A Reference Grammar of Thai

A Reference Grammar of Thai provides a clear, detailed and comprehensive guide to Thai grammar, designed for intermediate to advanced learners. Written by two leading experts on Thai, it places a special emphasis on functional accounts of its grammatical phenomena: the use of demonstratives, personal reference terms, the modality system, the aspectual system, pragmatic particles, verb serialization, relative clauses, question formation, passive and causative constructions, topic marking, and many more. Unlike any other book on Thai grammar, it draws on data from everyday spoken discourses such as informal conversation, group discussions, interviews and narratives, as well as non-technical written texts such as folk tales, short stories, and newspaper articles, to discuss grammatical phenomena at both sentence and discourse level. An extensive index is provided and examples are given in both Thai orthography and IPA symbols, making this an invaluable resource for linguists as well as students and teachers of Thai.

• Detailed, comprehensive and user-friendly, making it suitable for intermediate to advanced learners of Thai as well as scholars • Illustrates ‘real’ language using data from everyday spoken discourses as well as non-technical written texts • Provides definitions and explanations of technical linguistic terms before discussion

1. Introduction; 2. The structure of words; 3. Personal reference terms; 4. The structure of noun phrases; 5. Numeral classifiers; 6. Demonstratives; 7. Adjectives; 8. Adverbs and adverbial phrases; 9. Verbs and transitivity; 10. Challengeability marker: /cå/; 11. Modality; 12. Aspect; 13. Linking particle: /kç›/; 14. Speech level particles; 15. Pragmatic particles; 16. Body-part expressions; 17. Copulative sentences; 18. Serial verb construction; 19. Relative clauses; 20. Complementation; 21. Quotation and complementizer /wâa/; 22. Adverbial clauses; 23. ‘Yes/No’ and tag questions; 24. Interrogative and indefinite expressions; 25. Reciprocal, distributive, and collective: /kan/; 26. Passive; 27. Causative; 28. Benefactive and purposive; 29. Potential; 30. Discourse.