Semai language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Semai | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Peninsular Malaysia | |
| Total speakers: | 33,000 | |
| Language family: | Austro-Asiatic Mon-Khmer Southern Aslian Senoic Semai |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | mkh | |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | sea | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Semai is an Austroasiatic language belonging to the Mon-Khmer subgroup, and it is spoken in Western Malaysia by about 33,000 speakers.
One notable aspect of Semai phonology is its highly irregular pattern of expressive reduplication, showing discontiguous copying from just the edges of the reduplicant's base, thus forming a minor syllable.
[edit] References
- Diffloth, Gerard. 1976a. Minor-Syllable Vocalism in Senoic Languages. In Philip N. Lenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.), Austroasiatic Studies, Part I, 229-247. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press.
- Diffloth, Gerard. 1976b. Expressives in Semai. In Philip N. Lenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.), Austroasiatic Studies, Part I, 249-264. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press.
- Hendricks, Sean. 2001. Bare-Consonant Reduplication Without Prosodic Templates: Expressive Reduplication in Semai. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 10: 287-306.
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