STUDIA PHONOLOGICA IX (1975) Common Tai and Archaic Chinese

1. A number of scholars have discussed the problem of whether there is any re-lationship between the Thai and Chinese languages l. Among them, K. Wulff has carried out the most comprehensive research. In his Chinesisch und Tai 2, Wulff first made detailed comparative studies of Tai dialects, and then comparing them with Karlgren's reconstructed form of Ancient Chinese. This work, while an excellent and enduring one, fails to establish regularities of phonemic correspond-ence between the two languages. The Thai and Chinese languages are very close to each other not only in phonemic inventory and syllabic pattern, but also in syntax, and show one-to-one correlations. Nevertheless it is not easy to find sys-tematic correspondences between individual phonemes and morphemes of the two languages. Therefore, it is quite natural to pose the question of which family the Thai language should be said to belong t03• 2. It was previously proposed that the Sino-Tibetan language family, including Thai, should be brought into the Indonesian language family, and the whole in-corporated into a larger group of languages. 4 In his Uber das Verhaltnis des Malayo