phonological profile: New evidence from Kra-Dai languages" (2024). Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards. 957.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/theses/957
